Custom Carbon & Graphite Machining

02 May

Oxygen and Synthetic Graphite: A Corrosive Relationship

Synthetic graphite has been a boon for industry and is the preferred material for a majority of graphite components. It can be produced with many specifications in mind and is thus customizable for use in very extreme conditions. While heat and pressure are often no match for this wonder material, synthetic graphite does have a kryptonite or sorts: oxygen. To be fair, lots of materials don’t particularly like too much oxygen, and synthetic graphite and oxygen don’t always dislike each other. But as we shall see, when things heat up, oxygen can wreak havoc upon synthetic graphite components. Synthetic graphite...

25 Apr

Inflation, Rising Gas Prices, and Graphite Fabrication

2021 was not a great year to move graphite blocks (or any commodity, truth be told) around the globe. Supplier bottleneck issues, freight costs going up 4, 5 and even up to 10-fold, containers of graphite blocks coming from China costing up to $18000 to ship (that’s up from $2000 a year earlier): the news was bad across the board for graphite fabrication businesses when it came to shipping. Businesses that did not think strategically in 2021 face another very tough year as graphite blocks aren’t getting any cheaper to move around the globe, nor is it getting any cheaper...

12 Apr

Graphite Components in Weapons

On February 24 of this year, the Russian military began its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Suddenly, war was in the news every day here and around the world. As the Ukrainian people continue to stun the world with their armed and brave resistance to the invasion, we thought this would be an interesting time to explore synthetic graphite’s use in military equipment and weapons. There are, of course, numerous examples where synthetic graphite is used in all the downstream industries that produce components for military equipment, such as in foundries (graphite electrodes) that produce the necessary steel, or in facilities...

01 Apr

Lorain, Ohio: Graphite and Much More

Imagine you’re driving down the coast of Lake Erie and you see a giant sign: “Welcome to Lorain, Ohio. Home of the Graphite Company Semco!” Ok, so there’s no sign like that. While we at Semco like to think of ourselves as integral to the town, there’s a lot more to Lorain, Ohio than machining graphite applications. We invite you to read ahead and learn about this small gem of a city on the Great Lakes. Lorain is located in northeastern Ohio on Lake Erie, at the mouth of the Black River, about 30 miles west of Cleveland. Like a...

29 Mar

Turning Blocks of Graphite into Art

On rare but very fun occasions at Semco, we give our machinists (and our machines) a break from manufacturing graphite parts for industry and task them with turning blocks of graphite into art. The job of conceptualizing the pieces, of course, falls to artists -- our shop floor employees take these plans and machine graphite parts for these independent artists. On these occasions, artists provide us with shapes, profiles, and even solid models of their art work. Graphite is specified by these artists as the actual material for the finished artwork. While Semco prides itself on machining graphite parts used...