In a lifetime, how many opportunities have you missed to listen to a potential friend, or at least a possible interesting acquaintance, because you stopped at “how you doing today?” This thought became real to me recently while listening to a marvelous book, Theo of Golden, by Allen Levi. It is Levi’s first novel. He described it as an “experiment,” but friends who read pieces of it implored him to try to get it published. The story is about Theo. We don’t know his last name until the end. He flies alone on a private jet to a university town named Golden, ostensibly attracted by 115 portraits drawn in pencil by an unknown artist, displayed in a local coffee shop. Theo buys all of the art pieces anonymously. One by one he writes handwritten letters to the particular subjects of the portraits and invites them to meet him near a prominent fountain in the center of town to receive their portrait as a gift. Over the course of the book, we learn about many of the people as Theo graciously meets them and thoughtfully brings out their “stories.” Invariably they want to know why this kind old man with a…

I was touring a shop once, and the owner told me the engineers can draw up whatever they want. It never comes out like that on the machine. At IMTS, I brought that up with Greg Walker and Bob Folts of Spatial Integrated Systems. They told me it can. As long as you’re honest with the software. Greg is president and co-owner of SIS, a Siemens partner based in Broadlands, Virginia. They sell and support Siemens software, primarily for aerospace, defense, and federal customers. Bob is their advanced manufacturing expert for federal work. He has over 50 years in tooling and defense manufacturing, and he started out cutting cams on Brown & Sharpe screw machines. ************* Link to Graff-Pinkert’s Acquisitions and Sales promotion! ************* Listen on your favorite podcast app using pod.link.     . View the podcast at the bottom of this post or on our YouTube Channel. Follow us on Social and never miss an update! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/swarfcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/swarfcast/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/todays-machining-world Twitter: https://twitter.com/tmwswarfblog ************* Highlights Your Machine, Not the Perfect One Everything starts with a digital twin. That’s a digital version of your machine, part, or process that behaves like the real thing. I asked what happens when the machine isn’t in…

What did visitors tell us at IMTS? One shop owner said, “I’ve got a ton of orders, but I can’t find the people to make the product.” Another said, “I wish I could find a magic machine that makes product and runs itself.” I don’t have the answers, but I will try to define the problems so the answers may become more apparent. * * * There are millions of people in this country looking for a job that pays an adequate living. One survey found that college students expect to make about $58,000 a year one year after graduating. My guess is that young people without a degree hope to reach $58,000 to $70,000 within 5 to 10 years in a job or profession. From a job competition standpoint, let’s start with fast food. In Chicago, the starting pay for a Chipotle employee is advertised at 16.75-17.75 per hour, while McDonald’s pays roughly $16 to $20, or about $34,000 to $41,000 a year working full time. Would a Gen Z worker without college figure that fast food is a better leg up toward that $58,000 to $70,000 job than learning a complicated skill in a machining firm, where the…