Swarfcast

In honor of this weekend’s PMPA National Technical Conference, we’re resharing a podcast we did last year with Elliott May, engineer at BME in Port Huron, Michigan. BME builds original custom attachments for cam multi-spindles. They also rebuild Acme-Gridley screw machines. Elliott and I talked about a lot of fascinating things in this interview. How [...]

The post Innovating New Attachments for Screw Machines, with Elliott May—EP 143 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.

I’m dealing with a customer right now who seems interested in some CNC machines Graff-Pinkert has for sale. They told me they needed this type of machine ASAP! And these machines are RARE! They even said they had a big job for the machines already and they are on the “verge of pulling the trigger [...]

The post Ghosted by a Customer, What Do You Do?—EP 215 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.

On this week’s classic episode of Swarfcast, we’re talking about preventing fires inside of machinery. Our guest is Mike Campo, Midwest Regional Sales Manager with Firetrace International, makers of fire suppression systems and solutions. Fire suppression systems keep businesses, people and equipment safe by automatically detecting and suppressing fires in high-risk equipment, like CNC machines, [...]

The post How to Prevent Fires in Your Machine Tools with Mike Campo-EP 98 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.

It seems that today’s younger generations of workers, such as millennials, want to understand why they are instructed to do their jobs in a certain way more than their predecessors. Many of today’s employees are not content to just follow orders and take home a check. They want to feel invested in their work, they [...]

The post The Benefits of a Manufacturing Business Sharing Financials with its Employees, with Reid Leland-EP 132 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.

In the last year, our used machinery company, Graff-Pinkert, has been successfully growing our business brokering division. This podcast and Today’s Machining World have played a huge part in our marketing. They have established us as thought leaders in the machining industry, and that is bringing in customers. It only took 24 years of writing [...]

The post How to Market a Manufacturing Business by Becoming a Thought Leader, with Joe Sullivan-EP 137 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.

Today’s episode is Part II of our interview with Roger Duffy, owner of F&F Machine Products. In Part I we touched on Roger’s natural entrepreneurial instinct and how he loves to push himself to get out of his comfort zone. In this episode, we’re delving further into Roger’s business adventures and philosophies.  He believes in [...]

The post Breaking Your Machining Business Out of Its Goldfish Bowl, Roger Duffy (Part II)-EP 212 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.

How many times has something happened to you that really sucked but then eventually turned out to be a good thing or even a great thing that happened for you?  Today, I’m going to tell you a story about when a big machinery deal went to hell and then how its failure led to an [...]

The post How to Turn a Business Failure Into an Opportunity—Seeking Serendipity EP 211 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.

Recently, we have seen a growing number of mergers and acquisitions in the manufacturing space. After these deals are finalized there’s a lot of uncertainty for the employees caught in the middle of reorganization. Our guest on the podcast today is Jennifer Fondrevay. Jennifer is a best selling author and the Founder of Day1 Ready, [...]

The post How Do You Manage Employees When a Company is Acquired? With Jennifer Fondrevay—EP 175 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.

At Graff-Pinkert, I’ve sold a lot of machine tools to successful entrepreneurs, including my guest on today’s show, Roger Duffy, owner of F&F Machine Products. But, just a few people like him really have stood out for their outward ballsiness in business. Roger says he loves being an entrepreneur because it allows him to take [...]

The post Growing a Thriving Shop by Creating Chaos and then Organizing it, Roger Duffy (Part I)-EP 210 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.

“I can’t hire a cam multi-spindle operator who knows what they’re doing! I’m throwing out my multi-spindles and going all CNC.” “These old Acmes, Wickmans, or New Britains pay for themselves every three months. They’ve left a wide open field for me!” Selling screw machines for our used machine tool business, Graff-Pinkert, we hear both [...]

The post Change, Fear, and Screw Machines–EP 209 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.