Swarfcast

Today's Machining World
  • 4.8 (37)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Updated Biweekly

Noah Graff, used machine tool dealer and editor of Today’s Machining World, interviews machining company owners, equipment gurus, and experts with insight to help and entertain people working in the machining field. We discuss topics such as how to find quality employees, customer acquisition, negotiation, and the best CNC equipment options for specific jobs.

  1. Aug 11

    Why Onshoring Is Really Happening, with Lloyd and Noah Graff-EP 271

    The first quarter of 2026 stunk for Graff-Pinkert’s used machinery business. But fortunately, in the last few months, we’ve made some really good deals, selling old Davenport and Acme screw machines, as well as some expensive late model CNC multi-spindles. Today, Lloyd Graff and I give our take on why the year unfolded this way and what we predict the machining industry will look like for the rest of the year. We’re optimistic because it seems like onshoring is real and tariff surprises are no longer a surprise. 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! It’s Hard to Sell Expensive Machines Noah: We purchased an INDEX MS22-8 CNC Multi-Spindle, manufactured 2019, with a partner at an auction. Brand new, that machine goes for over three million. We were asking less than half of new. And the thing is, even though something is worth that, it’s hard to find someone to actually buy it. Lloyd: Who’s to say it’s worth that? It’s worth it if somebody pays it. Noah: We came very close with one company. We were on the one yard line, a very big corporation, but then it went up the rung, at the very end they said, “Well, the machine we already have has four Y-axis, and this only has two Y-axis.” I think it was an excuse to shoot it down. Lloyd: It may very well have been a political battle within the big company. That’s why it’s difficult to sell expensive machines to big companies. It’s also hard to sell to small companies, because small companies don’t have access to that kind of money. Noah: If you’re going to buy a machine that costs over a million dollars, you have to have a job for it. It’s not something you spec on. People might think, all right, maybe I can pay three hundred grand for a used machine. But to pay a million dollars for a used machine, it just doesn’t compute. Even if it’s half price. Even if it’s a third of the price. Noah: So we got creative, and a little serendipity showed up. I was texting with an old customer to offer a different Index we have for sale. Then he says to me, “Hey, I have an idea for a trade for your 2019 machine.” We ended up trading our INDEX for his Tornos MultiSwiss 8×26, a 2017 with 8,500 cutting hours, plus cash. He really wanted an Index. His MultiSwiss operator is retiring, and his people wanted another Index. Lloyd: And for all we know, we might end up with a trade on that too. Onshoring Is Real Noah: Like them or don’t like them, tariffs are very influential and they’re happening. Is on-shoring finally real? Lloyd: That’s what we’ve been told by our clients. Onshoring is real, because it’s not so much about price. It’s about fear of what prices might be, and it’s about fear of what the Chinese might do, let’s say, if there was an invasion of Taiwan. Noah: We like to use fear of tariffs as an excuse for why people didn’t buy a lot of equipment from us at the beginning of the year. But it seems like now we’ve broken through to some extent. Lloyd: I think so. To some degree, people are being forced to buy, because they have an avalanche of orders. But I also think there’s a genuine fear by big companies that they cannot have crucial production in China. What I’m hearing from clients is their customers are saying, “We’re not worried about price. We’ll accept price raises. What we want is quality, and we want certainty of delivery.” With China, they may be able to get price, but they cannot get certainty of delivery. And, they cannot get certainty of quality. So while China can still undercut United States manufacturers on price, price is not the only thing that dictates decisions. 50 Bucks an Hour and Gila Monster Saliva Noah: What’s a contrarian prediction you have? Lloyd: Fewer and fewer men are deciding to go to college, because they don’t want to accumulate the debt, and they don’t see the opportunities in the jobs they used to get. (It used to be) “I want to be a programmer, I want to be an accountant, I want to be a lawyer.” Those aren’t necessarily great jobs to go into today, particularly if AI is going to take over so much of the white collar world. But what you do have a need for is people who can run factories and people who can work in factories. So my contrarian view is that more and more people are going to go to vocational school and technical school, and you will see a turnaround in the amount of people available for machining. But you will also see the pay for machining work go up dramatically. You’re going to see people routinely making fifty dollars an hour for machining jobs. Noah: If there’s a bigger supply of people who want to do it, wouldn’t that make wages go down? Lloyd: The demand for quality people will continue to be high, and contract manufacturing people will wake up and decide, if I want to hire somebody, I’m going to have to pay them. Lloyd: What do you think is a surprise that’s coming? Noah: I’m not that original with this one. Stephanie and I have made an investment, and we’re going to invest a little bit more, in GLP-1 stocks. Scott Galloway says that in the next ten years GLP-1 technology is going to be a bigger development in the world than AI. Is that true? I don’t know. But every day these GLP-1s seem to do something new that we didn’t think they could do. Lloyd: Do you know how they developed the first GLP-1 drug? Noah: I do not. Lloyd: It came from testing the venom of a Gila monster. It was originally developed for diabetes. Noah: Serendipity. What We’re Using AI For Lloyd: What did you use AI for today? Noah: I took a database of machines and had Claude build a call list for us. We’re purchasing a Star SR32, so now I have a list of customers all organized and ready to work. What deep dark secrets did you use it for? Lloyd: I used it this morning to check how long a CT scan would take, because my wife was going to have a CT scan ahead of hip replacement surgery. Noah: And what did it say? Lloyd: Five to ten minutes. Noah: And how long did it take? Lloyd: Five to ten minutes. She was greatly relieved before she went, knowing that was likely all it would take. Noah: Anything else you’d like to say to the people of the world? I think I’m ready to drop the mic. Lloyd: Live each day. Savor every moment. Noah: Thank you. Let’s do this again soon. The post Why Onshoring Is Really Happening, with Lloyd and Noah Graff-EP 271 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.

