One of the authors who led this school of optimism in the future of technology was E.E. “Doc” Smith, an engineer by training and an author of “space opera” stories by avocation. His Skylark and Gray Lensman novels featured heroic protagonists who could whip up rays of the sixth order — whatever those were — that could drive space-ships [as he called them] at about a  million times the speed of light and burst planets like toy balloons.

In the Skylark series, super-genius man-of-action Dick Seaton, his wife, his buddy, and his buddy’s wife flit around the galaxy defending it from the monstrous Fenachrones bent on conquering the universe — nothing like having big plans after all — and defending themselves from their arch enemy Marc “Blackie” DuQuesne.

This is all very interesting, you might say — or might not, depending on your taste — but what has this to do with machining?

I’m setting the groundwork for a passage from Smith’s novel, “Skylark Three.” In the book, Seaton needs the help of the Osnomians, an advanced civilization of green humans, a million years old and composed of geniuses that make Brainiac seem like a slow learner.

Seaton enlists their aid in building a super-duper space-ship with which to defeat the Fenachrone.

“Building the generators,” Smith wrote back in 1930, “would have been a long and difficult task for a corps of Earthly mechanics and electricians, but to Seaton it was merely a job. The ’shop’ had been enlarged and filled to capacity with Osnomian machinery; machine tools  that were capable of performing automatically and with the utmost precision and speed almost any conceivable mechanical operation. He put a dozen of them to work . . . ”

Automatic machine tools capable of performing by themselves to “utmost precision” were as pie-in-the-sky for an engineer in 1930 as were starships. This was an era straight out of “The Bull of the Woods” where some machine shop tools still were powered by leather belts from a central motor.

Yet, a mere 30 years later, NC and CNC machines were entering the shop environment. Today, 80 years after Doc Smith posited the need for a million-year-old culture to produce automated machining, metalworking machines that can create parts from electronic drawings are within the reach of almost any machinist willing to invest the price of a new automobile.

What’s even more remarkable is that we now have machining technologies even science fiction couldn’t have predicted: electrical discharge machines, laser cutters, waterjets, plasma cutters, stereolithography, and laser sintering. Not to mention technologies now only in development.

Despite the current economic woes, I believe we live in a time that will be seen as the golden age of machining.

-Pete Nofel-

My biggest objection was the take-over of General Motors by the federal government. Okay, Our Beloved President isn’t sitting at the head of the board of directors like Donald Trump on that goofy TV show, but when you take Uncle Sugar’s dough, you’re a vassal, no matter how much you protest. The great thing about GM is that it didn’t even have to change its initials when it went from General Motors to Government Motors.

I should offer some full disclosure here. My old man — requiescat in pace — worked for Ford. It was a golden time for automotive workers. He was able to retire after 30 years with financial and medical benefits that weren’t gold-plated, they were solid gold plated in platinum. I suspect that when he died, and his retiree benefits stopped, the price of each Ford dropped by $1.73. Growing up, I took part of his family benefits plan, so I’m more than a little invested in the health of the US auto industry.

That said, I admit that I was a patron of General Motors. My Blushing Bride and I leased or purchased Pontiacs for the past 12 or 15 years, that’s six of them. We bought our last one a couple of months before GM decided it was such a lousy car company that it needed public funds to keep going. The day I heard that GM became an adjunct to the federal government, I vowed to avoid GM. When I heard that GM had killed the Pontiac brand, General Motors was dead to me.

But, I have been tempted of late to perhaps give them another chance. Our dealership — who has treated me and My Blushing Bride extraordinarily well — may switch over to the Buick line after they had the Pontiac nameplate yanked out from under them. I suppose being a successful dealer doesn’t mean the company owes it anything. Just another example of how corporate-speak — “Our employees are our greatest asset” — isn’t worth the powder to blow it up.

What convinced me to never buy another GM product is the company’s latest decision to ghetto-ize the C word: Chevy.

According to corporate [and probably government] drones, “Chevy” is no longer an acceptable word that can be used by GM employees. Yeah, it carries so much negative baggage with it:

• “Had an old gold Chevy and a place of my own”
• “Drove my Chevy to the levee”
• “Out in the back seat of my ‘60 Chevy”

I expect it now has the negative cachet in GM that the N-word and B-word have. The same corporate geniuses that drove the biggest, most success car company into the ground [in a Chevy, no doubt] has instituted “cuss-jars” for the use of “Chevy.” Say the C word, owe a quarter to the cuss jar, or perhaps as in Cool Hand Luke, spend a night in the box.

