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Recent episodes
Your Scrap Tungsten Carbide Is a National Security Question, Nick Stevens and Joey Marks–EP 268
Jun 23, 2026
Unknown duration
The Only Classic Car Wiper Business in the World, with Pat Parnell-EP 267
Jun 9, 2026
Unknown duration
The Man Who Never Stops Teaching, with Logan McGhan-EP 266
May 26, 2026
Unknown duration
Manufacturing a $70,000 Wristwatch in the United States, with Josh Shapiro EP-174
May 19, 2026
Unknown duration
Rifles, Racing, and Rhinos, with Tim Betts–EP 265
May 12, 2026
Unknown duration
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| Date | Episode | Topics | Guests | Brands | Places | Keywords | Sponsor | Length | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6/23/26 | ![]() Your Scrap Tungsten Carbide Is a National Security Question, Nick Stevens and Joey Marks–EP 268 | 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 own boss?” Today Nick and his cousin Joey run JC Metals, going around the country paying cash on the spot for the carbide piling up in shops. And they refuse to sell a pound of it overseas even when buyers offer them more money to do it. Listen on your favorite podcast app using pod.link. . View the podcast at the bottom of this post or on our YouTube Channel. Follow us on Social and never miss an update! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/swarfcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/swarfcast/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/todays-machining-world X: https://twitter.com/tmwswarfblog ************* Link to Graff-Pinkert’s Acquisitions and Sales promotion! Main Points While You Wait, the Price Moves Carbide tooling has gotten expensive. Between the tariffs and China restricting exports, prices have been swinging all over the place. Every machine shop has scrap carbide sitting around, worn inserts and chipped end mills that are useless for precision work but still worth real money as raw material. A lot of shops don’t realize how much. Nick says he walks into places with piles of carbide they’re practically throwing away, not knowing it’s worth $40,000 or $50,000. JC Metals buys it and sells it to a private US processor, one that recently received what Nick describes as an $11 million government grant to buy up as much domestic carbide as possible and keep it in American manufacturing. The major toolmakers all have their own buyback programs too. Kennametal, Sandvik, Seco. They work, but the model is the same: ship your material out and wait on a check for 15 to 30 days. With prices moving the way they are, the number you agreed to when you shipped is not the same number when the check clears. JC Metals shows up with their own scales, weighs everything in front of you, and pays you that day. Cash, wire, Zelle, ACH, whatever you want. The Geopolitics of Scrap China controls about 85 percent of the world’s tungsten carbide supply and has been cutting off exports. Foreign buyers have been approaching American shops directly, offering 30 to 40 percent more per pound to ship the material back overseas. Nick says he outbid one of those buyers last month, knowing he would lose money doing it, because he didn’t want the material leaving the country. Tungsten carbide is a core component of armor-piercing ammunition, from rifle rounds to tank rounds. It’s also used in nuclear weapons casing. Until this interview I knew tungsten carbide was a big deal for manufacturers. I had no idea about the national security ramifications. Changing the Scrapper Stigma My great grandfather was in the scrap metal business. One reason my grandfather went into used machinery instead was that he found the scrap business unsavory, manipulating scales, shady deals. When we had a warehouse it wasn’t uncommon for scrappers to pull up in a truck and steal from Graff-Pinkert. Nick and Joey bring their own scales so there’s no question about the weight. The company name, JC Metals, stands for Jesus Christ Metals, a nod to the faith that carried them through Jack’s illness. Jack Stevens, Nick’s son, is ten months cancer free. Question: What do you do with your scrap carbide? | — | ||||||
| 6/9/26 | ![]() The Only Classic Car Wiper Business in the World, with Pat Parnell-EP 267 | 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 stumbling onto this business, he cashed in part of his life savings to buy it. Now at 64, he calls running the business relaxing. He’s shipping wiper kits worldwide for 90 different classic cars, and currently building out a machine shop to make everything in-house. Listen on your favorite podcast app using pod.link. . View the podcast at the bottom of this post or on our YouTube Channel. Follow us on Social and never miss an update! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/swarfcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/swarfcast/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/todays-machining-world X: https://twitter.com/tmwswarfblog ************* Link to Graff-Pinkert’s Acquisitions and Sales promotion! ************* Main Points Hidden in Plain Sight Rain Gear makes hidden wiper kits for classic cars. The systems remove the factory wiper motor from the firewall and tuck it into the vehicle’s airbox or underneath the dash. Cleaner firewall, more room under the dash, and a more reliable system than what came stock on a 1957 Chevy. That last part matters. Original wiper systems on classic cars were often cable-driven and unreliable. This isn’t just about looks. People actually drive these cars in the rain. Pat ships kits to customers as far as Australia. Over 90 SKUs covering everything from C1 Corvettes to Tri-Five Chevys, Ford and Chevy trucks, and 1964-1968 Mustangs. Kits run from around $500 to $800 depending on the vehicle. The Only One in the World Pat says Rain Gear has no competition. He spent 42 years competing in the appliance installation business. Now he’s in a category of one. When customers need a wiper system for a car Rain Gear doesn’t have a kit for, they provide dimensions and Pat works with them to find the closest fit. Rain Gear Wiper Systems Wiper Kit Two Weeks Pat was looking to buy a 1965 Mustang fastback for his wife. The seller mentioned he’d only purchased the car to design a wiper system for it, and that he was also selling the company. Within two weeks Pat bought Rain Gear Wiper Systems in November 2024. His philosophy on purchasing: do the research upfront, know what you want, and when the right thing appears, don’t hesitate. “It’s always the first one. It’s not the second one, not the third one. It’s always the first one you should buy.” His wife puts it differently: “You’re bending over picking up pennies while the dollars are flying over your head.” The Founder is Still at It The original engineer, Tom Jensen, a Vietnam veteran, designed the systems and sold the company to Pat. He didn’t walk away. Jensen emailed Pat recently saying he was heading to the junkyard to buy parts to design a new kit for a 1973-1987 Chevy square body truck. Pat already has customers waiting for it. The pipeline is open. Building a Shop When Pat bought Rain Gear all parts were outsourced. He’s bringing production in-house. He’s already purchased a fiber laser, is looking for a 32mm CNC Swiss machine, and is adding a CNC brake and a high-end compressor, around five to six machines total. His brother-in-law, who installs industrial robotics professionally, is helping with setup, and a programmer he knows will handle the CAD files and machine programming remotely. Pat’s reasoning: spending $200,000 on equipment that generates revenue long-term beats spending the same on parts sitting on a shelf. One Business Fading, One Growing Pat still has two employees running the appliance installation business. The plan isn’t a hard cutoff. Rain Gear has to outgrow it first, and then he’ll let the appliance side fade naturally. He’s managed over 20 employees, multiple trucks, and two warehouses before. The organizational side doesn’t intimidate him. He’s done it. | — | ||||||
| 5/26/26 | ![]() The Man Who Never Stops Teaching, with Logan McGhan-EP 266 | 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 in life is to pay it forward. He mentors young machinists at his shop. He trains people in martial arts for free. He even rehabilitates mean dogs. Listen on your favorite podcast app using pod.link. . View the podcast at the bottom of this post or on our YouTube Channel. Follow us on Social and never miss an update! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/swarfcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/swarfcast/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/todays-machining-world X: https://twitter.com/tmwswarfblog ************* Link to Graff-Pinkert’s Acquisitions and Sales promotion! ************* Interview Highlights Where It Started Logan grew up watching his father, a tool and die maker, work on an engine lathe and Bridgeport mill in the garage. People would bring him parts to fix for companies like Motorola and Intel, and his dad would figure it out. When Logan was five, his father hired a Korean martial arts master named John Kil Kang, a former presidential bodyguard who fled South Korea during a coup. Logan trained under him for ten years. It set a standard for discipline that never left him. Mentors Who Left a Mark In his twenties, Logan found coaching from two older aerospace programmers with about 40 years of combined experience. One of them, Alexander Hamilton Curtis, died of pancreatic cancer at 63. The last thing he told Logan was: “Don’t ever become a legend in your own mind.” Logan says he still thinks about it at least once a week. There was also a trade school professor who, in front of 27 classmates, told Logan that if he didn’t take a computer class he was an “effin idiot.” Logan was embarrassed enough to sign up. He credits that moment for everything that followed in his career. The Long Road Back After years as a five-axis programmer, Logan suffered a serious head injury in a car accident and never told anyone at work. He pushed through, but the cognitive load of high-level programming eventually caught up with him. He pivoted to machinery dealing, even hiring a sales coach on his own dime for $6,000. When COVID hit and commissions dried up, a longtime client called and asked if he could still program. Logan said yes, spent three weeks learning new software until midnight every night, and clawed his way back. Paying It Forward Today Logan mentors young programmers in their twenties at his shop, including trade school recruits he helped bring on himself. He has spent years training a friend in martial arts at four in the morning, for free, meeting him at a park because he figured if the guy didn’t show up at 4am he wasn’t worth working with. He also took the time to help me last week when I asked for advice on selling used equipment. Question: What mentor or coach had a profound impact on your life? What did they teach you that stuck? | — | ||||||
