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 [...]
It’s that time of year again. Westec brings manufacturers to the Los Angeles Convention Center. But the real question is, “Will shops bring themselves to Westec?”
It’s no secret that this year might just bring new meaning to the term “lean manufacturing”. Maybe “little manufacturing” might be more appropriate. Cynical? Yes! [...]
Back in my machinist days I was often asked what I did for a living. The response from the average person was usually the same… they had heard the terms “machinist” or “machine shop” but couldn’t really explain what they were or what they did. The interested people that actually wanted to [...]
Once again IMTS has come and gone. Millions of dollars have been spent on travel, booth displays, hotels and dining all with the sole purpose of getting owners to spend even more on new products and machinery. Though it is an event that comes every other year, has the hype been worth it? [...]
There’s plenty of mousetraps in the world and there’s always room for better ones right? As machinists we often find ourselves needing a tool or seeing how to improve one. (Yes, amazing things come to mind while standing at a machine for hours on end.) So what to do when the next [...]