  2. Jul 21

    Can Work Make You Happy? Ask the Russian in Brazil, with Tatiana Koval-EP 270

    My guest today teaches happiness for a living. Which is ironic, because she grew up in a country where smiling at a stranger means something is wrong with you. Tatiana Koval spent 15 years as an HR consultant in Russia. When the war in Ukraine started, saying you were against it could put you in jail. Within days, she left the country with her husband and two sons to emigrate to Brazil. This is a conversation about happiness at work, life in Russia, and moving to Brazil, a place where strangers smile, hug, and say good morning in the elevator. ******** 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 Losing Everything to Stay Human Russia’s war with Ukraine started February 24, 2022. On March 1, Tatiana and her family were gone. A new law had made it a crime to speak against the war. Most of her clients had government connections, so she lost them. Colleagues cut ties because being associated with her had become dangerous for their businesses. They chose Brazil because of a Facebook post saying Russians could move there and get citizenship. Money matters, she says, “but to stay human for me was much more important.” The Slavic Face In Russia it’s not the norm to smile. If you want respect, you wear a serious face. Tatiana calls it the “Slavic face.” Russians grow up expecting crisis, always ready for something bad to happen. She calls that mindset the opposite of happiness. Looking back at her school and university years, she realizes she fought depression, but she never saw a psychologist. The stigma was too strong. Tatiana holds three university diplomas: mathematics, economics, and communication. None in psychology. Then about 15 years ago she joined a US-based online conference where people were talking about happiness at work. Nobody had ever told her that work could be a path to happiness. She calls it her “wow moment.” She dove into positive psychology, taking courses on Coursera and reading Martin Seligman and Tal Ben-Shahar. What hooked her was Seligman’s famous question: if everything is okay with our lives, could we make them better? Bom Dia in the Elevator In her building in Brazil, neighbors say bom dia in the elevator every day. People smile, hug, and complain plenty too. Community runs deep, in church, in family, at work. In Moscow she lived in the same building for over 15 years and knew two or three of her neighbors. But she pushes back on the idea that everything in Brazil is better. Social trust, she says, is about the same as Russia. She couldn’t go out after dark in her old Russian neighborhood, and she wouldn’t recommend it in most Brazilian cities either. How She Learned to Love Cleaning the House Tatiana uses a method from positive psychology called job crafting: redefining how you see a task. She hated cleaning her house. So she turned it into her hour for podcasts, dancing, and exercise. Now she refuses to let anyone else do it. Understanding Your Why Work becomes a path to happiness when you find the meaning in it. In Tatiana’s projects, one of the most common results is that people finally understand what the company is doing, why, and for whom. In her own business, the goal is not just to make money but to understand what the other person needs and find the true solution. If a solution isn’t right for a client, she says no and points them to someone else. Happiness Is a Skill Tatiana says the tools of positive psychology helped her recover from emigration faster. She had stress, losses, and plenty of negative emotions. But her recovery came much quicker than it would have without the science of happiness. During that period she asked herself every day if she was happy. The answer was yes, because the decision to leave was built on her values. Listen to Tatiana’s podcast, Happy at Work — Coding Happiness into the AI Workplace The post Can Work Make You Happy? Ask the Russian in Brazil, with Tatiana Koval-EP 270 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.