| 5/19/26 | ![]() Manufacturing a $70,000 Wristwatch in the United States, with Josh Shapiro EP-174 | 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 line of watches coming out that he has been working on for years. He is finally going to be producing the entire movement in his watches. Please have a listen to one of our most popular interviews on the show! Our guest on the podcast today is a machinist, entrepreneur, and master craftsman. Josh Shapiro is the owner and founder of JN Shapiro Watches, one of the few high-end luxury wristwatch makers in the United States. His latest line of watches will be priced at $70,000 dollars and up. His operation uses the most state of the art CNC Swiss and turn mills, as well as manual turning technology developed as far back as the 1500s! Listen to the podcast or read the highlights to learn how Josh is producing watches like nobody else has in United States for last 50 years. You can also view the podcast in video form on our YouTube Channel. Highlights from the Interview Noah Graff: First, explain your company, JN Shapiro. Josh Shapiro: We make high-end luxury wristwatches. We’re one of the very, very few companies in the United States that manufacture watches. We started out just making the faces of the watches. Our expertise is with something called Guilloche, which is doing engraved geometric shapes on the faces of watches, and that’s done using non-motorized, very old school machines. They’re really special. From there we moved on to making our own cases. Now we are very close to having our first prototype completely in-house movement done. Graff: How much do the watches cost? The price was $30,000 to $40,000 depending on the case material. The new series that we’re going to launch soon is $70,000 up to about $85,000, depending on material and customization. JN Shapiro Watch So they’re very expensive, but we put in about 400 to 500 hours on each timepiece. So much time goes into making each one of those watches. Graff: How did you get into watchmaking? Shapiro: I just had a love of old things, so I ended up becoming a history major and then becoming a teacher. I walked into a local watch store here in Los Angeles called Feldmar when I was about 25, and just fell in love with watches. One of the first watches I saw was a Skeleton Chronograph watch. There was just so much going on there. It was so fascinating to me. Watches are mechanical. Watches are a really beautiful thing. It’s wearable jewelry that’s functional. It’s fascinating how the gear train flows together. How the escapement functions, the pendulum, just the whole interplay of all the pieces. While I was a teacher and principal, I was doing watchmaking as a hobby. Then around 2015, I purchased a really nice set of Guilloche, or engine turning machines, and that allowed me to do professional level work. I started producing watch faces, watch styles for other watchmakers, and started thinking in the back of my head of launching my own brand. Around 2018, I launched my first series, and that’s when I started really reducing my role as a principal, until finally leaving completely two years ago. Graff: Explain engine turning Shapiro: The concept is there are cams made out of bronze on the spindle of the machine, and those cams are rocking against the stop. As the spindle is turning, it’s creating these geometric patterns. Then you can phase the cam, independent of the workpiece, and you can create these really beautiful geometric shapes. It’s an old art. Engine turning machines have been around since the time that lathes came into existence, around 1500. I have a number of them. The first one I bought, I scraped together every cent I had to afford it. Then, then I ended up selling that set of machines and buying another set of machines. The second set of machines cost me around $30,000. I didn’t have that much money, so I had to sell my 67 Mustang Fastback to afford it. Graff: How many staff do you employ for making the watches? Shapiro: It’s me plus seven. I’ve taught everyone in the company how to do engine turning. I have one trained CNC machinist. I have another watchmaker who is turned into a CNC machinist. I have three other watchmakers who are doing various watchmaking tasks and manual machining tasks. I have one person who’s a trained jeweler, who has pursued a whole career in hand engraving, and one admin. So everyone has a really great skillset and really enjoys making things. Graff: Tell me about the various machines in your shop. Shapiro: My first big CNC machine, which we still have, is a Haas office mill. That’s actually a great watchmaking machine, and there’s a lot of people in Switzerland that have these Haas office mills because they’re really, really accurate. Then we got a Hardinge, HLV, which is like the premier tool room lathe. And then we picked up the, the (Citizen) L20 from you that was to practice on before we got our new shiny L12, which is getting here Wednesday. The big machine that we got this year was a Kern Evo. Kern makes the most accurate milling machines on the planet. It’s a sub-micron machine. We can’t measure sub-micron here in our shop, but it’s nice to know that we’re working with the machine that accurate, that precise. It’s the first Kern Evo used for watchmaking in the US, which is really exciting. JN Shapiro Watch Parts Graff: Explain the watch movement Shapiro: A movement is the guts of a mechanical watch. It’s everything inside of it, just like a car engine and transmission. There are some [watch] brands in the United States that do cases and dials, and some purchase everything from Switzerland. They’re just designed in the United States, like Shinola watches. You know they’re importing a good chunk of all their stuff. They got in trouble with the FTC for saying it was American made. Slowly more is being done here. Our watch that we’re working on is the first time since the sixties that all the parts, all the little parts, everything are made in the United States. The old series, the Infinity series, that we sold out on, we were making the case, the hands and the dial. So not the movement of the watch. That was according to plan. I did the Infinity Series to have the funding to grow the company enough to be able to make the movement. Some people make the mistake of trying to do the movement, which is the most difficult thing, right off the bat. And if it’s not a critical success, then they’re out of business. Graff: Why do people buy expensive watches? Shapiro: I guess the best example is if you look at the car world. You can buy a Toyota or Honda, and it’ll get you from point A to B, and you can also buy McLaren and it’ll get you from point A to B. From the outside observer, they say, okay, the McLaren looks cooler and rich people buy it. But then you get into the engine. You know the car goes fast—very, very fast. There’s a ton of engineering that goes into the car to make it be able to do that. The quality of the parts that are in the car are produced at a much higher level than in a car that’s mass produced. It’s the same thing for a watch. It tells the time, but the quality and time that we put into each and every one of the parts is astronomic. [A watch] is something that’ll last hundreds of years. It’s a piece of art, and it’s functional art that you can wear on your wrist. Art is the spice of life. It’s not something that’s necessary for you to eat, or live. But it’s what makes our civilization special beyond just being a toy for wealthy people. When someone sees a work of art it’s inspiring, and that’s what we do with our watches. They’re more than just time telling devices. Question: What is your favorite watch? | — | ||||||
