Disclaimer: Many employees face incredible pressure from a variety of angles, often juggling their work and personal responsibilities. It’s no wonder many feel the high levels of stress and low energy that indicate burnout. Unfortunately, many people don’t have the bandwidth to even begin to navigate it. To that end, HelpGuide.org created this resource, Burnout Prevention and Treatment, that covers: The difference between stress and burnout Why burnout happens and how to prevent it Key tips for handling burnout Today is the final episode of our series about mental health in the workplace. Our guest is Darcy Gruttadaro, Director of…
Author: Noah Graff
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…
Today’s podcast is the fourth episode of our season interviewing people involved in CNC Swiss machining. Our guest is Mike Reader, owner and president of Precision Plus, a CNC turning company in Elkhorn, Wisconsin. Mike came into the machining business at 31 years old following a career in the fast paced finance industry. When he first arrived, the company was using old school Tornos cam Swiss machines and running a lot of commodity-type parts. Over the years Mike has built a world-class machining company, diversifying the company’s product lines with the help of newer technology. All the while, his original…
Today’s show is the first episode of our new season about Swiss-Type CNC machining. Our guest is Marc Klecka, founder and president of Concentric Corporation, a prominent distributor of Citizen-Cincom CNC Swiss lathes in Cleveland, Ohio. Scroll down to read more and listen to the podcast, or listen with Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts or your favorite app. Main Points Marc talks about his company, Concentric, which has been distributing Citizen Swiss machines for 31 years and Miyano for 10 years (after Citizen acquired the company). (2:20) Marc gives his “5-year-old explanation” of Swiss CNC Machining (sliding headstock machining). He says the…