Author: Noah Graff

Why was 2022 the best year of my life so far? (This blog was also recorded as a podcast narrated by Noah Graff). Listen with the player below, Apple Podcasts, or on your favorite podcast app) Reason Number 1: I Improved My State of Being I began working with my life coach, Ginny Cutler, in January. She is coaching me on “being” who I WANT to be. The idea is that if you “feel” stuck, the only way to become unstuck is to transform your state of being.  She says to ask yourself, “What would I be doing if I…

Read More

After serving in the Navy SEALs for nine years, Bill Berrien retired from the military in 1999, ready for a new chapter in his life. He attended Harvard business school where there were six other SEALs in his class. After graduating from Harvard, Bill worked as a Six Sigma Blackbelt at General Electric Health Care, which brought him to the Milwaukee area in 2002. Rather than climb the ladder at a large corporation, Bill’s ambition was to eventually acquire his own business.  Scroll down to read more and listen to the podcast. Or listen on your phone with Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify,…

Read More

Bill Berrien has had an extraordinary professional journey. He earned an MBA at Harvard, worked for General Electric and then in private equity. Ten years ago, he purchased Pindel Global Precision, a successful two-generation machining company near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which he has modernized and grown over the past decade. Oh, I forgot to mention, he was also a Navy SEAL officer for nine years. Scroll down to read more and listen to the podcast. Or listen on your phone with Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app.  You can also view the podcast in video form on our YouTube Channel.  …

Read More

Today’s guest on the podcast is Jon Perin, owner and President of Perin Industries, a young CNC machining company in Webster City, Iowa. Jon, started Perin Industries in 2018, after a 12-year career as a hospital administrator. Like many entrepreneurs, Jon has had to face some daunting challenges. Starting out, he aggressively bought new state of the art CNC equipment to make parts for the medical sector. When he had trouble penetrating that market he successfully pivoted to fire arms work. Scroll down to read more and listen to the podcast. Or listen on your phone with Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or…

Read More

Everyday, Graff-Pinkert runs into a myriad of excuses why people won’t purchase a used machine tool from us. Maybe they don’t have the work. Maybe they don’t have the expertise to run a machine. Maybe they are not sophisticated in negotiating with buyers and suppliers. Maybe they don’t have enough money. All of these things can stop a sale of a used machine, and when we do sell a machine we often run into the problem that the customer says they have another option that is cheaper, so we have to lower our price and reduce our margin. If we…

Read More

Do you know what is really going on with your machines? Have you actually listened to them lately? Today’s guest on Swarfcast is Jeff Rizzie, Director of Digital Enablement at Sandvik Coromant.  Sandvik is renown for its cutting tools, but the company has branched out into selling cloud-based machine monitoring software called CoroPlus Machining Insights. Machining Insights measures the overall equipment effectiveness, or OEE, of a factory’s machines, collecting data such as spindle speeds, axis feed rates, and spindle override frequency. Rizzie estimates that 90% of shops who have used Machining Insights believed their OEE was significantly higher than what…

Read More

I get stressed sometimes choosing what tasks to prioritize in my day. Yesterday, I listened to an episode of Grow The Show, my favorite podcast for advice about making podcasts. The subject of the episode was how to deal with the stress that comes with managing a business and a podcast as well as all the other stuff that life throws at you. The show’s host, Kevin Chemidlin, said he had been stressed by all the things on his to-do list that he believed he should do to grow his business and podcast.  He brilliantly realized he could cope with…

Read More

At IMTS 2022, I stumbled upon a booth with an impressive 28 foot rocket on display, constructed by students from the Purdue University Bechtel Innovation Design Center. Anirudh Pal, an operations manager at Bechtel, and Xander Wells, an undergraduate teaching assistant at Bechtel, told me the story behind the rocket’s creation when I interviewed them for today’s podcast. The Bechtel Innovation Design Center is a makerspace, where undergrad students of all different majors have the opportunity to work together on creative manufacturing projects, incorporating a wide variety of manufacturing processes. Participating in the makerspace is completely voluntary, and students at…

Read More

At IMTS 2022, I had the privilege of interviewing Bryan Stusak and Steve Vanderink, two product specialists from Iscar Metals, world renown seller of cutting tools for machining. We talked about the latest developments in cutting tool technology that enable faster changeover, and how to save money by using inserts properly when removing small amounts of material. If you’ve been wishing for a more technical episode of Swarfcast, this is the one for you. Scroll down to read more and listen to the podcast. Or listen on your phone with Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app.     Follow us on…

Read More