| 5/12/26 | ![]() Rifles, Racing, and Rhinos, with Tim Betts–EP 265 | 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 heavily regulated businessmen in America. Seriously, he’s a compounding pharmacist, he machines precision rifle parts, and he manufactures race bikes for harness racing around the world. And he’s all in on every one of them. Listen on your favorite podcast app using pod.link. . View the podcast at the bottom of this post or on our YouTube Channel. Follow us on Social and never miss an update! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/swarfcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/swarfcast/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/todays-machining-world Twitter: https://twitter.com/tmwswarfblog ************* Link to Graff-Pinkert’s Acquisitions and Sales promotion! ************* Interview Highlights Guns Tim co-owns Procision Arms with his partner Jason, who runs the shop while Tim runs the office. They spotted a real gap in the market. Small and mid-sized gun builders were getting squeezed by venture capital firms buying up precision rifle component manufacturers, jacking up prices and cutting margins. Tim and Jason built their processes from the ground up to fill that void. Today they’re a full OEM shop producing parts to aerospace tolerances for bolt action hunting rifles. Five-axis machining, horizontal mills, EDM, serious work. Drugs Tim has a doctorate in pharmacy and works for a compounding pharmacy in southeastern Pennsylvania. Compounding means making custom medications that either don’t exist commercially or have been abandoned by drug companies as unprofitable. The work is intensely creative. If a child or animal won’t take a pill, you find another way. Tim’s team once made antibiotics for a rhino who happened to love Rice Krispie treats, so they baked the dose into a full 9×9 pan. They’ve also embedded pills into fish to medicate penguins. It’s a business tightly regulated by the FDA and more manufacturing than most people realize. Horses Tim and his brothers grew up in harness racing. Both of their grandfathers trained horses and his brother is a full-time trainer today. Tim also owns a company that manufactures the sulkies, the two-wheeled race bikes the horses pull. They ship them to the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and South America. It’s a genuinely global manufacturing business inside a niche sport most people have never thought about. When Worlds Collide, Good Things Happen At first glance, these three worlds have nothing to do with each other. But the overlaps keep showing up. Veterinarians, some of Tim’s core pharmacy customers, turn out to be disproportionately into hunting and shooting, so pharmacy relationships open firearms doors. He met a major firearms customer through the horse world. And the problem-solving mindset carries across all three. As Tim puts it, the trial and error in pharmacy looks a lot like dialing in a new tool path in the shop. “This carrier didn’t really work at the pH it has to be at, so we have to try a different carrier. It’s a lot of the same type of things from a production standpoint.” His wife says she never knows when he takes a phone call at seven in the evening whether it’s going to be about horses, guns, machining, or pharmacy. Tim just shrugs. “Never a dull moment.” | — | ||||||
| 4/28/26 | ![]() Be THE Leader, with Ryan Avery–EP 264✨ | leadershippersonal development+3 | Ryan Avery | Today's Machining World | — | leadershipinfluence+3 | — | 51m 00s | |
| 4/14/26 | ![]() Courage to Be Rubbish – EP 263✨ | courageperfectionism+4 | Lloyd | CubsSwarfcast+1 | — | courage to be rubbishperfectionism+4 | — | 35m 55s | |
| 4/7/26 | ![]() Manufacturing Acquisitions with Purpose, with Mike Payne (Part 1)-EP 232 (Best of Swarfcast)✨ | manufacturing acquisitionsM&A industry+3 | Mike Payne | Hill Manufacturing and FabricationWalmart+1 | Broken Arrow, Oklahoma | manufacturingacquisitions+3 | — | 37m 18s | |
| 4/7/26 | ![]() Why Some People Build Companies and Others Don’t, with Mike Payne (Part 2) – EP 233 (Best of Swarfcast)✨ | entrepreneurshipbusiness ownership+3 | Mike Payne | Hill Manufacturing & FabricationToday's Machining World | — | entrepreneurshipbusiness+3 | — | 33m 45s | |
| 3/31/26 | ![]() Your AI Life Coach Is Lying to You, with Brooks Canavesi–EP 262✨ | AIvulnerability+3 | Brooks Canavesi | ChatGPTBaryons+4 | — | AIlife coach+3 | — | 1h 21m 23s | |
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| 3/24/26 | ![]() Robots that Know Where to Go, With George Konidaris (Best Of)✨ | artificial intelligencerobotics+3 | George Konidaris | Realtime RoboticsBrown University+1 | — | roboticsAI technology+3 | — | 1h 05m 10s | |
| 3/17/26 | ![]() So You Want To Be More Confident?–EP 261✨ | confidenceself-improvement+3 | — | Today's Machining World | — | confidenceself-introduction+5 | — | 7m 03s | |
| 3/3/26 | ![]() He Bought the Shop He Worked For, Federico Veneziano (Part II)-EP 260✨ | business ownershipcompany culture+3 | Federico Veneziano | handcuffsladders+4 | Italy | machine shopownership+3 | — | 1h 02m 33s | |
| 2/17/26 | ![]() Learning, Teaching, Owning, with Federico Veneziano-EP 259✨ | entrepreneurshipmanufacturing+4 | Federico Veneziano | Siemens controls840D+2 | northern ItalyOmegna | metal cuttingCNC+5 | — | 50m 34s | |
| 2/2/26 | ![]() Making Engineers Love Manufacturing, With Andrew Schiller-EP 258✨ | engineering educationmanufacturing+3 | Andrew Schiller | Utah TechCaterpillar+1 | ChicagoValparaiso University | manufacturingengineering+6 | — | 51m 10s | |
| 1/28/26 | ![]() Is 2025 the End of Cam Screw Machines? EP 257 (Reupload) | Is an Acme-Gridley the mink coat of machine tools? A well made product that still does a great job, but nobody wants another one. In 2025? No. Not yet. On today’s podcast, Lloyd and I talk about our used machinery business over the last year. We saw one customer drop 20 million for five INDEXs to replace every cam screw machine in their shop. At the same time we sold machines to a multinational automotive supplier who is buying hundreds of Davenport screw machines—many older than me—I’m 45 by the way. ************* Listen on your favorite podcast app using pod.link. . View the podcast at the bottom of this post or on our YouTube Channel. Follow us on Social and never miss an update! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/swarfcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/swarfcast/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/todays-machining-world Twitter: https://twitter.com/tmwswarfblog ************* Link to Graff-Pinkert’s Acquisitions and Sales promotion! ************* Interview Highlights The Mink Coat Discovery This Thanksgiving, while going through my mother’s closet, my dad found her 40-year-old mink coat in perfect condition. Once worth $10,000, ChatGPT now values it at maybe $250 to a dealer. The discovery sparked an uncomfortable comparison to the cam screw machines in our stock. “Of course, mink means Acmes to me because Acmes helped pay for the mink,” Lloyd reflects. “These are very functional, valuable machines that were running good parts where we bought them and we feel they have value, however… we have to doubt ourselves.” He poses the question that haunts our business: “Let’s say it is 1-5/8” RB-8 Acme. How much money could somebody potentially make on that machine over the course of one year?” He figures $25,000 to $50,000, maybe more with the right job. “We would sell that machine in that price range. Yet we find no buyers. From an economic standpoint, to me that makes no sense.” A Brutal Year The machinery dealing business has been tough this year. While many of our customers’ businesses remained steady, indecision paralyzed buying decisions—particularly around tariffs. “One of the polls I did on LinkedIn asked if indecision because of tariffs caused them to not buy equipment this year.” Fifty percent said that was one reason why they had not bought equipment. And I will never forget this year’s deal from hell. ”We bought a machine in Germany, sold it to a company in the United States, and then BOOM—tariff. We went from an amazing deal to… I’m amazed we didn’t lose money.” I hate tariffs for a lot of reasons. This one was extra personal. The $20 Million Paradox The market presents striking contradictions. One of our customers recently got rid of 30 cam screw machines, selling them for “$2,000, $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 a piece,” then spent over $3 million each on INDEX CNC multi-spindles—$20 million total to replace their entire shop floor. “I was shocked,” Lloyd admits. “The question was, are they that much better than a 1” Acme?” I explain the economics: “They make an entirely different kind of part. They make a part that you could make a dollar from where you make 10 cents from an Acme part. Or they’re making $10 on that part, and on the Acme, they were making a quarter.” The new machines can handle medical parts, complex geometries—the kinds of high-margin work that justifies the investment. The Davenport Bet Meanwhile, another customer is betting the opposite way, buying hundreds of Davenports for facilities in Mexico and China. Today’s Davenports have a similar design to their original one from 115 years ago. The company is buying so many they’ve ordered Davenport’s entire production capacity for new machines while simultaneously buying used ones. Good ones, bad ones, anything they can find to rebuild. “There are many uses for small parts as bushings or as inserts or pins,” Lloyd explains. “And if you’re catering to a world market… they’re saying to themselves, we want to tremendously expand our capacity because we believe there is a market there and people have abandoned this market.” The China Question Lloyd sees a broader pattern: “The Chinese appear to be able to make good product, not maybe the quality of product being made in the United States or in Europe, but close to it at a fraction of the price.” He worries about Chinese companies producing chips “90 to 95% as good” as NVIDIA’s but selling for 30% less. “They’re able to make an electric car now in China and sell it in the Chinese market for under $10,000, and they’re selling them now in Germany for as low as $16,000.” “In my mind, we’re in a war with China—an economic war.” Gratitude We end where we began—with gratitude. “I get the privilege of working with you,” Lloyd tells me. And I tell him that I have a gratitude list every day in the morning, and he’s on it. Readers, listeners out there—In an industry facing profound disruption, all I can say is adapt, keep picking up the phone and stay grateful. Even if you’re selling machines that might be the mink coats of manufacturing. Question: What machines did you purchase or get rid of in 2025? | — | ||||||