When the lease on our Pontiac GXP is up at the end of they year, I think I may visit a car dealer who has a franchise for the T-word automobiles.

Long live Our Beloved President.

- Pete Nofel -

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 lately that reminded me of the basic principles of good visual communication: grammar, spelling, content, layout and second opinions.

Click to Magnify

How Not to do a Brochure
The brochure I’ve used to illustrate these basics of visual communication is from a real company that is actually using this brochure to attract customers.  What they may not realize is that they may be causing customers to avoid them like the plague.  I’ve graciously hidden their name.  Though not everything they did was wrong, our English teacher here would have definitely issued an F-.  My favorite quote, “excellence in Precision manufacturing is everything we do”, might actually be true… because we sure know that basic writing isn’t.

Grammar and Spelling
Most of us in manufacturing were not top students in English, but that does not excuse us from knowing the basics of punctuation, sentence structure and capitalization that are needed to correctly communicate.  The aim of this section is not to teach these basics, but to emphasize their importance.  Even if we don’t have the skills, or don’t want to learn them, we at least have some people in our lives that can help.  Even in the worst case scenario we could make a call to the local high school to ask the English teacher to refer an AP English student.  $25-$50 to proofread or help rewrite copy would have that student thrilled.

Content
The most important aspect to a good brochure is the content. There are two sides to content – visual (photos and graphics) and copy (text).  Let’s cover the copy with two lists – Basic Copy and Optional Copy:

Basic Copy

• Company Name
• Phone number
• Address
• Website address (if any)
• Types of manufacturing processes offered
• Types of materials worked with
• Certifications and/or quality standards
• Markets served

Optional Copy

• Machinery list
• Customer list
• Size of company
• Brief company history
• Simple map showing the company location
• Contacts of key company individuals or departments

Layout

Click to Magnify

Creating a good brochure layout is definitely a stretch for most shop owners.  Our definition of what looks good is usually defined as what type of finish it has.  Needless to say we may not even possess the talent and tools to even know where to begin to create any marketing material.  It looks like the creator of our example brochure used a company that I too have used for quite some time – VistaPrint.

VistaPrint is an online digital printing company that offers a wide range of products at excellent prices.  Whether you’re a professional graphic designer or a first time user, VistaPrint has all the tools needed to create and produce everything from shirts and mugs to business cards and brochures.  They have an extensive set of templates ready to customize with logos, photos and copy.  When choosing a layout be sure you are able to include the copy elements listed above as well as the following visual content:

• Company logo
• Current photos of your facility
• Text in a size and color that is legible
• Photos of sample parts
• Photos of key individuals or company products

Our example brochure has what is called “stock photography” on the front.  This is a no-no.  Don’t waste precious photo space with something that isn’t authentically from your company.  Make sure all photos are well lit and in focus.  Always uploading the highest resolution available or else you’ll run the risk of your photos looking pixelated.

Second Opinions

One of the more satisfying events I ever experienced was when an arrogant, know-it-all boss only trusted himself and his brown-nosing secretary to proofread his work.  It all came crashing down when a print order of nearly $6,000 was tossed in the dumpster due to a simple (and obvious) key word that was misspelled.  The rule-of-thumb is always get as many eyes on your work before production… pass around the rough draft at lunch and listen for feedback.  Good inspection is a key factor to a shop’s ongoing success so why should it be any different with marketing.  Plus, what does a poorly written brochure say about your company’s quality control?

By following these key principles of grammar, spelling, content, layout and second opinions you and your team will be equipped to create a brochure worth holding on to and not adding to the round file.

- Jay Pierson

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, a 20 year span isn’t as shocking as it once was.

Take things back 35 years and the details of life were much different. Cable TV was strictly for rural folks who couldn’t get broadcast signals. Computers were room-sized hulks that only big businesses could afford. There were still pay phones, and they only cost a dime.

Technically things changed, but in the political / economic life, things haven’t changed that much. We still don’t know how to effectively control inflation, avoid recessions, or the complex relationships between economic growth and interest rates.

Back when Gerald Ford was president, the US was going through an inflationary period. Banks CDs were paying 10 percent and home mortgage rates were in the 13 and 14 percent range. Ford, and his administration, had no idea how to address inflation. In a move that only politicians could call “brilliant,” the president started wearing “WIN” buttons: Whip Inflation Now. As if the normal shop guy could go to a vendor and tell him to drop his price.

