Just when you think that we Americans have it bad with gas prices between four and five dollars per gallon, look across the Atlantic. Europeans are paying around nine dollars per gallon. Spanish truck drivers have protested by simply parking in a long line along the highway. Now in Spain and France people are protesting high prices by riding bikes in the nude. Also, farmers are leaving fields and clogging roads with their tractors.
Source: www.thestreet.com
“Auction of the Week” is new blog feature in which we give readers the inside scoop on one upcoming machinery auction every week. The following is not an advertisement. It is totally free of monetary consideration for TMW or any other company. We will pick these auctions on the merit of what we believe will interest members of the machining community.
On July 15, the grand daddy of Greenlee screw machine shops, Sharon Screw, goes up for auction, under the hammer of Cincinnati Industrial. Gerry Savage, Sharon’s owner, collected Greenlees like some people pick up Rolexes. If the price was right he bought it. He is finally ready to hang it up. He made an effort to sell the operation as a going business but the appetite for a big Greenlee shop, even in the home of Greenlee, Rockford, Illinois, has waned.
A competitor of Savage told me that he might covet the building but he never wants to see another Greenlee machine. Greenlees were made for a more forgiving machining climate. Will Greenlee buyers come out of the woodwork to inspect the bones. Check it out July 15th.
Now people can replicate replicating machines from replicating machines. Sounds kind of like Dolly, the cloned sheep, being cloned to produce a new sheep.
http://blog.reprap.org/2008/06/reprap-achieves-replication.html
Adrian (left) and Vik (right) with a parent RepRap machine, made on a conventional rapid prototyper, and the first complete working child RepRap machine, made by the RepRap on the left. The child machine made its first successful grandchild part at 14:00 hours UTC on 29 May 2008 at Bath University in the UK, a few minutes after it was assembled.
[Sorry this news is a few days late, RepRap fans. We had a press embargo on it till 4 June to coincide with the opening of the Cheltenham Festival (see above and below), and it wouldn't be very good practice to break our own embargo
]
A Gas Guzzler May Save You Money
With ridiculous gas prices sweeping across the U.S., it might seem intuitive for a car buyer to look for something fuel efficient like a Smart Car, Prius, or Honda Civic. But with dealers struggling to get rid of trucks and SUVs (domestic brands in particular) some unprecedented deals for gas guzzlers are appearing which may actually make sense for buyers to jump on.
Manufacturers are offering between $2,000 and $5,000 in discounts on once popular models like the Ford Explorer and Chevrolet Suburban, and dealers say there’s room for negotiation after that. Used SUVs and trucks often have even greater discounts, with some selling at roughly one-third the price they would have fetched new four years ago.
Among the better bargains are Ford’s SUVs, the Expedition and the Explorer. An Expedition with four-wheel drive has a sticker price of about $35,000, but in many areas, consumers can get one for $30,000 after discounts and negotiations. The all-wheel-drive Explorer with V-8 engine lists for about $31,000, but can be had for $25,000.
These deals only make sense if your driving routine is local or you simply want a truck or SUV. If you only drive five or 10 miles a day it will take years for even $4.00 gas to surpass the value of many discounts, and by that time your lease may have ended.
Source: Wall Street Journal
“Auction of the Week” is new blog feature in which we give readers the inside scoop on one upcoming machinery auction every week. The following is not an advertisement. It is totally free of monetary consideration for TMW or any other company. We will pick these auctions on the merit of what we believe will interest members of the machining community.
Hoff-Hilk Auctioneers is doing an online auction of the physical assets of the K.O. Lee Corporation of Aberdeen, South Dakota, on the Web June 25th and June 26th.
I talked to Russ Hilk, one of the partners of the auction firm, and he gave me background on the sale. The key pieces in the deal are the new K.O. Lee grinders, surface, tool and cutter, and creep feed style.
Hoff-Hilk got the deal primarily because of a long standing relationship between the firm’s managers and Dennis Hoff, Russ Hilk’s partner. They had done appraisal and consulting work through the years for K.O. Lee.
Hilk mentioned that prior to the auction K.O. Lee’s parts business was sold to LeBlond LTD of Amelia, Ohio, along with the intellectual property of the machine prints and website
The sale of intangible soft assets for a company with a great old name presents intriguing issues for auction and appraisal companies in the area of global Web trading.
Fredric Baur, the man who invented the tubular can that packages Pringles potato chips, died May 4, 2008, at the age of 89. Yesterday it was announced that he has had some of his ashes put into a Pringles can which was put into his coffin.
Baur was an organic chemist and food storage technician who specialized in research and development and quality control for Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble Co. A patent for the can was granted in 1970, according to P&G archivist Ed Rider.