| 1/28/26 | ![]() The Turnaround Formula, with Neil Lansing-EP 256 (Reupload) | Today I’m talking to a guy who believes every company needs to be built to last—not just to flip. Neil Lansing is a turnaround specialist who left private equity to bet his own money on small, underperforming businesses. He’s taken companies from 18 employees to over 400. From $2 million to $40-50 million in revenue. And when everyone else was laying people off in 2008, he told his refrigeration company’s team: “We need more clients.” After transforming mom-and-pop service companies one after another, he found his final stop, Piedmont Machine & Manufacturing. At 67, he’s not looking for the next flip. He’s building something that will outlast him. ************* Listen on your favorite podcast app using pod.link. . View the podcast at the bottom of this post or on our YouTube Channel. Follow us on Social and never miss an update! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/swarfcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/swarfcast/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/todays-machining-world Twitter: https://twitter.com/tmwswarfblog ************* Link to Graff-Pinkert’s Acquisitions and Sales promotion! ************* Interview Highlights The Journey from Satellites to Shop Floors Neil started as a satellite engineer at Hughes Aircraft, became a CFO of a publicly traded pharmaceutical company, then worked in private equity doing turnarounds and startups. But eventually he walked away from working with other people’s money to bet his own cash on small businesses. It wasn’t an easy mental shift. As he told me: “I remember the first time I did something. I was sitting there and I remember, now I’m not in corporate America, I’m not in these nice New York digs… I’m in some place where it’s like, my God, what did I get myself into?” But then he told himself: “Quit crying, figure it out, make it work.” The Five-Person Rule One of Neil’s key insights is his management structure. Nobody has more than five direct reports. Not supervisors, not managers, not even Neil as owner. This tight span of control is how he grew his refrigeration company from 10-18 people to over 400 in six years while maintaining quality and accountability. “Everyone has to do what we’re supposed to do,” he explains. “If we all do what we’re supposed to do and take the accountability of what we’re supposed to do, then it can work.” Growing When Others Retreat The 2008 financial crisis tested every business owner, but Neil’s response was counterintuitive. While the country was laying off 700,000 people a month, he gathered his top 10 guys and said: “We’ve just got to get more clients.” By Christmas, they were bringing in all new work. Then their existing clients–Target, Publix, Costco – suddenly needed massive expansions. Neil went from laying off 40-50 people to desperately hiring them back plus another 40-50 more. Why Manufacturing, Why Now After several successful turnarounds, Neil decided manufacturing would be his next chapter. He bought Piedmont Machine in Concord, North Carolina, seeing opportunity where others saw decline. The company does Swiss machining for smaller diameter work and can handle parts up to 30 inches in diameter—from roller bearing components for landing gear to automated door systems. He envisions growing his company to 80-100 employees, consolidating into a new 60-75,000 square foot facility, and implementing comprehensive training programs. The Grinder’s Legacy Neil calls himself a “grinder” – someone focused on day-to-day execution rather than just deal-making. His philosophy centers on personal responsibility: “If I don’t do what I’m supposed to do, then I can’t pay these people. And if I can’t pay these people, that means that we did it wrong.” What drives someone to keep grinding at 67? Neil says it’s about legacy, not money. “Everything I’ve done, it still works. It still runs. If I do something and it goes under or it stops being in existence, then I feel like that’s not a good legacy. That means I didn’t do it right.” Neil doesn’t know how to run a machine and doesn’t want to. He knows how to run a business with clear strategy, deep understanding of people, and balls, and he’s still betting big because that’s what real builders do. | — | ||||||
| 1/21/26 | ![]() Running a CNC Swiss Medical Shop, with Shawn Gaskin–Ep. 161 | Our guest on the podcast today is Shawn Gaskin, owner of Swiss Technologies of New England and Stone Medical in Plainville, Massachusetts. Shawn started Swiss Technologies over 20 years ago, with one L20 Citizen making parts out of sterling silver for Tiffany and Company. Over the years, his company has grown into a diversified shop, doing a significant amount of medical work. If you want to learn about the medical Swiss components business I recommend you check out this interview. Scroll down to read more and listen to the podcast. Or listen on your phone with Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. Follow us on Social and never miss an update! Facebook: https://lnkd.in/dB_nzFzt Instagram: https://lnkd.in/dcxjzVyw Twitter: https://lnkd.in/dDyT-c9h Main Points After high school, Shawn worked for a friend of his dad’s who owned a jewelry factory. The company purchased a Citizen L20 Type V Swiss lathe to make parts out of sterling silver for Tiffany and Company, which went into items like key rings, pill boxes and whistles. Shawn characterizes machining sterling silver as across between machining aluminum and titanium. It produces chips like aluminum and the has the abrasiveness of titanium. The jewelry company rented space for the Citizen in a nearby machine shop, where Shawn was tasked with learning to run it. After several years, Shawn’s boss gave him the opportunity to find more work for the Citizen, giving him a 15% commission on what he brought in. Eventually, Shawn started his own company, borrowing $40,000 from his parents and $80,000 from his former boss, who he then supplied parts for. He built Swiss Technologies starting with the original 1997 Citizen he had learned on. Eventually, the jewelry job slowed down, so he was forced to find new work. He caught a huge break getting a job running parts that went into ATM machines. In a single purchase order, Swiss Technologies went from doing $450,000 in sales to $2.4 million. Unfortunately 60% of the company’s business came from one customer. In 2015, when the ATM machines got a new design, the work went to China, taking away 35% the company’s revenue. Shawn knew he needed to diversify, so he increased Swiss Technologies’ sales and marketing and obtained ISO 9001 certification, which increased the company’s customer opportunities. In 2018, the company obtained ISO 13485 certification for medical work. Shawn characterizes this big move into medical as an overhauling of the business. Medical Swiss Parts Business Swiss Technologies got its first medical job when a shop nearby had an overflow of work. Shawn says he realized medical work was a good place to be when he went from jobbing machines at $50-$60 per hour to $125-$150 per hour. Shawn says Medical work is generally categorized as external or internal. External medical work signifies making parts for medical devices such as IV pumps or syringes, while internal medical work refers to implantables, parts that are put into the body, such as bone screws. He says external medical work is lucrative, but internal medical work is generally more lucrative. Doing internal medical work requires significant investment, such as purchasing liability insurance. As a company doing $3.5 million in revenue with 17 employees, Shawn says he pays around $25,000 per year for insurance, and there are only four or five companies who offer the insurance. Often medical customers want suppliers to have all of their processes in-house, such as anodizing, passivating, deburring, and laser marking. Swiss Technologies and Shawn’s other company Stone Medical don’t offer all of those services, which adds to the challenge of competing in the medical parts arena. Advice for companies wanting to get into Swiss Machining Shawn says “bigger is not always better” for a Swiss machining company. He thinks a company can be successful with three or four employees and four to six machines. He encourages ambitious people to not be afraid to start with one machine making parts in the garage because there is a lot of work out there for companies who have low overhead. For companies trying to break into medical work, he recommends trying to get Tier 2 work to begin with. Shawn says if he could go back and time and do things differently at his business he would have trained his people better. When he was making high volume parts for ATM machines, the shop’s machines needed few change-overs, so his people didn’t develop their skills setting up new jobs. He says today he has the best crew the company has ever had. He makes a point of training his people to think independently by giving them time to struggle with problems in shop, even if it means machines are down sometimes. Shawn says he usually gets on the shop floor two and half to three hours a day. He says it’s good to show his employees he is with them in the trenches, to help them solve problems and for him to understand what is going on in the shop. But more than that, he is on the shop floor because of his passion for Swiss machining. He loves the equipment and the processes. He needs to get his hands covered in oil like he did when he started on his first L20, which is still in use today. Question: What are your favorite type of parts to make? | — | ||||||