That kind of ineffectual blah-blah was called jaw-boning. If those in power would only say that the economic hard times were over, then through some magic fairy-dust, the hard times would disappear. Things haven’t changed much.

The current administration and it’s sycophants in the press keep trying to tell us that the Great Recession is over and that we’re on the road to recovery. It’s jawboning from down here in the trenches. Unemployment figures released in mid-May are up again, and that’s just those applying for unemployment benefits. There are millions of us out here who have burned through those benefits and are still jobless. And, it is jobs that make the economy roll.

We’re a consumer culture. The old saying “Nothing gets done until someone sells something,” is an economic fact. Without jobs and incomes, nothing gets sold because nothing can be bought.

Pumping printing-press money into the economy, in the guise of “economic stimulus” isn’t going to bring us out of recession. All it does is mortgage the future to higher taxes to pay off the loans the government is incurring.

If governments at all levels really want to get the economy back on its feet, it’s time they stopped making it harder for the small- and medium-sized business to get back to business. Lower taxes, less senseless regulation, and fewer “entitlements” will allow the guys with small businesses to get back to making things rather than filling out forms.

Pete Nofel

Here is Lynn Tilton, CEO of Patriarch Partners, a private equity firm dedicated to strengthening manufacturers, explaining why the President’s plan is more of a sound bite than a sound plan.

My first editor-in-chief gig was as head honcho of Gases & Welding Distributor, a sister publication of Welding Design & Fabrication. In fact, the WDF’s editor – Brad Kuvin at the time [now editor of MetalForming magazine at Precision Metalforming Association] – had the office next to mine. We even shared some staff.

In some restructuring at Penton, American Machinist moved into our publishing group. It was the big dog on the block: rarely less than a half-inch thick, the rest of the books – that’s publishing jargon for magazines – in the Industrial Group were less than dust beneath its feet. Since GWD was a small bimonthly book, it was a rare day when the editor back then had a good word – or any word, for that matter – with what he considered a pee-wee book such as GWD.

My other connection with AM came when I edited Modern Applications News. AM was one of our direct competitors, though you couldn’t tell from MAN’s name. I had just come from being a tech writer in the IT department of a large bank where computer programs were called “applications.” For me, a magazine called Modern Applications News, should have been about programs. Maybe that’s one reason it was never much of a leader in the field, despite it’s 42-year history.

All things considered, the demise of AM, WDF, and MAN bring up the issue of where people in the industry are getting their news?

Blowing Sunshine Up Readers’ Exhaust Ports
Let’s face facts, there is more than a close relationship between manufacturers and B2B magazines. While I tried to maintain something of a firewall between editorial and advertising, it wasn’t unknown for some books to be predisposed to working more closely with advertisers than I was comfortable with.

But, we all tried to maintain the idea we were independent of undue business influence. Now, however, with print publications disappearing, who will be taking an unbiased view of information coming from manufacturers?

Company in-house magazines, while slick and professionally produced give the impression of an unbiased presentation of facts, they are, in fact the mouthpieces of the company. That’s not a criticism. They wouldn’t last very long biting the hand that feeds them.

That leaves the reader in an uncomfortable, but probably unaware position, of not fully trusting what’s being printed. Not that such publications would lie, but I’m sure they would paint the rosiest picture possible of their products.

E Pluribus Stupid
Many of the websites about machining get most of their content from reader forums. I’ll be charitable and state that most of the participants are less than genius level. Is it really prudent to take advice from people who don’t know how to use the shift key, use multiple exclamation points, lack spelling proficiency, and insert emoticons? The intelligence of a crowd is inversely proportional to its size.

“Bring Out Your Dead!”
So, where does that leave things. I dunno. If I did, I’d have cashed in on it long ago. All I can predict is that newspapers and B2B magazines are on the skids, or as Grandpa Simpson said [and I'm paraphrasing]: “You’re in the newspaper business? Ho-ho! Something that’s going to die before I do!”

Pete Nofel has 30+ years of journalism experience and has held the position of Editor-in-Chief of several magazines covering the manufacturing industry.  He currently serves as Editor of CNC Report.com.

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 machines. However, graphite dust is very messy to work with and dispose of. Without a proper industrial dust collection system, the shop quickly is covered with a fine gray dust. This is unhealthy for humans and machinery as well. Because the dust is so conductive, it has destroyed more than one circuit board in a nearby machine tool.