Pringles have always been my favorite potato chips. I’ve always felt their flavoring was superior to other chips – from the Original Salted, to Sour Cream and Onion, to Cheez Ums. But I know what attracted me to them originally was their unique presentation, not only the can, which seemed so classy compared to regular potato chip bags, but the uniformity and aesthetics of the chips.
Pringles are the ultimate combination of quality, presentation, and branding. Those are the keys to success when producing and selling any product which can seem generic and commoditized, whether it be a food, computer, or machined part. In the world’s capitalist economy fueled by consumer choice, the only way to succeed in business is to use Procter & Gamble’s Pringles model. Yes – price also plays a huge part in competition, but the companies which truly dominate the world always strive for excellence – to produce their own Pringles.
This is the first story on a new blog feature in which we will give readers the inside scoop on one upcoming machinery auction each week. This is not an advertisement. It is totally free of monetary consideration for TMW or any other company. We will pick these auctions on the merit of what we believe will interest members of the machining community.
The 100 mpg Gas Guzzler
Jonathan Goodwin dropped out of seventh grade to help pay the bills and follow his passion for cars and engines. Today the automotive world bows to his genius and wonders if this car nut might actually win the 10 million dollar X PRIZE for producing a low emission, competitively priced, 100 mile per gallon car.
His partner in this venture is Neil Young, rock legend, who contributed his 1960, Lincoln Continental “boat” as Goodwin’s test car.
Goodwin works out of a garage where he specializes in converting Hummers into fuel sipping diesels while boosting their power. He also likes to run his thug cars on fried chicken grease contributed by the local KFC outlet.
The fact that the prestigious X PRIZE contest committee has allowed Goodwin and Young to apply to join the elite, well financed, automotive companies from around the world gives him credibility.
Goodwin is negotiating with DHL to convert 800 vehicles to super efficient systems which cut fuel costs by 50 percent.
It appears that his approach is unique because he does not want to build a new vehicle and engine. His devious plan is to make inexpensive conversion packages for existing vehicles turning them into biodiesel burning plug-in hybrids.
Proving his point on Neil Young’s 40 foot “boat” may not win the X PRIZE, but that’s what they said about the crazy bike mechanics Wilbur and Orville Wright in 1903.
Noah and I visited Vienna, Austria, recently on a business trip to central Europe. Our first order of business was to find the original Julius Meinl coffee shop, which is my favorite in Chicago.
After several missteps, we found Meinl at about 6:00 in the evening on Sunday. The only part of the store which was serving customers was the outdoor seating area. The blond fraulein who came to take our order spoke no English. She was quite pretty but she carried a near scowl on her face. I tried to order a latte, but she only understood cappuccino, so that’s what we ordered.
The coffee came promptly and it was beautifully presented with a heart artfully drawn in the foam.To the best of my tasting ability, the Viennese and American coffees tasted the same – excellent, but the attitude and the price were decidedly better at Julius Meinl in Chicago. The size of the cup was about one third smaller than the comparable American one and the price was double in American dollars. I felt like a poor American in continental Europe. Yet on the other hand it reminded me how cheap America is now, and that I need to use that to my advantage in business.
Remember the last scene of Back to the Future when Doc Brown returns in his flying DeLorian to take Marty to the year 2015? As a 5 year old kid in 1985 I still remember being fascinated, not only because the car was flying, but because the new DeLorian was powered by garbage instead of plutonium. At the time I didn’t even know what plutonium was. But garbage fuel – now that was a cool concept.
In 2008, people are finally starting to work on garbage-powered aviation. The Solena Group, a Washington DC company that builds and operates renewable energy power plants in North America, Asia and Europe, has started work on a facility that will produce jet fuel from trash, tree bark and manure using a process called plasma gasification. It uses 5000-degree plasma arcs to break trash into gas fuel, which is then converted into liquid suitable for powering an airplane.
The plasma gasification and the gas-to-liquid conversion processes will release significant amounts of CO2 into the environment, but the company claims that the CO2 does much less harm to the environment than emissions created by decomposing landfill waste and reliance on petroleum based aviation fuel. (According to the Department of Transportation, aviation accounts for 2.7 percent of U.S. annual greenhouse gas output.) Also, energy generated from the plasma arcs is used to power the system, which makes it self-sustaining.
Solena plans to build its plant in Gilroy, California, (home of the famous Gilroy Garlic Festival) where it will have access to a steady stream of household trash from Norcal Waste Systems, a big California garbage collection company.
The Company won’t begin production until 2011, despite some U.S. biofuel tax credits being scheduled to expire in 2008. Also, no commercial airlines have expressed interest in the project. But if prices of fuel keep going up there could be some significant interest by 2015, and maybe Back to the Future director/writer Robert Zemeckis will turn out to be a true science visionary, not just a great Sci-Fi creator.
Source: www.wired.com