| 1/15/26 | ![]() Attached to Multi-Spindles, with Elliott May—EP. 143 | Our guest on today’s podcast is 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 to keep old mechanical beasts relevant, getting young people into machining, and what it’s like to work closely everyday with your dad—who’s also the boss. Scroll down to read more and listen to the podcast. Or listen on your phone with Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. Find us on Social: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/swarfcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/swarfcast/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/todays-machining-world/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/tmwswarfblog Main Points Custom Attachments Elliott says that customers come to BME when they want to make a part on a cam screw machine but can’t figure out how to make it happen. The company offers an extensive line of proprietary attachments such air operated pickoff assemblies, rotary recess attachments, and synchronized slotting/milling attachments. Elliott’s father, Brett, started BME 15 years ago. Nine years ago, Elliott started working at the company at age 14. His first job was cutting steel bars with a bandsaw. Later he worked in shipping and receiving, and then graduated to assembling attachments for multi-spindles. After studying engineering for a few years he began working in tandem with his father engineering attachments. Generally they are tasked with tweaking attachments already in their product line to suit the jobs of specific customers. A few times a year, they are called upon to engineer more novel devices, when a customer’s job calls for something special that they haven’t invented yet. Elliott says his father, Brett, is the “idea guy.” Brett analyzes what he wants to accomplish, then Elliott puts the idea down on paper (often CAD). They both are constantly putting their heads together to solve problems. It’s not uncommon for the two to stand at several whiteboards for long periods of time, brainstorming various drawings, trying to work out a solution. Elliott says they have a good chemistry at work, and over the years his role has changed as his knowledge and skills have grown. He admits that when he was younger and less experienced he may have been too overconfident in his ideas and he had to be put in his place. But nowadays, it sounds like he is genuinely challenging his dad in the engineering room. Acme Rebuilding As a used machinery dealer myself, selling old cam multi-spindles, I grilled Elliott on a lot of the same questions we grapple with at Graff-Pinkert, our family business. I asked him if rebuilding old multi-spindles from the ground up, particularly Acmes, was a good business to be in. Graff-Pinkert still refurbishes some cam multi-spindles such as Wickmans and Davenports, but the work we do is much less comprehensive than that of BME. Also, we stay away from doing a lot of work on Acmes. The parts for Acmes can be very expensive, and the Acme rebuilding process is extremely labor intensive. For a rebuilt Acme, BME charges several hundred thousand dollars. The price depends a lot on what kind of turnkey the customer requires, if any. Elliott says the rebuilding and attachment businesses compliment each other. Often the rebuilt machines come equipped with BME’s proprietary attachments. He says he believes the cam multi-spindle business has a significant future because the machines are often still the best option for high volume jobs, assuming companies have the personnel to run them. Elliott May, Engineer at BME Young People in Machining I asked Elliott why it’s a struggle to get young people to go into manufacturing and an even greater struggle to get them to run old multi-spindles. He says manufacturing has to shake off its bad reputation from the past, as having a top-down style of management that doesn’t care about the needs of employees. He suggests that if manufacturing employees could count on a clean, pleasant work environment, and felt supported and heard by management, more people would want to go into the field. Working with His Dad I was very curious to get Elliott’s perspective about working closely with his father, as I also work with my father. I asked him if he felt like he was in a strange position as someone who is not the boss, but also not a normal employee either. It’s a position that I’ve often analyzed for over a decade. Despite being only 23, Elliott says he has the advantage of having the longest tenure at BME of all its employees. He also says because of his experience and confidence in his ability, he earns the respect of his coworkers. I remarked to him during the interview that he often referred to his dad in the third person as “Brett,” rather than “my dad.” He says it’s a useful way to draw less attention to himself as the boss’s son, even if everybody knows he is. I personally have seldom used this strategy because referring to my dad as “Lloyd” just feels strange. But I admit that I sometimes refer to him as “the boss,” or some other euphemism, when I’m talking about him at work. It was Brett’s idea for me to ask Elliott to be on the podcast. I could genuinely feel his enthusiasm about the idea when he suggested it to me over the phone. I joked to him that it seemed like he was really “kvelling” about his son excelling in the business. He easily inferred the meaning of my Yiddish. After interviewing both Brett and Elliott, it’s clear to me that both men share a passion for the nuts and bolts, and working together. Question: What’s something important you learned from your father? | — | ||||||
| 1/6/26 | ![]() Pivoting to Manufacture a Product, with Michael Gimbel – EP 224 | Most of us don’t have a knack for pivoting. We follow the standard curriculum, and we keep going forward when we get in a lane, whether we believe it’s the right direction or not. But for Michael Gimbel, my guest on today’s show, seeing setbacks as serendipity and then pivoting is a natural gift. Michael built a CNC router in his garage by age 12. He dropped out of an elite university after one year to start a company selling 3D printing technology that he invented. When the company failed, he picked up the pieces, shifting to contract manufacturing and engineering consulting. But that business didn’t excite him, so Michael pivoted again to manufacture a spindle gripper he developed for automating his own vertical CNC mills. Today his company, Gimbel Automation, is thriving and his spindle grippers are saving machining companies hundreds of thousands of dollars on automation. And he’s only 26! ************* Listen on your favorite podcast app using pod.link. View the podcast at the bottom of this post or on our YouTube Channel. Follow us on Social and never miss an update! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/swarfcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/swarfcast/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/todays-machining-world Twitter: https://twitter.com/tmwswarfblog ************* Link to Graff-Pinkert’s Acquisitions and Sales promotion! ************* Interview Highlights The Startup Noah: Tell me about your interesting career journey. Michael: I got to college and was totally miserable. I was doing things I’d already studied and aced because they wanted me to. It was such a downgrade from the equipment. The only thing I could fit in my dorm was a little 3D printer. I went from having a full shop to just a couple of crappy pieces of equipment, taking courses I’d already taken. I got burnt out and chose to drop out after a year. To be honest, I felt like I wanted to do my own thing. Hopkins is good for the right person, but it wasn’t me. You have to want to follow everything from A to B to C by the book, believing in the process. I’m the kind of person who wants to try everything, see what I can do, and see where I fail. It’s not a place that curates failure on your own, and that’s what I really needed. Noah: Interesting. So you decided to leave after freshman year? Michael: I completed freshman year, dropped out, and convinced six or seven professors to give me about $70 grand as startup seed money. Then I moved to Los Angeles and raised venture capital. I raised about 1.25 million dollars as a 19-year-old with just a dream, a plan, and a couple of experimental 3D printers. I had invented a new 3D printing process. From there, it was its own wild ride. Noah: Then what happened? Michael: What happened was exactly what you’d expect when you hand a million dollars to a 19-year-old. I tried to run the company, but I didn’t know what I was doing. We made cool tech developments, but I didn’t understand how to manage people or how to get things to the next level. Ultimately, that first company failed. Contract Manufacturing and Engineering Consulting Noah: What came next? Michael: There’s a long, convoluted path to my next stage. The company’s assets traded hands a couple of times. The original investors didn’t want anything to do with it because it was a money pit. Eventually, it came into my hands and I ended up paying off all the debts. I had the idea to run a job shop or contract manufacturer again, to have all these machines in this space for my next chapter. I’d looked for jobs but couldn’t get behind anything, thinking I’d fall into building someone else’s dream. I wanted to build my own thing, even if it was difficult. And it was definitely difficult. I started doing job shop work for startups. I learned quickly that startups are awful customers because most don’t exist in a year or two. We slowly moved into engineering consulting. The startup company was 3D printing, but to do our own R&D, we had machines – a water jet, a Haas CNC machine. I thought, we need to make money now, so