It is not enough to merely set up a shop vacuum to suck up the dust during the typical manual surface grinding operation to make EDM electrodes. A fine particle filter industrial dust collection system is vastly superior and will help keep the shop atmosphere clean and healthy. Many shops have customized wheel guards in place to help eliminate the dust during the grinding of graphite. This, together with the dust collector can make a huge difference. The operator will greatly appreciate this as well!

The high speed milling machines that now produce many of the electrodes for EDM machining are commonly equipped with a negative pressure chamber that is extremely efficient at dust collection. The inside of the machine cabinet is often squeaky clean, not to mention the air in the vicinity. The carbide cutters and inserts used in these machining centers are expensive. Many are coated with special chemicals to increase their performance capabilities. Removing the dust during machining helps prolong the life of these carbide end mills and ball end mills. A coated micro end mill can easily cost up to $85, so the cost savings is significant.

The automatic tool changer and pallet changer can also be adversely affected, if the dust is not removed from the shop. Similar to the precision tooling, any moving parts will prematurely wear or become inaccurate over time. One other common tool, frequently used in mold repair, is the micro welder, or laser welder. The circuitry can be damaged by short circuits from the annoying dust.

Bottom line: invest in an industrial dust collector and keep the filters clean!

Other groups I often speak to are machinists wanting to start shops of their own and owners who want to take their businesses to the next level. The advice I give to both groups is nearly identical. Making great parts in a timely manner may be the easy part, but faced with the reality of what it takes to successfully grow and market a company of their own often causes the mental back burners to fire up. Though there’s not one right answer to successfully market a machine shop, I’ll provide several “most bang for the buck” ideas. In part 1 of this “Marketing for Machine Shops” series, I’ll cover one of the easiest marketing tactics to implement and it’s all done through a product called Google Maps.

X Marks the Spot

Google Maps can bring a company to the forefront of people’s searches without having to spend a penny. In fact, it doesn’t even require a company webpage. With Google Maps, users in a geographical area can type in a search term and find a list of related businesses with their locations pinpointed on an interactive map. Having good online visibility is arguably one of the most powerful aspects in promoting a company. Companies registered with Google Maps not only achieve this visibility of appearing on map searches, but also under normal web searches in the user’s geographical area. For example, a user in Chicago searching for “Machine Shops” on Google’s main search page will also see results appear under a map section called “Local business results for machine shops near Chicago”. Very powerful indeed!

Getting Practical

Registering a business with Google Maps is a free, one-time process. Get started with these steps:

1. Go to www.google.com.
2. In the upper right-hand corner of the page, click “Sign In”. An account with Google is necessary to proceed. (An account with Google is an asset that provides many valuable tools to small businesses that I’ll cover in future columns.)
3. In the upper left-hand corner, click on “Maps” or go to maps.google.com.
4. On the left-hand side of the page click the link that says “Put your business on Google Maps”. On the next page, click “Add New Business”.
5. Start entering all pertinent contact information and a well thought out description about the company and click “Next”. Should any of the info change, Google Maps provides the ability to edit details at any time.
6. On the following page, continue to enter as much information about the company. It’s not necessary to fill out all the fields, but don’t skip the “Category” section. Again, this can be edited at a later time.
7. Submit the information and verify everything on the next page.

Once this information is recorded in Google’s database, potential customers will have a far greater chance of making contact with your company and friends will label you the “go-to-guy” for Google Maps.

- Jay Pierson

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 anyone to load a piece of paper in a chute, dial a number, press a button and walk away. I admit that faxes are possibly here to stay for another decade, but let’s at least give a facelift to this old technology.

A few years ago I spent some time helping my father move out of his shop as he entered retirement after a 30 year career as a sheet metal shop owner. Among the typical things you would expect to find were vast amounts of documents that had been accumulated and archived over the years. Boxes upon boxes of invoices, purchase orders, faded faxes, material certificates and receipts easily amounted to hundreds of pounds of paper alone! We reminisced while thumbing through old blue prints (yes, literally the blue ones) dating back to June 1979. Why someone would hold on to documents for so long baffled me. “Out of sight, out of mind” was his answer. However, it did motivate me to ensure that such a useless (and somewhat hazardous) stockpile never occurred in my company.

Our ability to reduce paper consumption is not only appealing to environmentalists, but can eliminate unneeded filing and clutter around the office saving us time and money. For now, let’s start with the fax machine – one of the worst paper-spewing culprits.

