In the runup to this year’s State of the Union address, President Obama has been busy trying to fulfill pledges from last year’s. He went to Raleigh, N.C., to announce it would become a high-tech manufacturing hub to ensure that the U.S. attracts “the good, high-tech manufacturing jobs that a growing middle class requires.” The president is one of many politicians of both parties as well as pundits who think manufacturing deserves special treatment. But this factory obsession is based on flawed economics. As the Brookings Institute economist Justin Wolfers asked recently, “What’s with the political fetish for manufacturing? Are…
Author: Lloyd Graff
I’ve driven in a Tesla. It’s for real. If you are making parts for internal combustion engines, I am warning you – things are changing. Tesla means it when they tell us they are coming out with their BMW 3 Series competitor in 2017. They plan to price it between $30,000 and $35,000. They think they can sell as many as they can make. The Fremont, California, plant (San Francisco) may be able to ramp up to 500,000 units per year. Some people sneer when they see Tesla Motors stock valued higher than Nissan. Scoffers always doubt the real movers…
Imagine being able to lease a 3D printer to build your entire house. The technology, called Contour Crafting, is already here and can build a 2,500-square-foot home in 20 hours. The massive robot printer was invented by University of Southern California professor Behrokh Khoshnevis, who says that the technology is so versatile that it can be used to build homes in slums or human habitats on Mars. The technology is ideal for the world’s slums and areas destroyed by natural disasters, claims Khoshnevis, because the robot’s construction is cheaper, stronger, faster, safer and more eco-friendly than manual construction. Khoshnevis also says NASA is supportive…
Last week, I attended the Shot Show in Las Vegas, one of the largest gun shows in the world. I went with Rex Magagnotti, my coworker at Graff-Pinkert, intent on selling multi-spindle screw machines to exhibitors and getting a good scoop for Today’s Machining World. One of the more surprising things I saw at the Shot Show was a commemoration of the late Mikhail Kalashnikov, the inventor of the AK-47, who passed away in 2013. Several portraits of him were placed throughout the show and the Arsenal/K-Var booth had a special display honoring him. The homage to the Russian Lieutenant…
IN my last year on Wall Street my bonus was $3.6 million — and I was angry because it wasn’t big enough. I was 30 years old, had no children to raise, no debts to pay, no philanthropic goal in mind. I wanted more money for exactly the same reason an alcoholic needs another drink: I was addicted. Eight years earlier, I’d walked onto the trading floor at Credit Suisse First Boston to begin my summer internship. I already knew I wanted to be rich, but when I started out I had a different idea about what wealth meant. I’d…
I know I’m supposed to celebrate milestone events. I have a lot to celebrate—a wonderful wife for over 40 years, the marriage of my son Ari, surviving my quadruple bypass surgery, and 14 years of Today’s Machining World. I feel enormously grateful for all of these gifts and I count my blessings every day, but celebration is something I have not quite mastered. In an earlier piece, I recounted a story that my father Leonard told me as a kid, but I’ll retell it now. He was just starting out in the used machinery business and was travelling the Midwest…
Tom Brady versus Peyton Manning. I can’t wait. This isn’t just football, this is American history being written. Mills and lathes can wait for another day. New England against Denver is just too juicy, too sexy, too loaded with plots and back stories to pass up. Tom Brady’s football career started in the relative obscurity of Junipero Serra High School in San Mateo, California. He was considered a better baseball player than football and was drafted to play professional baseball out of high school, but Brady and his Dad saw it differently. His father took his home videos of son,…
THERE are now a score or more of ways to print objects out of metal, plastic or both by building them up, layer by layer, into the finished article. But such 3D printing has its limits. One is that no version of the process is good at making the surfaces of its products smooth and accurate enough for them to be used as mechanical components: for example, as the bearings in an engine. If the necessary tolerances are not met, the engine will seize and be no good to anyone. Many engineers therefore think that “additive manufacturing”, as it is…
These are a few of my best guesses for what 2014 may bring. Give me your feedback, and some slack. 1) The trends of the last few years will tend to continue — tepid economic growth, weak employment, rich getting richer and the poor falling further behind. *A few exceptions, however. A powerful hiring tool will gain more traction. Companies will offer to pay off school loans to recruit prime applicants. For programmers, engineers and some other specialists in demand — maybe machinery set-up people — the school loan pay-off will be an important hiring inducement. 2) In 2013, 42%…
Barack Obama is really the stealth Republican President. Had John McCain beaten Obama in 2008, had he not chosen Sarah Palin for VP, today, at the beginning of 2014 he could be so proud of the accomplishment of the “ironic” president Barack Obama, whose adherents generally see him as a failure to date. Obama has succeeded as a Republican disguised as a Democrat. Look at the numbers. The stock market has doubled from 2008, and 2013 was one of the best years ever. Corporate profits have skyrocketed. Labor costs are quiet. Inflation has vanished. Home prices have recovered most of…