we’ll do job shop work. That’s how we started and how I paid off the debts at first. We then moved into engineering consulting and production work, like specialty stuff and art. We were doing all the stuff other shops didn’t want to do because it wasn’t full production quantities and was complicated. We took on customers who didn’t have drawings but needed certain requirements. We grew rapidly, doubling in size every year. We quickly built up to four people. Everything was great. We were mostly in engineering consulting, not only making parts but designing components, putting assemblies together, and testing them. Then COVID hit, turning our whole business upside down. 90% of the revenue disappeared. I had to lay off two people and put one part-time. This was the only time I ever laid people off. We started making face shields for a while and found a way through. It took a year and a half, but the engineering consults came back. People had projects they wanted to accelerate. The year felt like a rocket ship. Right after COVID, we won a big engineering consulting job that added 35% to our revenue overnight. Then it happened again with another customer. We were growing really fast, but you also have the tension of having one huge customer and working around their demands. Before the breakthrough, there was another “Icarus flies too close to the sun” moment. I didn’t really love consulting. It never made me excited to wake up in the morning. We had a four-month R&D project where we lost about $350,000 developing a metal 3D printing system. I was convinced it would be great. We built it, it worked, the machinery was awesome, but when we tried to test it in the market, it failed. I was a bit bored and looking for shiny objects to work on, but the big thing in my head was needing stable, recurring revenue in addition to these big customers. I really wanted a product. I think a lot of job shops have felt that. I’d been working on projects when bored for years. I once built an all-metal operational clock with a swinging arm. We built a shrink fit machine with virtual holders. One of the things we’d built was a spindle gripper to run internal production on our own components. The Spindle Gripper Gimbel Automation CNC Robot Gripper Noah: Explain how the spindle gripper works. Michael: A spindle gripper goes into the automatic tool changer of your machine, loading into the spindle like a tool. This whole sub-assembly goes into your spindle, and when air is turned on, it closes. This allows it, like a robot gripper, to grab a component. Parts are loaded onto the table in a tray on a grid. The gripper comes down, clamps on a part in the grid, lifts up, and drops it off in an automated vise. It does this without an external robot. We invented a new method for machines without through spindle air coolant, which is a huge portion of the market. We soft launched it and sold quite a few. We started with a couple big customers who liked what we were doing. We’ve exponentially grown the automation business from there, adding air vises, a conveyor loading system, and modules. Lately, we’ve focused on delivering total automation solutions. Noah: You came up with this because you were short on people? Michael: When I invented it, there were four of us, but I was the only one who could run a CNC machine. For production orders, I had to either turn them away or do them myself. It was built out of necessity – I needed a way to run parts. We used it for years before turning it into a product, which is now our primary business. Noah: It’s a gripper that hooks onto the spindle. How is it automation? The part still has to get in the machine. Don’t you need a robot, person, or loading system? Michael: We put at least one piece of automated work holding, like an air vise, onto the table, and have a fully adjustable part tray grid. You need room for a vise and a tray, and one of these grippers goes in the spindle. You set the vise, and using our program generator or automated templates, you upload your program. It’s as easy to program a run of 20 as it is for your setup guy to run one part. When you hit go, the generated program moves the table so the tray of parts is perfectly under the gripper. The gripper comes down, clamps a part, lifts up, centers over the vise, deposits the part, and the machining cycle runs. For a simple one-operation pallet system, we put that part back and move to the next one. The machine keeps going until the tray is empty. We’ve taken it further with a system using a second vise for the second operation and an integrated flip station for a third operation in the same cycle. Questions: When did you pivot in your business or life? What would you like to pivot to? Transcript was generated with the assistance of claud.ai. | — | ||||||
| 12/16/25 | ![]() Is 2025 the End of Cam Screw Machines? EP 257 | Is an Acme-Gridley the mink coat of machine tools? A well made product that still does a great job, but nobody wants another one. In 2025? No. Not yet. On today’s podcast, Lloyd and I talk about our used machinery business over the last year. We saw one customer drop 20 million for five INDEXs to replace every cam screw machine in their shop. At the same time we sold machines to a multinational automotive supplier who is buying hundreds of Davenport screw machines—many older than me—I’m 45 by the way. ************* Listen on your favorite podcast app using pod.link. . View the podcast at the bottom of this post or on our YouTube Channel. Follow us on Social and never miss an update! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/swarfcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/swarfcast/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/todays-machining-world Twitter: https://twitter.com/tmwswarfblog ************* Link to Graff-Pinkert’s Acquisitions and Sales promotion! ************* Interview Highlights The Mink Coat Discovery This Thanksgiving, while going through my mother’s closet, my dad found her 40-year-old mink coat in perfect condition. Once worth $10,000, ChatGPT now values it at maybe $250 to a dealer. The discovery sparked an uncomfortable comparison to the cam screw machines in our stock. “Of course, mink means Acmes to me because Acmes helped pay for the mink,” Lloyd reflects. “These are very functional, valuable machines that were running good parts where we bought them and we feel they have value, however… we have to doubt ourselves.” He poses the question that haunts our business: “Let’s say it is 1-5/8” RB-8 Acme. How much money could somebody potentially make on that machine over the course of one year?” He figures $25,000 to $50,000, maybe more with the right job. “We would sell that machine in that price range. Yet we find no buyers. From an economic standpoint, to me that makes no sense.” A Brutal Year The machinery dealing business has been tough this year. While many of our customers’ businesses remained steady, indecision paralyzed buying decisions—particularly around tariffs. “One of the polls I did on LinkedIn asked if indecision because of tariffs caused them to not buy equipment this year.” Fifty percent said that was one reason why they had not bought equipment. And I will never forget this year’s deal from hell. ”We bought a machine in Germany, sold it to a company in the United States, and then BOOM—tariff. We went from an amazing deal to… I’m amazed we didn’t lose money.” I hate tariffs for a lot of reasons. This one was extra personal. The $20 Million Paradox The market presents striking contradictions. One of our customers recently got rid of 30 cam screw machines, selling them for “$2,000, $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 a piece,” then spent over $3 million each on INDEX CNC multi-spindles—$20 million total to replace their entire shop floor. “I was shocked,” Lloyd admits. “The question was, are they that much better than a 1” Acme?” I explain the economics: “They make an entirely different kind of part. They make a part that you could make a dollar from where you make 10 cents from an Acme part. Or they’re making $10 on that part, and on the Acme, they were making a quarter.” The new machines can handle medical parts, complex geometries—the kinds of high-margin work that justifies the investment. The Davenport Bet Meanwhile, another customer is betting the opposite way, buying hundreds of Davenports for facilities in Mexico and China. Today’s Davenports have a similar design to their original one from 115 years ago. The company is buying so many they’ve ordered Davenport’s entire production capacity for new machines while simultaneously buying used ones. Good ones, bad ones, anything they can find to rebuild. “There are many uses for small parts as bushings or as inserts or pins,” Lloyd explains. “And if you’re catering to a world market… they’re saying to themselves, we want to tremendously expand our capacity because we believe there is a market there and people have abandoned this market.” The China Question Lloyd sees a broader pattern: “The Chinese appear to be able to make good product, not maybe the quality of product being made in the United States or in Europe, but close to it at a fraction of the price.” He worries about Chinese companies producing chips “90 to 95% as good” as NVIDIA’s but selling for 30% less. “They’re able to make an electric car now in China and sell it in the Chinese market for under $10,000, and they’re selling them now in Germany for as low as $16,000.” “In my mind, we’re in a war with China—an economic war.” Gratitude We end where we began—with gratitude. “I get the privilege of working with you,” Lloyd tells me. And I tell him that I have a gratitude list every day in the morning, and he’s on it. Readers, listeners out there—In an industry facing profound disruption, all I can say is adapt, keep picking up the phone and stay grateful. Even if you’re selling machines that might be the mink coats of manufacturing. Question: What machines did you purchase or get rid of in 2025? | — | ||||||
