Custom Carbon and Graphite Machining Blog

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...

16 Jul

Graphite Material Quality #3 Graphite Defects

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...

09 Jul

Vacuum Furnace -- Really?

According to Aristotle, nature abhors a vacuum, but we at Semco, and the graphite components we manufacture, especially the ones used in furnaces, love vacuums. What graphite abhors is oxidation, something that occurs in vacuum furnaces when the vacuum is not maintained and oxygen-rich air rushes in. And while flawed material resulting from problems during graphite production may be the first explanation when someone notices deteriorating graphite materials in their vacuum furnaces, what we have learned through investigation is that simple fixes to the vacuum seal of a furnace can save the graphite, and the furnace’s owner, much grief. Let...

02 Jul

Tolerance Stackup

As our readers can see from this blog, we love to talk about what we do at Semco, which means a lot about graphite manufacturing. We enjoy sharing with our clients and others in the industry how we run our graphite machining operation on our shop floor, what our employees thrive at outside of work, where we source our graphite material from, and how we perfect the graphite products we machine for our clients. We have shared our opinion on tariffs and examined reasons why we prefer to provide our clients with the raw material for manufacturing. As engineers, what...

15 May

Semco Carbon Appears in Thermal Processing Magazine!

In this article from the magazine Thermal Processing, graphite machining experts from Semco explore a couple of the most common challenges that manufacturers encounter when machining graphite components for heat treat industries. While Semco machines graphite components for many different applications, the company’s mainstay is manufacturing graphite components used in vacuum furnaces and sintering operations. With decades of experience doing this work, Semco engineers have identified two particular challenges that manufacturers of these components should be aware of in order to produce quality parts and avoid manufacturing mishaps. The first issue explored here is the challenge of measuring electrical resistance...