  3. Jul 7

    Army, Amazon, Aerospace, with Nir Levy — EP 269

    Nir Levy was nineteen years old when he was already commanding a unit in the Israeli army. He managed hundreds of people and logistics with life or death stakes, at an age when most of us were figuring out laundry. After the Israeli army came Amazon, where Nir eventually ran a full manufacturing facility. There, he learned to live by the company’s obsession with getting it right, every package, every time. Now he’s Vice President of Operations at Final Frontier Manufacturing, a high precision aerospace shop in Colorado. A company that pulled him out of Chicago because they wanted someone who could build a world-class operation from the ground up. ******** 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 Israeli Army Was His First School of Management In Israel, mandatory military service begins at eighteen, with assignments based on testing and advancement based on merit. Within a year and a half, Nir was a commanding officer, first as a frontline mechanic for a Navy SEALs unit, then staffing a maritime border patrol unit on the Gaza coast, then running HR and logistics for a unit of about 500 people in the Red Sea. “At a very impressionable age, you see what a world class operation looks like,” he said. The Amazon Standard: 99.65 Percent On Time After the army, Nir did his undergrad, worked in management consulting, and got an MBA from the University of Chicago. Amazon recruited him during his MBA through their Pathways program, which started him as a manager in a warehousing and fulfillment facility. After a few roles and promotions, he ended up running the manufacturing side, printing and binding books on demand with zero inventory sitting around. “Books are somewhat simple,” he told me, “but they can vary by any means.” Different paper, laminate, covers, cuts. Ninety five percent of orders shipped within four hours of the click. “That’s a world class operation right there,” he said. Across everything Amazon shipped, the standard was 99.65 percent on time or better. He says the principle behind it is customer obsession, treating every package like it has to arrive in time for Christmas, and building every process backward from the moment the customer needs it. The Amazon Playbook Meets Aerospace Final Frontier makes CNC parts for aerospace and defense, including a gear housing that sits on top of a rocket engine (pictured above). Cost runs anywhere from double digits to five figures depending on the part. Manufacturing at Final Frontier isn’t linear the way book printing was. Scheduling has to account for outside processing and raw material lead times on top of the work itself. Nir is applying what Amazon taught him about backlog management, planning weeks out instead of days, to a business with more variables. Near the end of the interview, I asked Nir what he enjoys outside of work. “I like organizing my pantry,” he said. “My pantry is very organized.” Somehow, knowing that, all of it made a little more sense. The post Army, Amazon, Aerospace, with Nir Levy — EP 269 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.

  4. Jun 23

    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? The post Your Scrap Tungsten Carbide Is a National Security Question, Nick Stevens and Joey Marks–EP 268 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.

  5. Jun 9

    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. The post The Only Classic Car Wiper Business in the World, with Pat Parnell-EP 267 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.

  6. May 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? The post The Man Who Never Stops Teaching, with Logan McGhan-EP 266 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.

  7. May 12

    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 [...] The post Rifles, Racing, and Rhinos, with Tim Betts–EP 265 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.

  8. Apr 28

    Be THE Leader, with Ryan Avery–EP 264

    Sometimes I feel like I’m a good leader. I think I’ve always believed at least that I could be. The insecure statement comes from my conventional view of leading–taking charge to mobilize other people in our businesses, or as a dad or as a thought leader. But my podcast guest Ryan Avery, gave me a [...] The post Be THE Leader, with Ryan Avery–EP 264 appeared first on Today’s Machining World.

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4.8
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About

Noah Graff, used machine tool dealer and editor of Today’s Machining World, interviews machining company owners, equipment gurus, and experts with insight to help and entertain people working in the machining field. We discuss topics such as how to find quality employees, customer acquisition, negotiation, and the best CNC equipment options for specific jobs.

Information

  • Creator
    Today's Machining World
  • Years Active
    2018 - 2026
  • Episodes
    262
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Show Website
    Swarfcast

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