Swarfcast

Born with no intention of becoming a machinist, Greg Knight says he was drafted into “indentured servitude” at age 16 when his father started a Brown & Sharpe machine shop in their garage. Despite his initial distaste for manual labor, fate had other plans for the psychology, philosophy, religion, and sociology major. I ran into [...]

The post Best of Swarfcast: Tai Chi, Machine Tools, and ALS, with Greg Knight — EP 240 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.

Nir Levy was nineteen years old when he was already commanding a unit in the Israeli army. He managed hundreds of people and logistics with life or death stakes, at an age when most of us were figuring out laundry. After the Israeli army came Amazon, where Nir eventually ran a full manufacturing facility. There, [...]

The post Army, Amazon, Aerospace, with Nir Levy — EP 269 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.

On this "Best of Swarfcast" episode, Noah speaks with Rich Gaffney, Vice President of Commercial Operations at Sentry Equipment, a 100-year-old manufacturing company in Wisconsin that has been employee owned since 1986.

While his nine-year-old son was fighting stage three cancer, Nick Stevens was driving around buying up scrap tungsten carbide just to keep food on the table. It worked well enough that one day, sitting in the hospital room, his son said to him: “Dad, why don’t you just start your own business and be your [...]

The post Your Scrap Tungsten Carbide Is a National Security Question, Nick Stevens and Joey Marks–EP 268 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.

Pat Parnell went to buy a classic car for his wife. He ended up buying a company too. Rain Gear Wiper Systems, the only hidden wiper system company for classic cars in the world. After 42 years hauling and installing high-end appliances, his body was done with the heavy lifting. Within a few weeks of [...]

The post The Only Classic Car Wiper Business in the World, with Pat Parnell-EP 267 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.

Today’s podcast is about mentorship, finding it, and paying it back. Logan McGhan is an old friend of mine from the used machinery business who is now a CNC programmer at a semiconductor company in Arizona. Along the way he’s had invaluable mentors in martial arts, machining, and sales, and one of his main purposes [...]

The post The Man Who Never Stops Teaching, with Logan McGhan-EP 266 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.

Have you ever wondered what it takes to manufacture luxury watches that cost tens of thousands of dollars? This is the episode to find out! Last week I reconnected with Josh Shapiro to tell him about a used Willemin 408MT Graff-Pinkert had for sale. He told me that he was extremely excited for his new [...]

The post Manufacturing a $70,000 Wristwatch in the United States, with Josh Shapiro EP-174 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.

I met Tim Betts a few weeks ago when he was shopping for a Willemin mill-turn we had for sale. One conversation in and I knew he had to come on Swarfcast. Tim told me he’s in the drugs business, the guns business, and horse racing, and that actually makes him one of the most [...]

The post Rifles, Racing, and Rhinos, with Tim Betts–EP 265 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.

Sometimes I feel like I’m a good leader. I think I’ve always believed at least that I could be. The insecure statement comes from my conventional view of leading–taking charge to mobilize other people in our businesses, or as a dad or as a thought leader. But my podcast guest Ryan Avery, gave me a [...]

The post Be THE Leader, with Ryan Avery–EP 264 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.

“God, I am so NOT relaxed right now. But I need to just embrace what I read recently — you need the courage to be rubbish. Just relax, stop worrying about everything being perfect, and do it.” I said that to my dad, Lloyd, as we sat down to record our podcast last week–which turned [...]

The post Courage to Be Rubbish – EP 263 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.