In today’s podcast we interviewed Scott Roy, a Senior Staff Engineer at Google who specializes in artificial intelligence. He also happens to be my brother-in-law (Lloyd’s son-in-law). One of Scott’s most recent projects at Google is to improve the way machines communicate with people in diverse human languages—last week he was working on communicating in Bengali. Scroll down to listen to the podcast with Scott Roy. Scott believes that one day machines may have the sophistication and human-like qualities of Commander Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation. He says there is a good chance machines will be able to…
Author: Noah Graff
I am like many people in this world, despite having so many things I should feel grateful for—living in a country with so many opportunities, being born into a well-off family with parents and siblings who love me, having a good career, etc… I still find myself plagued by negative self-talk and being annoyed by what I label as “First World problems.” After getting a recommendation from many self-help books and podcasts I started making a gratitude list almost every morning since July of this year. Most of the time I write down 7-10 things into my iPhone. Often the…
Scroll down to listen to the podcast with Rick Rickerson. Rick Rickerson is in charge of the machining lab at Purdue’s Northwest Indiana campus in Hammond. In today’s podcast he talks about why he loves his job. “It’s all about students” he says. His passion for teaching beams throughout the interview. Rick has been doing this job for 14 years. His department has a half-dozen South Bend lathes (now made in Utah), but the students gravitate to the Haas VF-2 vertical machining centers. The part of his duties that really gets the students’ juices going is the Purdue Northwest racing…
Scroll down to listen to the podcast with Jerry Levine. In today’s podcast we interviewed Jerry Levine. A chemical engineer, Jerry Levine’s working career stretched from polyester to politics. He led the team at Amoco Chemicals that conquered the production problems in making polyester in the 1960s. Jerry then learned what it was like to live under Communism when he helped set up a polyester plant in East Germany well before the Berlin Wall came down. He later returned to Amoco’s corporate office in Chicago, finding his niche as a lobbyist for the company and “Big Oil.” Jerry holds the view…
Scroll down to listen to the podcast with Armand Barnils. In today’s podcast we interviewed Armand Barnils, plant manager of the U.S. division of Ventura Precision Components, a multinational precision machining company headquartered in Barcelona, Spain. Armand grew up on the outskirts of Barcelona and studied Industrial Engineering in Spain. Through a foreign exchange program he came to the United States and earned a Masters Degree in Industrial Technology and Operations at the Illinois Institute of Technology. At age 23 he moved to Pasadena, Texas, just outside of Houston, to work at Ventura Precision Components. Two years later his boss left,…
Scroll down to listen to the podcast with Bill Cox. In today’s podcast we interviewed Bill Cox, owner of Cox Manufacturing in San Antonio, Texas, a job shop that makes parts for a variety of industries—oil and energy, medical, and defense to name a few. Bill’s father started the company in 1956 but died when Bill was age 12. The evening of his father’s funeral a customer had the audacity to ask Bill’s mother if he could buy the company. She asked Bill that night if he was interested in going into the family business and Bill said he was.…
Scroll down to listen to the podcast with George Breiwa. About two months ago I got a call from a company asking for a price on a Traub TNL18 on our Graff-Pinkert Website. For those unfamiliar, Traub makes arguably the heaviest, most expensive and advanced CNC Swiss machines on the market—the “the Hummer of CNC Swiss” one could say. I asked the caller what his application was, thinking it was a medical part to justify such an expensive machine, but the caller told me it was for making a unique vaporizer that had no moving parts and no battery. George…
Scroll down to listen to the podcast with Scott Livingston. Scott Livingston’s Grandfather Horst, after whom Horst Engineering Company in Connecticut was named, often talked about bicycles with Scott during his childhood. Cycling was part of Horst’s life in Germany before he fled from the Nazis in 1938 and came to America. Horst started his machining company in 1946, and Scott and his family run it today. While the core business is now aerospace products made on Swiss screw machines and thread-rolled parts, a growing piece of the business is a niche product for bikers, toe spikes. Scott and the…
Scroll down to listen to the podcast with Logan McGhan. In today’s podcast we interviewed Logan McGhan, a used machine tool dealer at the firm KD Capital. Logan’s journey to selling used equipment spanned numerous stages. At around age 7, his father, who also worked in machining, brought home a complex part from a trade show that had been made on a CNC, and Logan knew that the machining industry was his calling. At 17 he built an entire rifle (aside from the scope) using manual equipment. In his 20s he and his brother started a machining business making after-market…
Scroll down to listen to the podcast with Mike Fair. At the 2018 International Machine Tool Show I recorded a podcast with Mike Fair, Product Manager of Rethink Robotics, a robotics company specializing in collaborative robots for use on the factory floor. What sets Rethink Robots apart from several of the other collaborative robot companies I saw at IMTS is that their robot models have people’s names and they feature a display tablet placed in a position to resemble a head. The robot featured at the Rethink Robotics booth was called Sawyer. Rethink’s philosophy is to give collaborative robots, also…