Machining
Manufacturing in Thailand – the “Detroit of the East”
Emily Aniakou, Today’s Machining World’s Managing Editor, was invited to join 11 other journalists from the U.S. and Canada (six in the automotive sector and six in the food industry sector) by [...]
A Day in the Life of a Job Shop Guy
“Mike” owns a small job shop in South Carolina. He started from scratch building a machining business from a turret lathe and a mill. He loves the business and asked [...]
NBA Flunks Negotiating
One of the more interesting parts of attempting to teach my son Noah the art of business concerns negotiating. It’s a topic of enduring interest because there is seldom a [...]
Why is my business so good if the economy is so bad?
I attended the Precision Machined Products Association’s annual meeting in Austin over the weekend. The question I heard often was, “Why is my business so good if the economy is [...]
African Lean: Pioneering Precision Machining in Ghana, Africa
In 2007-08 I spent a year in Benin, West Africa, as a volunteer with the U.S. Peace Corps. Although Africa is easy to write off as a hopeless mess, there’s [...]
A Race to the Perfect Collapsible Container
Imports from Asia are rising again. China is allegedly going to allow its currency to rise. Scrap steel is leaving the U.S. and foreign steel is rushing in to fill [...]
Machinist in the Womb
By Lloyd Graff Hunter Jamison and his two brothers Scot and Terry own and operate Millipart Inc., an aerospace machining firm southeast of Los Angeles in Glendora, Cal. Their father [...]
Machining Solo
By Lloyd Graff Chuck DeLong says he “can’t deal with people,” but he loves his old CNC machines, which he cajoles to run perfect pieces like other people baby their [...]
Amish Precision Machining
By Lloyd Graff The variety of small business permutations in America always surprises me. In the rolling prairie of Northwest Indiana-Amish Country—Eli L. runs 3 1-1/4″ RA6 National Acme screw [...]
Are Machinery Trade Shows Becoming Obsolete?
By Lloyd Graff WESTEC as we know it is changing. There will be no show in 2011 in Los Angeles. SME (Society of Manufacturing Engineers), which organized the 2010 event, [...]