| 12/9/25 | ![]() How to Make Your Employees Want to Stay, with Adam Wiltsie–EP 130 | Last week, I heard a story about an old customer of Graff-Pinkert who lost three key machinists because a shop down the street was paying more. It led me to make a post on Linkedin, asking if machinists and setup people were paid enough to attract young people to the machining field. On the whole, commenters vented that they were not compensated what they felt they deserved working in the machining industry. The post has 53 comments so far (I’m usually lucky to get one). The big question is, are manufacturing jobs in the United States, machining jobs in particular, attractive enough to fill the labor shortage that everyone continues to cry about? I thought back to one of my favorite podcast interviews, in which I spoke to Adam Wiltsie of Vanamatic, a 3-generation screw machine shop in Delphos, Ohio. In the interview, Adam told me that Vanamatic does not have a talent shortage and enjoys incredible employee retention, in part due to innovative recruitment strategies and flexible schedules. I don’t know what the company pays its employees, but Adam told me that when business came roaring back after the Covid-19 dive in 2020, Vanamatic raised wages $5 for all employees. I spoke with Adam yesterday and he said that employee retention is even better than it was two years ago. Even if you’ve memorized this story already, I recommend you check out the original blog and listen to the podcast. They’re good even a second time around! Listen with the player at the bottom of the page or at your favorite podcast app. View the podcast our YouTube Channel. Follow us on Social and never miss an update! Facebook: https://lnkd.in/dB_nzFzt Instagram: https://lnkd.in/dcxjzVyw Twitter: https://lnkd.in/dDyT-c9h Original Blog After Graff-Pinkert sold a second used Lico CNC lathe to Vanamatic, a 3-generation screw machine shop in Delphos, Ohio, I had a great conversation with Adam Wiltsie, the company’s Director of Operations. At that moment, I was quite envious of Adam—I was sitting at my desk in my office, while he was outside on a beautiful July Friday afternoon, waiting in line his local ice cream institution Dairy Hut. Adam gets out of the office on Friday afternoons. He gets to tailor his work schedule, and contrary to what one might assume, this is not just a perk for members of the company’s leadership team. Vanamatic allows a flexible work schedule for all its 103 employees. Adam says this is a key reason why the company has not been suffering from a shortage of skilled people, that so many other manufacturing companies often complain about. In fact, 103 employees is a record number for the company, which happens to be located in a town of 6,000 people. Vanamatic was founded in 1953 by Adam’s grandfather in Delphos, Ohio. Today, the company is run by a leadership team made up of Adam, his brothers Scott and Jared, Steve Schroeder and Dave Ricker. The company makes parts for a variety of sectors including automotive, aerospace, fluid power, agriculture, construction, fittings, and refrigeration. The majority of its machines are 8-Spindle VNA Conomatics— 1-5/8” and 2-5/8” capacity. For those unfamiliar with Conomatics, or “Cones” as they’re often called, think of an ACME-GRIDLEY but heavier and a larger tool zone. Adam says the company loves the machines because “they can push feed rates like no other.” Cones aren’t built anymore so Vanamatic has its own rebuilding program for the machines. The company also has CNC turning centers, a few other brands of multi-spindles, and 10 Lico CNC lathes—picture a sexy, beefed up 11-axis CNC Brown & Sharpe. Adam is 42 years old, with three kids. He says having kids influenced his management style because it made him realize that every person works differently. Vanamatic’s management philosophy takes into account that all of the company’s employees have different requirements to bring out their peak performance and make them happy. Treating every individual employee uniquely bucks the traditional collective style of management in manufacturing companies, which Vanamatic had employed for the majority of the company’s life. Adam Wiltsie, Director of Operations of Vanamatic A while back, Adam and his brother Scott, head of Human Resources, implemented a management strategy called Start, Stop, Improve. Every year, they sit with each individual employee and ask them what they would start, stop or improve on a company level, a department level and an individual level. In the process, they learned that many people at the company desired a better work-life balance. They realized that by implementing flexible hours they could improve the lives of employees who prefer to be with their families at different times of day. Flexible hours could also accommodate employees who have hobbies or outside projects they want to pursue. For most of Vanamatic’s existence, the company had a standard work week for every employee, of four 10-hour days and one 8-hour day. Fifteen years ago, the collective model was thrown out. Currently, all shop employees, aside from primary production operators, have the choice to work between 35 to 50 hours per week. Primary production operators can work 45 to 60 hours per week. Employees have the right to work within those ranges at their discretion without approval from supervisors. Every two weeks, the company takes a look at what work needs to be done and maps out a plan. Shop workers manage schedules amongst themselves to get the necessary work completed. In the past, some of Vanamatic’s customers came to the company and demanded it implement a policy making its people work a minimum of 56 to 60 hours per week, but it refused to change its policy. Adam says loyal, happy, skilled employees are the essential element to keep the company successful, so it can’t afford to alienate or lose them. They take precedence over an annoyed customer. Vanamatic’s management philosophy was a lifesaver in May of 2020, when its business fell 50%. The company gave its employees the choice to work 0 to 50 hours per week. It even laid off employees if they volunteered to be and then helped them sign up for unemployment benefits. When work came roaring back later in 2020, Vanamatic needed to get all of its people back fast. Instead of complaining about unfair competition against government assistance money, the company raised wages $5 above what workers were previously earning. Employees came back and felt valued. Now they are fueling Vanamatic to set a record pace for the company in 2021. Question: Are machining jobs in the United States attractive enough to fill the labor shortage that everyone continues to cry about? | — | ||||||
| 12/1/25 | ![]() The Turnaround Formula, with Neil Lansing-EP 256 | Today I’m talking to a guy who believes every company needs to be built to last—not just to flip. Neil Lansing is a turnaround specialist who left private equity to bet his own money on small, underperforming businesses. He’s taken companies from 18 employees to over 400. From $2 million to $40-50 million in revenue. And when everyone else was laying people off in 2008, he told his refrigeration company’s team: “We need more clients.” After transforming mom-and-pop service companies one after another, he found his final stop, Piedmont Machine & Manufacturing. At 67, he’s not looking for the next flip. He’s building something that will outlast him. ************* Listen on your favorite podcast app using pod.link. . View the podcast at the bottom of this post or on our YouTube Channel. Follow us on Social and never miss an update! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/swarfcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/swarfcast/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/todays-machining-world Twitter: https://twitter.com/tmwswarfblog ************* Link to Graff-Pinkert’s Acquisitions and Sales promotion! ************* Interview Highlights The Journey from Satellites to Shop Floors Neil started as a satellite engineer at Hughes Aircraft, became a CFO of a publicly traded pharmaceutical company, then worked in private equity doing turnarounds and startups. But eventually he walked away from working with other people’s money to bet his own cash on small businesses. It wasn’t an easy mental shift. As he told me: “I remember the first time I did something. I was sitting there and I remember, now I’m not in corporate America, I’m not in these nice New York digs… I’m in some place where it’s like, my God, what did I get myself into?” But then he told himself: “Quit crying, figure it out, make it work.” The Five-Person Rule One of Neil’s key insights is his management structure. Nobody has more than five direct reports. Not supervisors, not managers, not even Neil as owner. This tight span of control is how he grew his refrigeration company from 10-18 people to over 400 in six years while maintaining quality and accountability. “Everyone has to do what we’re supposed to do,” he explains. “If we all do what we’re supposed to do and take the accountability of what we’re supposed to do, then it can work.” Growing When Others Retreat The 2008 financial crisis tested every business owner, but Neil’s response was counterintuitive. While the country was laying off 700,000 people a month, he gathered his top 10 guys and said: “We’ve just got to get more clients.” By Christmas, they were bringing in all new work. Then their existing clients–Target, Publix, Costco – suddenly needed massive expansions. Neil went from laying off 40-50 people to desperately hiring them back plus another 40-50 more. Why Manufacturing, Why Now After several successful turnarounds, Neil decided manufacturing would be his next chapter. He bought Piedmont Machine in Concord, North Carolina, seeing opportunity where others saw decline. The company does Swiss machining for smaller diameter work and can handle parts up to 30 inches in diameter—from roller bearing components for landing gear to automated door systems. He envisions growing his company to 80-100 employees, consolidating into a new 60-75,000 square foot facility, and implementing comprehensive training programs. The Grinder’s Legacy Neil calls himself a “grinder” – someone focused on day-to-day execution rather than just deal-making. His philosophy centers on personal responsibility: “If I don’t do what I’m supposed to do, then I can’t pay these people. And if I can’t pay these people, that means that we did it wrong.” What drives someone to keep grinding at 67? Neil says it’s about legacy, not money. “Everything I’ve done, it still works. It still runs. If I do something and it goes under or it stops being in existence, then I feel like that’s not a good legacy. That means I didn’t do it right.” Neil doesn’t know how to run a machine and doesn’t want to. He knows how to run a business with clear strategy, deep understanding of people, and balls, and he’s still betting big because that’s what real builders do. | — | ||||||
