By Lloyd Graff Back in the heyday of Brown and Sharpe screw machines in the 1970s, many of the screw shops in Chicago ran parts for the pinball machine guys. The flippers and bumpers were exquisite mechanical devices full of precision components. Most of those parts are gone today as video games have come into vogue, but one manufacturer remains, Stern Pinball of Suburban Melrose Park, Illinois. There was an excellent article in Wednesday’s Chicago Tribune about the company and the owner Gary Stern. An accompanying piece on 98-year-old Steve Kordek, a hall of fame pinball designer is also well…
Author: Noah Graff
In yesterday’s Battle Creek Enquirer, Elizabeth Willis wrote an earthy portrait of Julie Eddy, a machinist for 24 years and now an adviser to local students. She says she first got hired because she was wearing a push-up bra when she knocked on the door of the machine shop. She’s had her share of shop injuries and talks about it with the sensibility of a professional wrestler–they come with the job. While the writer views Julie as a working anomaly, anybody who walks into a factory today is likely to see women working all over the shop floor.Direct link to…
By Lloyd Graff Michael Jackson’s passing got most of the ink, but the death of TV pitchman, Billy Mays, just a few days later affected me so much more. Both men died at 50. Billy was funny without trying to be funny and could relate to consumers. Michael Jackson was a sad freak who couldn’t relate to himself or his fame. Mays had soul, Michael had hair. Watch the following videos for more insight and a response from the Today’s Machining World team. Michael Jackson vs. Billy Mays — Who mattered more? Response to Michael vs. Billy Mays
Daniel Amos, the head of Aflac, the remarkably successful medical insurance firm, was interviewed in the New York Times on Sunday. His remarks on leadership and motivation are intriguing. He treats employees like voters and challenges his sales staff not with overt quotas but by telling his people he wants them to make a particular figure. For instance when he used to be a sales manager he would say to an employee, “I want you to make $60,000.” He recounts that employees couldn’t say, “No, I really don’t want to make that much.” He says they didn’t know how to…
By Lloyd Graff My daughter Sarah does funerals virtually every week as a Rabbi in Palo Alto, California. She has a knack for capturing the essence of the person who just died. She talks to the family, selects stories, brings in her own remembrances and embroiders the eulogy with texture and empathy. I thought about her eulogies before I started to write this piece about the death of Automatic Machining Magazine because I hope to strike a truthful and empathetic tone. Automatic Machining started almost 70 years ago under the name Screw Machine Engineering in Rochester, N.Y. Don Wood, its…
By Lloyd Graff I often talk to machining folks who like to reminisce about the good old days when General Motors owned 50 percent market share and when people actually believed “what’s good for General Motors is good for America.” General Motors got sloppy in every way. They made ridiculous deals with the United Auto Workers Union, spawning the infamous “job bank” and health care and retirement benefits that gave the company a monstrous sled to pull. In those good old days a lot of leaks developed. So many carbide inserts seeped out to bars near big factories to be…
By Lloyd Graff Don called me yesterday to ask if I still remembered him. I said “sure, you are that fat Polack in Milwaukee with the Davenport shop.” I could say that because even though I haven’t seen Don in a decade, I always loved his good humor and sense of joy about doing business and making money. “Remember me, I was that skinny kid who walked into your old plant in south Chicago with my Dad and bought my first two Davenports,” he said. I remembered the story even if I could never remember Don as skinny. Don bought…
While job losses keep mounting in today’s brutal economy, a growing number of companies are avoiding layoffs using a program known as work sharing.Instead of laying off employees, companies are keeping them while reducing workers’ pay, often by 20 or 40 percent. The employees generally get to hold on to benefits as well. Then, state governments step in and make up part of the lost wages, usually about half. Seventeen states have adopted the program, and economists and executives are hailing the program as a way to keep workers employed and retain skilled labor. A similar work sharing program has…
By Lloyd Graff Over the last few years Chinese and Russian firms closely tied to their governments have bought up scarce mining and mineral resources. The Chinese have indicated that down the line they may make smaller purchases of U.S. Treasuries and spend more cultivating strategic materials. The Chinese are also developing their nuclear energy production almost as rapidly as they are building their dirty coal-fired electricity production.A recent Atlantic Monthly piece, discusses the Chinese attempt to control the market for neodymium, the critical material needed for the industrial magnets in wind turbine engines and motors for priuses. Molycorp, bought…
Brian Bittner of Beamer Laser Marking Systems demonstrated one of the company’s products to Noah Graff, engraving a pen in about one second with a Today’s Machining World logo. He designed the logo using a Windows based computer on the spot.