I’ll let you in on a little secret: I read science fiction. Not exclusively, but I do enjoy the techie stories of authors like Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, and Robert Heinlein. They blend stories about people and technology with an optimistic outlook about what’s in store for us. The characters that populate their stories are [...]
Yeah, I’m a codger — not yet by definition “old” since I don’t yell at kids to get off my lawn, but I’m getting codger qualified. I can tell because I like some things that have changed, but shouldn’t have, like the nickname of what was once America’s best-selling car. This [...]
As an owner of a company that buys a lot of machined parts I often receive solicitations in the form of brochures. I appreciate the time fellow business people take in putting together marketing materials to pursue sales, but correctly pursuing a customer starts well before the stamp hits the envelope. I received a brochure [...]
It used to be that 20 years ago was a significant amount. Not so much now. Haul someone from 1990 to 2010 and there wouldn’t be the same amount of future shock that bringing someone forward from 1930 to 1950 would have. Maybe we’ve become more sophisticated, more technically savvy. But, [...]
In President Obama’s recent State of the Union address he introduced a plan for $30 billion of TARP money to be lent to small businesses through the banking network. This shot in the arm is exactly what small business needs to regain working capital for new investments and expansion. Too bad the average small business [...]
Two more industrial business-to-business magazines have bitten the dust. Penton Media’s venerable American Machinist and Welding Design & Fabrication have ceased print publication. For me, both were within that six-degrees-of-separation.
My first editor-in-chief gig was as head honcho of Gases & Welding Distributor, a sister publication of Welding Design & Fabrication. In [...]
Dust is such a dirty thing! But when it comes to machining graphite, dust can be a machine killer.
The use of graphite in EDM machining is very common in the US, and is increasingly used in Europe and Asia. It is easy to machine, has excellent wear resistance, and performs well in most EDM [...]
Rumor has it I built my company under the guise of being an inventor. If you ask me I’m simply an engineer that filled some needs for better workholding. Either way, my circle of friends has labeled me as the “go-to-guy” when it comes to answering invention questions. For this reason, they [...]
The fax machine is a powerful tool that gained widespread use in the 1980’s, but with email becoming a far superior method of transmitting documents, the fax is quickly becoming an archaic, yet necessary component to the modern office. Though I would personally love to eliminate its use altogether, it remains so easy for [...]
So often, shops have no company website. Moreover, their email address is from any number of generic sources; machineshopperson@att.net, anothershop@yahoo.com, i-need-a-website@hotmail.com. There’s really nothing wrong with having such an address, but using an email that includes your company’s name is much more professional.
In today’s information age, the necessity of having a company website [...]
