On today’s podcast we continue our season about how machining companies acquire new work. Our guest is Wes Szpondowski, plant manager of Wyandotte Industries, a multi-spindle job shop near Detroit that predominantly runs good old ACME-GRIDLEY screw machines. We interviewed him last week when he came to Graff-Pinkert to inspect an ACME 1-5/8” RB-8. Wes says one of the keys to Wyandotte’s success is that the company is constantly quoting new jobs. He says even if a machining company only lands a small percentage of work it attempts, persistent quoting gets the company’s name out, which leads to more work…
Author: Noah Graff
Today’s show is the first episode of a multi-part series about how machining companies acquire new work. Our guest is Federico Veneziano, CFO and COO of American Micro Products Inc., a precision machining company in Batavia, Ohio. Federico says one his key strategies for getting new customers is proving to them his company will minimize the problems that are bound to occur in most manufacturing jobs. Scroll down to read more and listen to the podcast, or listen with Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts or your favorite app. Main Points Federico talks about how the selling process in the machining business…
Today is the final episode of our series about mental health in the workplace. Our guest is Darcy Gruttadaro, Director of the Center for Workplace Mental Health at the American Psychiatric Association Foundation. Darcy’s organization works with companies of all sizes, giving them tools to support the mental health of their employees. She says that having a warm and social atmosphere in the workplace is more important than ever to keep people relaxed during these stressful times. Scroll down to read more and listen to the podcast, or listen with Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts or your favorite app. Main Points…
On today’s podcast we are continuing our season about mental health. Our guest is Dr. Ari Graff, a psychologist at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, a nationally ranked rehabilitation research hospital based in Chicago. Patients come to Shirley Ryan to recover from severe illnesses and injuries. Dr. Graff’s job is to help patients mentally heal from the emotional trauma that comes along with being damaged physically. The opinions in this podcast episode are solely those of Dr. Graff. They are not on behalf of the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab. Scroll down to read more and listen to the podcast, or listen with…
Today’s podcast is a “Best of Swarfcast” from Summer of 2019, a two-part interview we did with John Habe IV, President of Metal Seal Precision, a machining company based in Mentor, Ohio. Over the last several years, John has grown Metal Seal Precision both organically and through major acquisitions. According to John, growing through acquisitions can be financially rewarding but does not come easily. John discussed the difficulty in buying companies, which often have emotionally attached owners. He also talked about how he calculates the buy price of a company. He looks at cashflow, often called EBITDA in the acquisitions…
Back in February I had the pleasure of being interviewed on the MTD Podcast, an excellent podcast about machining in the UK. Hosts Joe Reynolds and Giovanni Albanese grilled me about a lot of our favorite topics featured on Swarfcast, like treasure hunting, reshoring, Trump, and Swiss CNCs, which my British counterparts often call “sliders.” Scroll down to read more and listen to the podcast, or listen with Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts or your favorite app. Main Points I explain the origin of “Pinkert” in “Graff-Pinkert,” our used machine tool company’s name. It comes from Aaron Pinkert, my grandfather Leonard…
Being a machinery dealer takes a lot of patience. I guess patience is key for selling most things, as well as pursuing a relationship or a career. The problem we all face is that other people just have different schedules and different priorities than we do. I tried to sell a CNC Swiss machine to a company in Europe over the last several weeks. The company acted like they really wanted it. They called me several mornings to discuss the deal. I could taste that deal. It was a medium sized deal—but a nice deal. My contact at the company…
We interviewed Brett May of BME Inc. Screw Machine Attachments for today’s podcast. Brett’s mission in business is to make old cam multi-spindle screw machines like National Acmes, Wickmans, and New Britains into productive money makers in today’s competitive machining environment. Scroll down to listen to the podcast with Brett May. Brett builds unique attachments which eliminate secondary operations that many people would put on a mill-turn CNC to finish, or run on an accurate but achingly slow Swiss-type machine. When he does his magic he turns supposed clunkers into enormously valuable machine tools. Brett sees an old Acme and…
On today’s podcast we continue our series about Swiss machining. Our guest is John Belmonte, owner and President of Mitotec, a precision turning company in Necedah, Wisconsin. Recently Mitotec purchased a Tornos MultiSwiss 8X26 multi-spindle screw machine. The unique design of the MultiSwiss enables such quick changeovers the machine is running many of the same jobs the company has on its single spindle Swiss machines, but in a fraction of the cycle time. Scroll down to read more and listen to the podcast, or listen with Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts or your favorite app. Main Points John gives an…
We’re currently working on fresh new episodes of Swarfcast. In the meantime, we felt this “Best of” was fitting for the recent season on CNC Swiss machining. In March of 2019, we interviewed Ken Mandile, founder of Swissturn, a successful CNC Swiss machine shop in Oxford, Massachusetts. Ken’s children are not interested in taking over Swissturn when he eventually retires, so five years ago Ken began restructuring his company into an employee stock ownership plan or ESOP, in which he will gradually transfer ownership and management to his employees. Scroll down to read more and listen to the podcast, or…