I didn’t think I would see it in my lifetime. I’ve been mocking them for years. I thought it would take another nut like Elon Musk to produce a competitive electric, self-driving car that could compete with Tesla, and in my mind a GM, Ford, Toyota, or VolksWagen would never have the guts to get to the finish line before the game was already over. The stock market thought so too. Tesla was at $750, Ford was languishing at $12. Then, out of the blue, Ford decided they would actually go for it. They would convince Tom Brady, metaphorically, to…
Author: Lloyd Graff
Every day I hear the cliched laments about the lack of people available to set up machines and run them to make parts customers want to purchase, except when I don’t. I was talking to a successful entrepreneur yesterday who bangs out nuts and bolts by the millions. He said that he has no problem hiring great people to keep his massive cold headers banging away. The shop owner had written me a beautiful fan note mentioning my recent piece about the apple tree that refused to bear fruit for decades. After thirty moribund years, the tree became prolific when…
The apple tree on the west side of the Graff-Pinkert warehouse is having a big year. After over 30 years of failure, it has finally hit its stride. Yesterday, I ate one of its sweetish-tart apples as a late afternoon treat. We built the Graff-Pinkert building over 35 years ago, and I planted the tree as a sapling right after we moved in. We gave it a boost this year by spraying in the spring to counter the nasty insects that have made the small amount of visible fruit inedible these many years. It stands a few feet away from…
A month ago, my son Noah pulled a hamstring lunging for a forehand while playing tennis after work with a client and friend. His opponent drove him to our house a few minutes away to assess the damage. All of us discussed the injury, and I suggested we call Keith, a doctor and friend of 30 years, to diagnose it. “Risa, ask him if he’ll come over,” I proposed. I handed her the cell phone to call. It was dinnertime on a Monday in July. I figured there was a good chance we would find him at home. “I’ll be…
There may never be a more fascinating and trying time to be in the automotive business. Demand for trucks and SUVs is powerful, but manufacturers cannot build them in the quantities people want because computer chips are short. The executives can blame themselves for being much too conservative in their ordering last year, but demand has been a yo-yo because of the defiant and devious nature of the COVID-19 variants. People didn’t buy cars in 2020 because they were afraid to walk out of their homes. This year things have flipped as folks hit the road. Money is still cheap,…
The Today’s Machining World team is on vacation this week. We will be back next week with our regular blog and podcast. We hope you enjoy this edition of Swarfblog from August 7th, 2019! The Futurism newsletter ran a piece about Liam Zebedee, a software engineer in Brooklyn who struggles with diabetes while trying to live the semblance of a normal life. He built his own “artificial pancreas” because he was frustrated with the daily hassle of dealing with hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, and pharmacies. He started with a good piece of hardware, an insulin pump. He then developed his own…
I vowed not to write so often about baseball and the Cubs, but this is about Anthony Rizzo, the soul of the Cubs team that won the 2016 World Series, being traded last week to the New York Yankees for the last 60 games of the 2021 season. The Cubs received two Minor Leaguers, decent prospects from the lower Minors, for a young man who symbolizes the magic of the game. Anthony Rizzo graduated from Parkland High School in Fort Lauderdale. After 17 students were killed in a shooting there, he went back to console the student body. Anthony Rizzo…
From a business standpoint these last 16 months have been one of the most fascinating and turbulent periods I have ever observed and dealt with. Last March we were entering the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a period of fear, doubt, and paralysis. Selling used machinery was almost impossible because the industrial economy was a mess. Business virtually shut down in April, employees were laid off or furloughed, and everybody wore a mask and watched TV. Making ventilators and gun parts was about all that was cooking, except cooking, which was hot because almost all restaurants were closed. I asked myself,…
I am a real sports enthusiast. Basketball, track, swimming, lacrosse. Bring it on. Yet I didn’t even know the Olympic Games were starting this Friday night. I couldn’t care less. Why is an avid fan, lover of sport, somebody who still reads the sports pages in the newspaper, so oblivious to the 12 million hours of Olympic TV coverage over the next 16 days? Because it is corporate, bureaucratized, and packaged. It is a Nike blur. It isn’t the games that started on a shoestring in 1896. It isn’t even the political games of 1972, when 11 Israeli athletes were…
My plan was to write about the machining world. “Nuts and bolts tonight, dad,” Noah nudged me before I left work. “Leave the baseball,” was how he ended the sentence. When I got home, I read a little of the Wall Street Journal looking for inspiration. I accidentally fell into a column by Bob Greene, who once wrote brilliantly for the Chicago Tribune. The article was about giving a Rawlings baseball glove to a friend to connect him with his youth and cheer him up. It was a beautiful piece, and I immediately wanted to share it with friends and…