Custom Carbon & Graphite Machining

06 Jul

So What is Graphite Used For, Anyway?

Working at Semco most days means we are rarely around people who ask “what is graphite used for?” But during the summer holidays, our employees do get asked this question. It gets posed during a polite exchange at a fireworks show or at a campsite, when the talk among the recently acquainted adults turns to “so, where do you work?” When we tell folks at a neighborhood barbeque or at a public lake shore that we work at a graphite machining shop, the question “what is graphite used for?” is likely to be raised. We often wonder if people who...

27 Jun

Metal Casting Molds at Semco Carbon

What are Metal Casting Molds?Metal casting is a 7,000-year-old process used in both manufacturing and fine art. Graphite production is now a key part of this very old process. While casting metals, molten metal is transferred from crucibles into metal molds to create positive metal cast objects. After a metal is poured into a mold, both are then cooled and the metal object is removed and finished.Move forward a few thousand years and the place of graphite production in metal casting molds becomes more apparent, especially in the process called continuous casting. Continuous casting is a casting method used in...

17 Jun

Safety Around Graphite Blocks

At Semco, most if not all processes start with graphite blocks: (sometimes) large sections of (usually) synthetic graphite of various grades. To cut, grind, and shave this material into the components that our customers depend on, our shop floor employees have to pass the material through precise machining processes that bring to bear much friction, pressure, and speed on the material. With all this power and force necessary for machining graphite blocks, Semco has to think carefully about the safety of its shop floor employees. We have a great safety track record at Semco, and in this blog we will...

06 Jun

How to Green a Graphite Company

Semco puts a lot of energy into, well, using less energy. We want to demonstrate what it means to green a graphite company. We’ve written a lot about our efforts to do just that in this blog, and we’re happy to detail another initiative here: switching over our lighting system to new LED lights. If the lighting in our graphite manufacturing center sounds like a small thing, that’s probably because we all take lights for granted. They’re always there -- all you have to do is flip a switch. It’s that very ease of use and ubiquity that makes lighting...

27 May

Networking and Graphite Production

Networking has always been an integral and important tool for Semco, as for any graphite company. Our network doesn’t just facilitate people-to-people communication, but also people-to-machine. As CNC machining has taken on a bigger role in graphite production at Semco, so has our network, which allows our machinists and engineers to program runs and complex jobs. In early 2020, we thought Semco was a highly networked workplace. Then came March 2020. With COVID restrictions, networking has taken on an even bigger role in our graphite company. Departments that understood in-person work as the bread and butter of what they do...