| 11/25/25 | ![]() Running a “First Class” Cold Heading Company, with Joe Bennett-EP 135 | Our guest on today’s podcast is Joe Bennett, Vice President of Sales at Seaway Bolt and Specials, a privately held cold heading company in Columbia Station, Ohio, founded in 1957. In the cold heading process, coiled steel is cut into slugs, which are then hit multiple times, ultimately pounding them into a desired shape. The cold heading process is capable of producing several hundred pieces per minute. Some cold-headed products are net shaped blanks that are shipped to machining companies who then finish the parts. Scroll down to read more and listen to the podcast. Or listen on your phone with Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. Main Points Seaway has historically focused on cold heading one product family, taper threaded pipe plugs ranging from 1/16” to 2” diameter. The pipe plugs are used in a wide variety of industries such as automotive, oil and gas, and agriculture, going into products like transmissions, pumps, compressors, and engines. Joe describes a threaded pipe plug as an inside out nut. It looks like a nut, but its threads are on the outside. They are produced by cold heading a blank followed by thread rolling. Seaway produces 100 million pipe plugs a year, exporting 30% of its production. A few years ago, the company decided it needed to make a new part family if it wanted to keep growing. Its team decided the logical course would be to cold head female tubular fittings to match its male pipe plugs. To cold head its pipe plugs, Seaway uses machines called nut formers. To make the new tubular parts the company purchased three machines called parts formers, which have the capability to make more highly engineered parts than nut formers. Joe says the new machines stand two stories high, have the footprint of three conference rooms and weigh 400,000 pounds each. The used machines cost several million dollars to purchase and will take millions more to rebuild. Joe says National produced around 18 of the type of 1.5” cold heading machines Seaway purchased. GM was their original owner, buying them new in the 1970s. Prior to working at Seaway, Joe worked in sales for 10 years at a large cold headed parts distributor in the Columbus, Ohio, area. Six years ago, he took a job at Seaway because he preferred to work for a privately held, smaller company with around 70 employees, where he felt he could make a significant impact. Joe beams about Seaway’s philosophy of running the company with a “first class” management style. He and the company’s owner, Ray Gurnick, offered to cover a roundtrip plane fare for me to come to the company and interview them in person. I unfortunately had to take a raincheck. Seaway pays 100 percent of higher eduction costs for its employees. The company has three holiday parties a year and regularly brings in food trucks to celebrate company achievements. It offers profit-sharing and gives regular bonuses. Its shop bathroom has been redone in marble. Seaway uses open book management, showing its employees the company’s financials on a quarterly basis. The purpose of open book management is to keep employees invested in the company’s success and guide them how do their jobs in the best way to maximize productivity. Also, including employees in the management process makes them feel valued, which can boost performance and satisfaction. Every Friday, production at Seaway stops for the last half hour of the day so employees can clean the shop–cold heading shops happen to be notoriously filthy. Afterward, the quality department takes photos around the shop and reports to the various departments how well they cleaned up. Joe says that when visitors come to Seaway they are wowed by the shop’s cleanliness, but more importantly, the cleanliness creates a pleasant working environment for Seaway’s people. Though Seaway is ambitiously expanding its product lines, the company does not aspire to be like its larger competitors. Joe says the company’s strategy is to do all the little things better than its competition. This will attract the best talent to work there, which in the end will lead to success. Question: If you could buy any new equipment for your shop, what would you buy? | — | ||||||
| 11/18/25 | ![]() Another AI Episode (But This One’s Actually Useful)-EP 255 | The last six months I’ve been using AI to help me with everything from business negotiations to dealing with my kid’s pneumonia. It’s become a daily part of how I operate—at work and at home. The big difference between it and just googling is that you have a conversation with it. Check out the video I made for my YouTube Channel, I Learned It on a Podcast! What the Heck is AI Anyway? If you’ve used ChatGPT or heard about it, you might still be wondering what it actually does. Wharton professor Ethan Mollick calls it “the world’s fanciest autocomplete.” Instead of just finishing one sentence, it can write full emails, answer complicated questions, or help you think through equipment problems. Here’s the key difference: when you ask Google a question, you get a list of links. When you ask AI a question, you get a response—and then you can respond back. You’re having a conversation. But you have to watch out—it can be completely wrong while sounding confident. I asked about health effects of eating eggs daily and got different answers depending on how I phrased it. It even sited a made up source! You have to stay sharp. It Figures Stuff Out The biggest shift is I’ve stopped Googling much. Instead of sorting through search results, I just ask AI and we work through problems together. I’ve used it for oil stains on my pants—describing exactly how it happened, what cleaning supplies I have, when I can get to a washing machine. For business negotiations—discussing customer situations, to figuring out what to make for dinner, we discuss a game plan together. When I was lost at Frankfurt airport, I snapped a photo of German signs and uploaded it. ChatGPT told me exactly where to go like having a local guide. The power isn’t in the first answer. It’s in the back-and-forth. AI asks follow-up questions I hadn’t thought of, suggests approaches I wouldn’t have considered. We figure things out together. How You Get Good at Using AI Don’t ask for one idea—ask for 200. Don’t ask for one way to write an email—ask for 30 variations and pick the best one. This creates serendipity—lucky breaks that take projects in directions you didn’t expect. Recently, working with Claude on a video script, we went back and forth on different ways to explain AI’s value. Through that conversation, we landed on the perfect line: “It helps you figure shit out.” I might have gotten there alone, but it would have taken a while. Together pretty quickly we found something that captured exactly what AI does in daily life. My Creative Conflict I’ll be honest. I sometimes feel conflicted using AI when I write. Sometimes it feels like having having a parent helping me with my homework who does too much. When Claude helps me write something polished that sounds like me, part of me thinks: “Did I actually write this?” But here’s what I’ve realized: AI doesn’t replace the hard thinking. It removes friction. The ideas and judgment are still mine. It’s just easier now to get more ideas into the world. I think of it like jazz—sometimes it’s a trio with me, Claude, and ChatGPT all riffing together. My Challenge to You Spend 10 hours using AI for everything you ethically can in your business. Ask about pricing strategies, equipment decisions, customer communication challenges. But remember. It’s predicting patterns, not searching databases. When something doesn’t seem right, trust your instincts and double check. Most importantly, don’t just ask one question and move on. Have the conversation. Ask for 50 ideas instead of 5. Push back when you disagree. You’ll quickly discover what AI is surprisingly good at, and what it’s not ready for. More importantly, you’ll see how it changes the way you figure things out when you’re stuck. Question: What’s your experience been with AI tools? Let me know in the comments. For the original podcast that inspired my blog and video go to this link: Using AI to Think Better, Create More, and Live Smarter | — | ||||||
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