On today’s show we are heading back to Brazil as we continue our season exploring the machining industry around the world. Our guest is Ali Jamil Jomaa, executive director at Samot, one of the most significant automotive parts suppliers in Brazil. Jamil has been at Samot for 32 years and is an authority on the tricky business of running a large machining company in Brazil. Scroll down to listen to the podcast. Or listen on your phone on your favorite app or Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. Main Points Jamil gives his background. He says he has been working at…
Author: Noah Graff
On Season 4 of Swarfcast, we’re talking to people involved in the machining industry around the globe. On this week’s show, we visit India. Today’s guest is Mayank Patel, director of Mayank BrassFit in Jamnagar, India. In the interview Mayank tells Noah his company produces Brass fittings primarily for Tribal Manufacturing and Parker Hannifin, both located in the United States. Mayank produces the majority of his parts on an expensive Buffoli Transfer machine. This is in stark contrast to his competitors who use cheap but slow single-spindle CNC lathes that require considerable manpower. Scroll down to listen to the podcast.…
On this week’s episode we’re continuing our tour of the machining world outside the United States. Today’s stop is Brazil, where I’m speaking with Rogerio Salvatico, Industrial Manager at Engemet, a major precision parts supplier for Tier 1 and Tier 2 Automotive in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Scroll down to listen to the podcast. Or listen on your phone on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. Main Points (3:00) Rogerio gives his background. He grew up in São Paulo, Brazil. During high school he attended a specialized school with technical classes in the afternoon. When he was 17 he started an apprenticeship…
Lloyd is deflected by a few big machinery deals this week so we thought it was appropriate to run this piece from the archives. Making the Nut was originally published January 10, 2018. We all absorb things from our childhood that literally wire our cerebral cortex and remain with us as we mature. There are images, sayings, emblems of fear and instigators of smiles. We soak up stories and develop a narrative that frames our lives. As I thought about writing this piece the line I remembered most vividly from my father while growing up, of a thousand things I…
Today’s podcast is the second episode of a season in which we’re talking to folks in the machining world outside of the United States. We’re making a second stop in the UK to talk to Tom Pearce, founder of CIRC Manufacturing in Westbury, England, a small CNC shop specializing in producing flow control products using a Citizen Swiss lathe and Hitachi 4-axis mills. Tom talked about entrepreneurship in the UK and his company’s first consumer product, a luxury pen machined from exotic super alloys. Scroll down to listen to the podcast. Or listen on your phone on Apple Podcasts and…
Maria Konnikova, doctor of psychology, journalist and professional poker player, said that the hardest but probably most rewarding lesson she has learned is that to win consistently you have to fold when you see you are likely to lose, even after making a sizable bet on your hand. This is a life lesson I see playing out vividly in the days of COVID-19 for people in business. In the machining industry, smart leaders shut down plants early in April, cut people or furloughed them, even if some were great workers they would have recruited with bonuses in 2019. Many also…
Today’s podcast is the first episode in a multi-part series in which we’re interviewing people in the machining world outside the United States. Our first stop was England, where we interviewed Joe Reynolds. Joe is Director of MTD, a company with several popular websites based in the UK that market prominent machine tool builders and inform people in the machining business on the latest news and technology. He also refers to himself as a “Swarf Guru,” so of course we had to interview him! Scroll down to listen to the podcast. Or listen on your phone on Apple Podcasts and…
Some things in life are unforgettable. By chance last night I started watching a Netflix documentary on David Foster, one of the foremost music producers in the last half-century. Unbeknownst to me, Foster has produced artists like Barbra Streisand, and groups like Chicago and Earth, Wind, and Fire. He also produced Natalie Cole’s album on which she sang the great song, Unforgettable, in a duet with her late father, Nat King Cole, singing from a tape. This song has always been a favorite of mine, not just because it is a wonderful piece of music, but because the duet performance…
Today’s guest on the show is Timo Lunceford, general manager of Swiss Productions, a 25,000-square-foot Swiss CNC shop in Ventura, California, that specializes in fluidic medical components. Recently Swiss Productions introduced two 7-axis collaborative robots to work in tandem with two Haas CNC mills. Timo says the robots increase the production on each machine by the equivalent of 30-40 hours per week. Scroll down to listen to the podcast. Or listen on your phone on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. Main Points (3:00) Timo discusses his background. He Joined Swiss Productions at age 20 when he married the owner’s daughter.…
“Life is a game of incomplete information.” These are the words of Maria Konnikova, a writer and psychologist who learned how to play poker and then played on the professional poker tournament circuit to write her new book, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win. Konnikova read from her book and discussed it with Stephen Dubner on the Freakonomics podcast this week. I found it particularly relevant because our family is now wrestling with a difficult decision while knowing that we have incomplete information, fear, and personal history to contend with. The question is whether…