Swarfcast
Noah Graff, used machine tool dealer and editor of Today’s Machining World, interviews machining company owners, equipment gurus, and experts with insight to help and entertain people working in the machining field. We discuss topics such as how to find quality employees, customer acquisition, negotiation, and the best CNC equipment options for specific jobs.
Episodes
My guest today, Doug Rizzo, has been working in machine shops for over 55 years, and he’s only 62. Doug worked in his father’s company through good times and terrible, and did applications for Doosan. Now, he’s a plant manager by day and runs his own shop for six or seven hours at night. Doug says he loves all of it, from doing applications, to making fixtures, to cleaning oil off machines. He says it’s wher...
Open your fridge and grab a beer without knocking anything else over. It’s usually not hard for a human to do it. But getting a robot to do the same task can take an engineer weeks or months.
George Konidaris is a professor of computer science at Brown University, director of the Intelligent Robot Lab, and cofounder of Realtime Robotics. Their technology does that kind of motion planning in minutes...
Today’s guest on the show is Paul Huber, CEO of COMEX, in Monroe Connecticut. Paul is a machinery dealer specializing in cam Swiss automatics. That’s cam Swiss, not CNC. I’m talking about Bechlers, Stroms and Escomatics, not Citizens.
Paul is 84, but proudly says feels like he is 60 as he raises his 17-year-old son.
He has been working on screw machines for over 67 years, ...
The first quarter of 2026 stunk for Graff-Pinkert’s used machinery business. But fortunately, in the last few months, we’ve made some really good deals, selling old Davenport and Acme screw machines, as well as some expensive late model CNC multi-spindles. Today, Lloyd Graff and I give our take on why the year unfolded this way and what we predict the machining industry will look like for the rest of the y...
Click on the link to go to the video.
I won a few big matches on my high school Tennis team, but I was never awesome. I never won the big tournaments. What killed me was that I always had more fun and playe...
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.
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Main Points
My guest today teaches happiness for a living. Which is ironic, because she grew up in a country where smiling at a stranger means something is wrong with you.
Tatiana Koval spent 15 years as an HR consultant in Russia. When the war in Ukraine started, saying you were against it...
Nir Levy was nineteen years old when he was already commanding a unit in the Israeli army. He managed hundreds of people and logistics with life or death stakes, at an age when most of us were figuring out laundry.
After the Israeli army came Amazon, where Nir eventually ran a full manufacturing facility. There, he learned to live by the company’s obsession with getting it right, every package, every time.
On this "Best of Swarfcast" episode, Noah speaks with Rich Gaffney, Vice President of Commercial Operations at Sentry Equipment, a 100-year-old manufacturing company in Wisconsin that has been employee owned since 1986.
While his nine-year-old son was fighting stage three cancer, Nick Stevens was driving around buying up scrap tungsten carbide just to keep food on the table. It worked well enough that one day, sitting in the hospital room, his son said to him: “Dad, why don’t you just start your own business and be your [...]
The post Your Scrap Tungsten Carbide Is a National Security Question, Nick Stevens and Joey Marks–EP 268 ...
Pat Parnell went to buy a classic car for his wife. He ended up buying a company too. Rain Gear Wiper Systems, the only hidden wiper system company for classic cars in the world. After 42 years hauling and installing high-end appliances, his body was done with the heavy lifting. Within a few weeks of [...]
The post The Only Classic Car Wiper Business in the World, with Pat Parnell-EP 267 appeared first on Today’s Machining Wo...
Today’s podcast is about mentorship, finding it, and paying it back. Logan McGhan is an old friend of mine from the used machinery business who is now a CNC programmer at a semiconductor company in Arizona. Along the way he’s had invaluable mentors in martial arts, machining, and sales, and one of his main purposes [...]
The post The Man Who Never Stops Teaching, with Logan McGhan-EP 266 appeared first on Today’s ...
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 [...]
The post Manufacturing a $70,000 Wristwatch in the United States, with Josh Shapiro EP-174 appeared first on Today’s Mac...
I met Tim Betts a few weeks ago when he was shopping for a Willemin mill-turn we had for sale. One conversation in and I knew he had to come on Swarfcast. Tim told me he’s in the drugs business, the guns business, and horse racing, and that actually makes him one of the most [...]
The post Rifles, Racing, and Rhinos, with Tim Betts–EP 265 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.
Sometimes I feel like I’m a good leader. I think I’ve always believed at least that I could be. The insecure statement comes from my conventional view of leading–taking charge to mobilize other people in our businesses, or as a dad or as a thought leader. But my podcast guest Ryan Avery, gave me a [...]
The post Be THE Leader, with Ryan Avery–EP 264 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.
“God, I am so NOT relaxed right now. But I need to just embrace what I read recently — you need the courage to be rubbish. Just relax, stop worrying about everything being perfect, and do it.” I said that to my dad, Lloyd, as we sat down to record our podcast last week–which turned [...]
The post Courage to Be Rubbish – EP 263 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.
On today’s podcast, I’m talking with Mike Payne, owner of Hill Manufacturing and Fabrication in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, to peek inside the mind of a prolific acquirer of manufacturing companies. Before purchasing Hill in 2018, Mike spent 20 years in M&A, orchestrating over 100 deals across nearly every industry. Since then, Mike has acquired four [...]
The post Manufacturing Acquisitions with Purpose, with Mike Payn...
I often ponder—why do some people own and build companies, while most people are destined to spend their careers as employees. In Part II of my interview with Mike Payne, owner of Hill Manufacturing & Fabrication, we explore this question. Mike comes from a family of six generations of teachers, not business managers or entrepreneurs, [...]
The post Why Some People Build Companies and Others Don’t, with Mike Payne (...
Today’s AI conversation is about vulnerability—not automation, efficiency, and replacing jobs. Brooks Canavesi, co-founder of Baryons, is taking AI somewhere different. He’s not trying to replace the human. He’s trying to make the human better. I’ve actually been using ChatGPT to supplement my own life coach for a while now, so when I learned what [...]
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