Going Digital

A quick internet search for “faxing services” will provide at least a dozen companies that offer online faxing services that are meant to replace the traditional fax machine. Here’s how they work. At signup, the faxing service provides toll-free and local telephone numbers to select for your new fax number. After some basic setup and activation, a sender can dial your new fax number and send as usual, but now the fax will be conveniently delivered to your email inbox typically in the form of a widely used .PDF file. When viewing these files they’ll look like what you would expect a traditional fax to look like. However, these services truly shine not just in their ease of receiving faxes, but storing them as well. I personally have every fax ever sent and received at my company since 2003 conveniently saved in an email folder called “Faxes”. If you’ve ever seen anything printed on thermal fax paper you’ll know that their tendency to fade makes it nearly impossible to read beyond a few years.

Sending faxes is easy and convenient as well. Suppose you have an invoice you want to send to a customer. Instead of printing the invoice to fax it, you simply save the file (this is assuming you are creating invoices with QuickBooks, Microsoft Word, Excel or another program) and attach it to an email addressed in a format such as (AreaCode+FaxNumber)@AnyFaxingService.com. Your customer will receive the crystal clear fax on their traditional fax machine within a few minutes.

Sign and Fax Back?

So far we’ve eliminated the fax machine, a second phone line and reduced paper consumption. But, what happens when we have a document needing to be signed and faxed? It would seem like this scenario would require you to hang onto the old fax machine for those times. Some software programs like Adobe Acrobat allow you to digitally sign a document, but the ability to scan an existing page with a document scanner is a better tool.

Document scanners are devices that loosely resemble copiers minus the paper trays and toner components. Most reasonably priced scanners ($50 to $75) come with built-in capabilities that allow you to create ready-to-email documents with the push of a single button. Insert document, press button, select and email the file to your recipient’s fax number and you’re done. They’re definitely a must-have tool to complete the transition.

With a bit of spare time, the transition to online faxing services should be as easy as tossing out a box of 30 year old blueprints.

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 cannot be ignored. The first step in getting a website is buying a domain name that tells the world where your website can be found. As the popularity of the internet grows exponentially, the importance of getting your company’s domain name registered as soon as possible, even if the thought of a company website is a distant idea. We’re not the only one that thinks so. In fact, all three- and four-letter combinations of letters have already been purchased as website domain names by people known as cyber squatters. A cyber squatter’s sole purpose is to purchase domain names with the hopes of companies becoming desperate enough to buy the name for thousands of times more than what it originally cost. If cyber squatters have bought up every combination of names from aaaa.com to zzz.com then stressing the importance of simply owning a domain name for future use goes without saying.

Getting Practical

For now, let’s start simple and take the first step in acquiring your piece of internet real estate. Let’s cover some basic principles. Every pioneer looks for land first before they ever build. Don’t assume that you need to buy a domain name and have a company website up in the next week. There’s nothing wrong with buying a name and waiting until the right time to put a site on it. Even free or low cost basic websites with your contact info is acceptable while you plan for something more extensive.

Now it’s time to think about what your company’s domain name should be. Many of you will luck out and be able to register the exact name of your company with no problems. Others will have to be a little more creative since the domain name might be taken. Let’s start with a few guidelines on how to choose a name:

• Try and keep your name as short as possible. There’s a reason Haas Automation uses www.haascnc.com as opposed to their full company name.
• Try and avoid dashes (-) and underscores (_) in your name. If these characters are not communicated properly, you risk pointing a customer to the wrong company.
• Always try and get the .com version and never the .org. A website ending in .org identifies you as a non-profit organization. Also, try and stay away from less popular website suffixes (technically known as a TLD) like .tv, .mobi, .us, .info, .biz. A .com suffix provides the strongest branding.
• Be descriptive. If your company name is simply “Smith”, try for smithmfg.com or smithmachining.com. Your domain name will be more memorable and will help people find you more easily through a web search.
• If you’re debating between two different names, buy both of them! You can always forward one name to another.

Now, once you’ve brainstormed and have a few domain name possibilities, see if they’re available. The fastest source for this is www.instantdomainsearch.com. As you type in domain names, you’ll instantly see if the .com, .net and .org names are available. From there you can visit any company that registers domain names (try www.1and1.com or www.godaddy.com) to purchase your name for less than $10 annually. Look for the terms “Search Domains” or “Register Domains” and they’ll walk you through the process.

Congratulations, you’ve now staked a claim in cyber space for your company’s future. You’re just a few simple steps away from setting up personalized email addresses and a basic info page. When the time comes to build a more detailed website, you’ll already have your perfect lakefront property to build on.