For those few people reading this who have been dwelling in a cave in Greenland all summer and still don’t know what the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is, I shall enlighten you. In July and August of 2014, inspired by similar fundraisers, some folks came up with the CRAZY idea that people should call out contacts on social networks asking them to give $100 to ALS research, or in lieu of the donation, pour a bucket of ice water on their heads. Variations evolved in which people post videos online pouring the bucket of ice on themselves and then still…
Author: Lloyd Graff
With elections coming up we are hearing more talk about raising the minimum wage. In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel advocates $13 per hour. Seattle is phasing in a $15 rate. New York’s left wing Mayor, Di Blasio is blathering on for the need to lift it substantially in the city. President Obama obviously is promoting it as a good way to save the Democratic majority in the Senate in 2014. My do-gooder side sympathizes with the plight of the $8 an hour worker cutting lawns or flipping burgers. But the sad fact is that a significantly higher minimum wage in…
As we diligently rub metal on metal, producing the stuff that makes the wheels roll smoothly, the big money in the economy continues to flow to the world of ideas, entertainment and health. A few thoughts to connect. Monday Amazon agreed to buy Twitch for $970 million. Google thought they were going to get it but Amazon swooped in at the last minute. Twitch is a site that broadcasts online video game competitions. They aspire to be the ESPN of video gaming. Who knew? But this is a big business and growing fast. Twitch is in the top 15 most…
As Chicago wraps its mind around 3D printing for consumers, business and transformative projects including the UI Labs-led Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute, there’s a document that provides some broad insights. The Wohlers report, released each spring for almost two decades and covering in depth the state of 3D printing and more sophisticated additive manufacturing used by industry, shows a field increasingly focused on high-end manufacturing. The 2014 report adds an important layer to the familiar picture of 3D printing, in which everyday consumers can buy and use tabletop devices suitable for the home hobbyist. The Midwest plays a…
I was going to write about the important stuff — unemployment, Fed policy, Ferguson, and the price of the new Hepatitis C wonder drug. But then the Little League World Series came on TV and I knew what really spoke to me. I’m one of the millions of men and women hooked by the Little League World Series — broadcast on ESPN, brought to you by Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes. I know it’s all brilliantly packaged by the media flacks, but the authenticity of the 11-13 year-old boys and one amazing girl have lifted the event from obscurity to center stage. A…
This basic truth haunted Brian Nowicki for years as he moved through important jobs in the distribution of tooling and machine tools for 30 years. The opportunity he saw was in the dead inventory sitting in the Lista and Vidmar cabinets all over the world, filled with perfectly usable cutting tools that were no longer needed by manufacturers or couldn’t be sold by the Sandviks, Iscars and Kennametals because they had developed slightly more advanced cutting materials to push. Tooling Marketplace is Nowicki’s online answer to the problem of unloved inventory. It is an Internet supermarket of carbide and other…
A principle my parents have repeated to me is that nobody in the world is a mind reader. Therefore, to get what you want from other people you have to be as clear as you possibly can. I usually hate going to a new barber because they ask me tough hair questions that I do not feel qualified to answer. They ask things like, “Do you want it short on the sides?” “How much should I take off the top?” “What gage should I use?” “Do you want it thinned out?” I’m not a barber. I don’t know this stuff.…
August is a strange month for me. It is the month of my mom’s birth and death, August 11, 1993. It is a celebration of surviving my heart attack, a near death experience in 2008. It is the time my daughter Sarah and son-in-law Scott come to Chicago for a week with my three spectacular granddaughters. The baseball season is in its dog days, and my Cubs are in last, as usual. But oh those fabulous prospects – the best in the game they say – will turn it around next year. Well, maybe in 2016. With my August pre-occupation…
Man plans. God laughs. A client of ours just had a huge fire that wiped out much of his capacity. He is scrambling to pull things together overnight to service his customer base. The insurance adjusters dither while he awaits the settlement. Another client jumped into the machinery market because he landed a big new account that wants parts in September. He’s buying a $100,000 machine and new secondary equipment. It had not been in the budget finalized in April, but a million dollar job was not going to be missed for want of a machine to run it properly.…
Last Tuesday, I attended an auction in Carmel, a suburb of Indianapolis, trying to pick up a few CNC machines to round out Graff-Pinkert’s stock. Key Auctioneers was auctioning off machine tools owned by Ameriflo Corporation. The company wasn’t out of business. It had just decided to outsource its machined parts. The sale featured an L32 Citizen manufactured in 1999 and four Mazak CNC Turning Centers, Multiplex 6200Y machines. Two of the Mazaks were new in 2000 and two in 2004. Mazak Turning Centers are not Graff-Pinkert’s specialty, but we are always trying to learn the CNC market better, and…