Custom Carbon and Graphite Machining Blog

25 Apr

Inflation, Rising Gas Prices, and Graphite Fabrication

2021 was not a great year to move graphite blocks (or any commodity, truth be told) around the globe. Supplier bottleneck issues, freight costs going up 4, 5 and even up to 10-fold, containers of graphite blocks coming from China costing up to $18000 to ship (that’s up from $2000 a year earlier): the news was bad across the board for graphite fabrication businesses when it came to shipping. Businesses that did not think strategically in 2021 face another very tough year as graphite blocks aren’t getting any cheaper to move around the globe, nor is it getting any cheaper...

03 Mar

Graphite vs. Carbon Cheat Sheet

At Semco, we are graphite fabrication experts, and our clients look to us for advice on the appropriate graphite materials for their projects. When clients discuss graphite materials with us, we notice that one conflation often comes up. In casual usage, the terms “graphite” and “ carbon” are used interchangeably, which is understandable, considering that graphite is a form of carbon. However, the physical properties of the two materials that we refer to as “carbon” and “graphite” are substantially different. This is relevant in a graphite fabrication context since graphite and carbon represent distinct material choices, and each material is...

15 Feb

Meet Graphite Cost Estimator, Chris Fultz

We are a graphite company with many state-of-the-art machines, but we also are a graphite company of great people. On this blog, we like to shine a spotlight on some of the people that make our graphite machining operation successful. One of those people is Chris Fultz. Chris started at Semco in 2017, and now has almost 5 years with the company. We brag a lot on our employees, and you may wonder how Semco finds enough employees expert in the precision graphite machining that we do. The truth is, sometimes they find us, and occasionally, there are happy accidents.....

01 Feb

2022 Graphite Company Goals

2022 is off to a running start at Semco. We began gathering our momentum around the midpoint of 2021. Last summer was the beginning of an aggressive growth for this graphite company. The amount of orders rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, and then surpassed those levels. We think that 2022 will be a record-setting year for us. At Semco, we often think about our fundamentals, the key graphite elements that make our business thrive. Keeping these things in focus is our strategy for success. Of course, our most important resource is our employees. We are, unfortunately, experiencing a job market that...

25 Jan

A Brief History of Graphite

In our graphite production business, we take little for granted. To deliver the best graphite solutions to our clients, we cannot cut corners in sourcing sound material, hiring and training knowledgeable employees, and investing in state-of-the-art machines. Doing these things right allows us to produce excellent graphite applications. If there’s one thing we do take for granted though, it’s graphite. That’s not to say we don’t study the material closely -- in fact, we’re dedicated to a deep understanding of what graphite is and how to best use it to meet our customers’ needs. Working with graphite applications every day,...