Custom Carbon and Graphite Machining Blog

03 Aug

What is Graphite Cement

To the wider public, the poster-boy of graphite applications is probably the pencil. In this blog, we will feature one of the many unsung but useful graphite products that we offer at Semco: graphite cement. While graphite is a durable material, it does happen that time, long-term use, and extreme conditions can lead to failure in graphite components. Rather than shelling out for new components, consider graphite cement for your graphite in-house repairs. What is graphite cement? Graphite cement is a paste-like material that joins graphite with a 100% carbonaceous bond. It remains secure at temperatures up to 5000ºF (Approx.2700ºC)...

27 Jul

What is Graphite?

We’ve written a lot in this blog about our primary material, graphite. We want to clarify that when we talk about graphite in most industrial applications, we are discussing synthetic graphite. Synthetic graphite is the crystalline form of carbon. It is a man-made material that is extremely resistant to high temperatures and acidic or basic solutions. Graphite can be engineered to obtain specific properties such as density, electrical resistance, hardness, porosity, compressive strength, flexural strength, coefficient of thermal expansion, and thermal conductivity. Below, we will detail the processes that go into making synthetic graphite and the different forms it can...

14 Jul

Ohio Safety Grant

Over the last few months, safety has been on everyone’s mind. From going to the store to working around others, most of us have considered our personal safety and the safety of those we come into contact with even more than we normally do. While Semco has done an exemplary job protecting our employees during the pandemic, the coronavirus is not the only danger to our employees that we have been thinking about. As a company that prides itself on its safety consciousness, we continue to look for areas of improvement within our graphite machining shop. Our employees’ safety is...

02 Jul

Quality Manager Position-Returning to the Roots

While time has seemed to stand still for much of the last few months, changes are still occurring. Semco’s Quality Manager for the past 5 years, Lee Dohanos, is retiring this month. After over 40 years working in the graphite manufacturing industry, and 5 years contributing his precision graphite expertise to our organization, he is embarking on a new chapter in his life— a well-earned retirement. Lee plans to pursue long-held passions, which means he will be spending a lot more time outdoors. Lee especially loves kayaking and is an avid hiker. Together with his wife, he also plans to...

23 Jun

Carbon Fiber Composite Materials in Vacuum Furnaces

They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. We’ve never bought into that adage, especially since many of us have parents or grandparents who have taken up new hobbies like gardening or bird watching with vigor. As a business, Semco also rejects the logic of the adage. Yes, we have been around for several decades, and our core business remains machining graphite materials. We did not become industry leaders by shunning innovation, though, and as we have grown as a company specializing in producing graphite components, the materials industry has devised new graphite composite materials, as well as...