Custom Carbon & Graphite Machining

24 Jun

The Installation of Our New 2000 lb Gorbel Overhead Crane

Semco is excited to share another significant update from our graphite machining facility in Lorain, OH: we recently installed a new 2000 lb Gorbel Overhead Crane. This state-of-the-art crane is a game changer for our operations, particularly in our lathe department. Our Haas lathes are state-of-the-art, but the ways we were moving graphite blocks and tools around the department was not. That changed with the installation of the Gorbel Overhead Crane, which spans across the shop floor, creating a safer work environment for our team and enhancing efficiency in loading and unloading parts and tools. The Overhead Crane’s Safety Impact...

07 Mar

Introducing Our New Haas VF-9: Revolutionizing Graphite Part Milling

Semco Carbon is thrilled to announce the arrival of the latest addition to our graphite machining arsenal: the Haas VF-9 vertical machining center. This cutting-edge machining center, built and assembled in the USA, is set to transform our graphite machining capabilities and enhance efficiency in milling graphite parts for our valued customers. If you require a precision-machined graphite component for your business, and you need it quickly, our acquisition of this new 3-axis vertical machining center puts almost any complex graphite component within our machining capabilities. The VF-9 Vertical Machining Center’s Capabilities Graphite machining demands precision, speed, and reliability, and...

01 Feb

Molded Graphite Rods

Graphite is well known for its corrosion resistance and good thermal conductivity. At Semco, we have noted an uptick in a particular mechanical application of synthetic, high density graphite: molded graphite rods. With this large increase in requests for molded graphite rods in various diameters, we have decided to add a new piece of equipment that would allow us to substantially increase the volume of rods produced. This dowel rod machine takes high density graphite blocks, which can be machined with more precision than with less dense material, and shapes them into rods that are useful across industries, in a...

24 Feb

Graphite Availability and Production in 2021

With 2019 and a particularly challenging 2020 in the rearview mirror, Semco Carbon is hoping for good things in 2021. The last couple years have presented multiple challenges regarding graphite, from material acquisition to production. Raw materials have been a particular challenge. Given the 2018 closure of multiple Chinese manufacturers per new green initiatives, many major graphite manufacturers found themselves without enough stock. Then, in 2019, everyone jumped into production and it became a year of oversupply. 2020 was a completely different story. Given the economic slowdown caused by the pandemic, lots of graphite manufacturers decided to shut down production...

24 Nov

Update on The Romer Arm: It's Here

A few months ago in this blog, we detailed an Ohio safety grant that Semco applied for. The grant, supporting businesses’ endeavors to improve workplace safety, would help Semco purchase a portable measuring arm. This state-of-the-art device would be used to perform difficult measurements of graphite components inside of large machines we use at Semco for graphite fabrication. Often, the component being manufactured must be measured while within the machine. In these cases, a quality inspector would have to go into the machine, compromising the quality of measurements (the machines are tight spaces for the inspectors and thus impeded accurate...