Custom Carbon and Graphite Machining Blog

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...

11 Sep

Graphite Recycling

Semco is a leading graphite company because we know our material as well as anyone out there. We value graphite and believe that it doesn’t belong in a landfill, ever. Not all materials are as readily recyclable as graphite. If you’ve ever considered putting a plastic bag in a recycling bin only to be reminded by a sign on the bin that plastic bags are prohibited, you know that many plastic items simply end up in landfills, or worse, in the ocean. Graphite is different. It’s a hardy and versatile material, and nearly any graphite element past its prime can...

26 Aug

Semco Carbon Appears in Thermal Processing Magazine for a Second Time this Summer!

We are honored that Thermal Processing Magazine is running a profile of Semco Carbon in the most recent edition of their magazine. Semco has a great relationship with the magazine, which recently published an article we authored about several issues that arise in the graphite machining process, particularly difficulties in machining components for advanced heat treat industries. We are proud that Thermal Processing, which publishes important work in our field, took an interest in our company and explored reasons for its success. The profile highlights several aspects of our business, especially our close work with customers from selecting graphite grades...

19 Aug

Graphite Material Quality Series - Blog 4: Cold Chunk

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...

05 Aug

Compressive vs. Flexural Strength

At Semco, we think of ourselves as master problem solvers. Since we take the utmost care in the machining of graphite materials, we often find that problems reported by our customers, under careful investigation, turn up issues not related to the quality of the graphite components we machined. Just because we are confident in our product doesn’t mean we stop investigating, though. On the contrary--we want our customers to get the most out of their graphite components. If they are not working properly, or breaking, we will help the customer get to the bottom of the issue, whether or not...