Custom Carbon and Graphite Machining Blog

12 Nov

Semco Attend the 2019 Brake Colloquium

As leaders in graphite applications and carbon composite design and machining, Semco does a significant percentage of our business in the Brake & Friction industry. Heat treat furnaces used on a large scale in this industry rely on graphite components that we tool. These components include graphite/carbon composite trays, discs and fixtures such as heating elements, rails, post, all the way down to bolts and nuts. We produce these components on a regular basis, and as designs evolve, Semco is at the forefront of that evolution. To remain on the cusp on innovation in this particular graphite application industry, two...

16 Jul

Graphite Material Quality #3 Graphite Defects

Series Introduction:Semco has made its name in graphite manufacturing, an industry that requires great investment in tools, technology, and training. Our machining capabilities and ability to customize graphite elements for clients’ manufacturing systems make us a go-to for companies that require industrial components made of carbon. This series of blogs will focus on a more behind-the-scenes, but no less important, aspect of our business: the selection and utilization of high-quality graphite material. At Semco, we take choosing the right graphite grade for each project very seriously because we know that the finished component, no matter how skillfully tooled, will only...

09 Jul

Vacuum Furnace -- Really?

According to Aristotle, nature abhors a vacuum, but we at Semco, and the graphite components we manufacture, especially the ones used in furnaces, love vacuums. What graphite abhors is oxidation, something that occurs in vacuum furnaces when the vacuum is not maintained and oxygen-rich air rushes in. And while flawed material resulting from problems during graphite production may be the first explanation when someone notices deteriorating graphite materials in their vacuum furnaces, what we have learned through investigation is that simple fixes to the vacuum seal of a furnace can save the graphite, and the furnace’s owner, much grief. Let...

02 Jul

Tolerance Stackup

As our readers can see from this blog, we love to talk about what we do at Semco, which means a lot about graphite manufacturing. We enjoy sharing with our clients and others in the industry how we run our graphite machining operation on our shop floor, what our employees thrive at outside of work, where we source our graphite material from, and how we perfect the graphite products we machine for our clients. We have shared our opinion on tariffs and examined reasons why we prefer to provide our clients with the raw material for manufacturing. As engineers, what...

12 Apr

Dispatch Lists and Work Flow

Every manufacturing facility, like our graphite production facility in Lorain, Ohio, must prioritize tasks so that both human and machine resources are employed to maximize production. At any one time, Semco has many open orders, and they cannot all be completed at once. Running a shop where graphite fabrication for multiple clients is going on at the same time requires a system of information flow. Semco has hit on such a system to manage the flow of information in our workplace. It’s called a dispatch list. We didn’t invent the dispatch list, but we tailored it to our business, and...