Swarfcast

The concept of an ESOP to me has always seemed extraordinary yet at the same time a little hard to grasp. E-S-O-P is an acronym for Employee Stock Ownership Plan. Basically it means an employee owned company. Our guest on today’s podcast is Rich Gaffney, Vice President of Commercial Operations at Sentry Equipment, a 100-year-old [...]

My guest on today’s show is Kris Fugate, President of Revolution Machine Works, a prominent rotary transfer machine rebuilder, specializing in Hydromats. Hydromats can seem strange and overwhelming to those unfamiliar with them. Some say they their circular shape with 12 or 16 work stations reminds them of a UFO, and the machines can crank [...]

Using savings to buy a 20-year-old Swiss machine that’s been sitting idle for year is a gamble. Buying one to start a machining company without any customers yet or a place to put the machine means really going ALL IN. Today’s podcast is Part II of my interview with Dulio Arellano, founder of Premier Swiss [...]

Have you ever wondered what it takes to manufacture luxury watches that cost tens of thousands of dollars? This is the episode to find out! Last week I reconnected with Josh Shapiro to tell him about a used Willemin 408MT Graff-Pinkert had for sale. He told me that he was extremely excited for his new [...]

My guest on today’s show immigrated to the United States from Mexico at 18 years old, went to tech school, worked his way up in job shops, became one of the top technicians at Tornos, and then founded his own successful job shop. Dulio Arellano is the founder of Premier Swiss, a Tornos Swiss screw [...]

This week on Swarfcast, we’re sharing an interview we originally did back in 2020 with Paul Van Metre, Co-Founder of ProShop ERP. During our discussion, Paul shares a lot of valuable and timeless information that can help your shop run more efficiently. Since we did the interview, he has also started his own podcast, called [...]

Pasta machines operate a lot like cam screw machines, Antonio Adiletta told me when I interviewed him for this week’s podcast. Antonio is co-owner of Arcobaleno and GAM Precision in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. After growing up in Italy, Antonio moved to Canada and then eventually emigrated to the United States with his wife and business partner, [...]

Working in the machining industry I hear the term “lean manufacturing” mentioned a lot. But what does the word “lean” really mean in this context? And how do you implement it in your company?  To help me clarify these questions, I interviewed Matthew Rassi, founder of Twenty Helping Hands. He’s a lean manufacturing consultant who [...]

In honor of this weekend’s PMPA National Technical Conference, we’re resharing a podcast we did last year with Elliott May, engineer at BME in Port Huron, Michigan. BME builds original custom attachments for cam multi-spindles. They also rebuild Acme-Gridley screw machines. Elliott and I talked about a lot of fascinating things in this interview. How [...]

On this week’s classic episode of Swarfcast, we’re talking about preventing fires inside of machinery. Our guest is Mike Campo, Midwest Regional Sales Manager with Firetrace International, makers of fire suppression systems and solutions. Fire suppression systems keep businesses, people and equipment safe by automatically detecting and suppressing fires in high-risk equipment, like CNC machines, [...]

Our guest on today’s show, Howard Sheldon, grew up working in his family’s third generation precision turning company. He planned to eventually take over the business from his father, but unfortunately succession didn’t happen the way he had hoped. Howard left his family company in his mid-30s, and 10 years ago started his own Swiss [...]

It seems that today’s younger generations of workers, such as millennials, want to understand why they are instructed to do their jobs in a certain way more than their predecessors. Many of today’s employees are not content to just follow orders and take home a check. They want to feel invested in their work, they [...]

My guest on today’s show, Thadd Mellott, called us at Graff-Pinkert because he needed a Star SB20 CNC Swiss machine. His company, Circle M Spring, in Warsaw, Indiana, produces medical parts, including implantable orthopedic components. Circle M Spring is currently merging with a medical component design company that specializes in sports medicine. Thadd is incredibly [...]

In the last year, our used machinery company, Graff-Pinkert, has been successfully growing our business brokering division. This podcast and Today’s Machining World have played a huge part in our marketing. They have established us as thought leaders in the machining industry, and that is bringing in customers. It only took 24 years of writing [...]