Swarfcast

On today’s podcast, we interviewed Mark Fordyce, Team Leader of the Hydromat Parts & Rebuild department at Component Bar Products in St. Louis. Mark is a Hydromat Maestro. He has been working with rotary transfer machines for over 40 years, first as a self-taught setup man in a job shop, followed by working in the engineering department at Hydromat Inc., and then at Component Bar. He is one of...

On today’s podcast, I interviewed Bryan Batten, CEO of Palmetto Precision Machining, located in Anderson, South Carolina. Palmetto Machining is a precision machining/fabrication shop specializing in tooling and automation for the automotive industry. Bryan, who jokingly refers to himself as a mechanical psychologist, discusses the difference between working with automotive companies in different c...

We interviewed Brett May of BME Inc. Screw Machine Attachments for today’s podcast. Brett’s mission in business is to make old cam multi-spindle screw machines like National Acmes, Wickmans, and New Britains into productive money makers in today’s competitive machining environment. Scroll down to listen to the podcast with Brett May. Brett builds unique attachments which eliminate secondary...

On today’s podcast, I interviewed Albert Lettmen, a Lean Six Sigma and Quality Systems consultant and educator who has worked for decades with prominent manufacturing companies around the world. Albert grew up in Jamaica, studied business in Scotland, and then worked for companies in Europe, China, Canada and the United States. I was surprised when Albert explained to me that a company eliminating...

In today’s podcast, we reflect on the machining world in 2018 through the lens of what went right and what went wrong for Graff-Pinkert’s used machine tool business and Today’s Machining World . Scroll down to listen to the podcast. One key observation from 2018 is that Graff-Pinkert is becoming more reliant on our extensive knowledge of the equipment market rather than the cam machine refurbishin...

Scroll down to listen to the podcast with Federico Veneziano. On today’s podcast we interviewed Federico Veneziano, COO and CFO of American Micro, a 100 person machining company near Cincinnati, Ohio. In the interview Federico compared the various philosophies he has observed in machining companies throughout Europe, China and the United States. Federico grew up in northern Italy and got his first...

Scroll down to listen to the podcast with John Saunders. In today’s podcast we interviewed John Saunders, founder of Saunders Machine Works and the creator of the NYC CNC YouTube channel . John is an innovative entrepreneur who lives and breaths CNC machining. When he was 24 he had an idea to sell an automatically resetting steel target for practicing firearms, but he had no engineering background...

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 po...

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 lath...

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...

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 Unite...

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 Bi...