Custom Carbon & Graphite Machining

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...

05 Nov

Recycle to Recycle: Electrolysis Rust Removal with Semco Carbon

At Semco, we love carbon products, and we’re distressed to think that many end up being unnecessarily thrown away and eventually end up in a landfill. To prevent the waste of our beloved carbon graphite, we have posted about ways to recycle it, and now it's time to remove rust. Brush PlatingLast month we posted a blog titled “Recycle to Recycle: Brush Plating” in which we detailed how recycled graphite can be used in the brush plating process, which is a method of plating that uses an applicator hooked up to an electrical current to brush on the plating metal. Brush...

14 Oct

Graphite Price and Shortage Update

Over the last couple of years, reliably priced graphite materials have been harder to come by on the world market. As we detailed in an article about the US-China trade war last year, synthetic graphite manufacturing largely depends on coke and pitch produced in China. The ongoing trade war has further troubled the market that was already experiencing stressors from idle production facilities and green initiatives by the Chinese government that slowed the production of coke and pitch. Although we are now seeing some pricing and availability relief on the raw material front, the market for graphite material is still...

01 Oct

Company History

For just over 50 years now, Semco Carbon has provided customers with graphite material in both raw and machined forms. With this milestone achieved a couple of years ago (Semco was founded in 1971), we thought it would be a good time to look back on Semco’s history and trace the company’s arc from provider of raw carbon materials and simple graphite components to one of the most respected names in the graphite machining field.Vince Thompson Jr. And The Founding of SemcoThe story of Semco begins with our founder Vince Thompson Jr. When Vince founded Semco is 1971, many of the...

25 Sep

Recycle to Recycle: Brush Plating

Recycling is important at Semco. Rather than dispose of old graphite material, we seek it out. Companies send their spent graphite components to us rather than to a landfill. A farmer in Iowa even called us up, asking us to retrieve large pieces of graphite from his cornfield. And it isn’t just other people’s graphite that we recycle. We also recycle over 1 million lbs. of graphite dusk and chunks from our own production facility every year. In today’s graphite market, which has been thrown into mayhem with the current trade war with China and the resulting regulations on production,...