You may have noticed that I often talk about friction on this podcast.
That’s because everyone has to fight friction in business—and there is A LOT of friction in the manufacturing business.
Friction from time consuming stuff. Friction from stuff being too hard to figure out. Friction from stuff we’re not qualified to do or just don’t want to do.
Why would anybody buy a CNC multi-spindle for $2 million? Or $3 million for that matter?
My guest on today’s podcast, Richard Kingsbury, has the answer. Richard is Managing Director of the Kingsbury Engineering Division, England’s INDEX distributor.
I’ve interviewed a lot of interesting business coaches for this podcast, and all the coaches had one thing in common. They focused on coaching a company’s owner or management, rather than working with everyone at the company.
Who would have thunk it a few years ago?
The robot boom that many people thought would grow and grow and displace millions of workers has ebbed.
Certainly robots have proved their worth with some jobs in manufacturing. The dull task of loading and unloading parts is perfect for robots, but now many of those jobs have already been replaced. Industrial jobs as a whole are down now with new machines having peaked in the period after the Covid pandemic.
This week on Swarfcast, we’ve been thinking a lot about some of the exciting tech that we saw last month at IMTS. One thing that always stands out to us are the robots. As our recent podcasts have touched on the topic of AI, we thought it would be fitting to reshare an interview we did with George Konidaris, co-founder of Realtime Robotics. A new podcast is on its way soon, but in the meantime we hope you enjoy this one again.
Seems like right now every podcast is doing an interview centered around artificial intelligence.
I encounter a lot of friction in my work. Too many obstacles get in the way of me doing the things I need to do and the things I like to do.
I know all of you out there have friction in your work too, and if you’re in the manufacturing business you likely encounter friction when you have to achieve the necessary quality to be ISO certified.
Today’s guest on the show, Adam Marsh, has a company called Ledge Inc. that guides manufacturers through the ISO certification process.
At IMTS 2024, I learned about the latest technology for CNC lathes, robots, and most notably 3D printing.
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.
Often the best deals and business decisions happen when you’re doing something that seems crazy to other people and even a little bit crazy to yourself. As used machinery dealers, putting our money down to stock old, dirty machines that we’re only interested in for resale, we have to have chutzpa. To some people, the business model seems a bit ridiculous, but it’s how we eat.
These days I often question if it even makes sense stocking machines. Often we make a good profit brokering machines we’ve spent no money on, selling them right off the owner’s floor.
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Today’s show is the second episode in our season about Swiss machining.
I interviewed Chris Armstrong last week while he was parked at a rest stop somewhere in Texas. He was en route on an all day trip to service a customer’s Citizens. I met Chris and his partner, Ryan Madsen, owners of Texas Swiss, a few years ago, trying to sell them some Citizen L20s from Asia.