Custom Carbon and Graphite Machining Blog

05 Jul

Graphite Material Property-Coefficient of Thermal Expansion

At Semco Carbon, we are constantly thinking of new, relevant, and useful topics involving graphite materials and graphite applications to share with the readers of this blog. If something has to do with the manufacture of graphite products, we’ve probably got a lot to say, and a story to tell, about it. During a recent meeting, our application engineers were working on a specific issue that one of our customers was having. This customer had been experiencing premature component breakage in a new high temperature process they were testing. After thinking about the specifics of their application, we realized that...

01 Apr

Flexural vs Compressive Strength in Graphite

It is an oddity of the graphite business, and in many other endeavors in life, that the more you know about something, the more you realize you still don’t know. At Semco, we do know there are many elements in graphite component design. We’ll go ahead and claim to know most of them (hey, decades in the same business can teach you a lot). But what we recognize is that when a client brings to us a problem with a graphite component that we machined, we may not immediately know what the problem is nor how to fix it. In fact, we’ve...

04 Feb

Graphite Parts Shipping

We have all learned many things over the past year. We’ve learned how to meet over Zoom. Many of us learned about sourdough baking. We also learned a lot about the Postal Service and other mail carriers. The political battles over USPS and mail-in voting highlighted the importance of a service that is often taken for granted. At Semco, we do not take shipping for granted. We make a pledge to our customers not only to expertly manufacture custom graphite components, but to get those graphite parts to the customer in perfect condition as quickly as possible. Getting shipping right...

26 Oct

Safety Committee

While it may be a cliche, it’s not far off to describe the workforce at Semco as a family. Many of us have worked together for years (or even decades), we all share a common purpose and interests, and we look out for one another. As we’ve outlined before, when working in graphite industries (or any heavy manufacturing industries), safety must be a top priority. The work environment can be a safe place, but workplace safety most certainly doesn’t come about on its own. Graphite manufacturing involves powerful machines, heavy blocks of raw materials, extremely high temperatures, and a host...

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)...