Semco Carbon's Machine Shop Partnerships
At Semco, we’ve been in business long enough to know what we can do and what we can’t do. While what we CAN do has grown steadily over the years, we still know where the line is. We exclusively manufacture graphite components, for instance. Graphite machining is our raison d’etre, you might say. What we don’t do is machine metal (although we know some excellent shops that do). Our components are used in metal industries, but we remain solidly a graphite machining shop. Not all of our clients are aware of this. Along with the requests for quote (RFQ) we receive for graphite components, we sometimes get a request for a non-carbon (usually metal) component. This is understandable. Many industries require all kinds of parts to effectively run their manufacturing operations. Often, managers in these industries aren’t aware that machining shops that produce components for industry often specialize in the material they machine. Within the field of carbon manufacturing, Semco can do just about anything. Whatever graphite component you need, and whatever graphite grade you would like your component made from, we can almost certainly meet your needs. Outside of carbon materials, however, we are not equipped to handle requests.
Business-wise, the last thing we want to do is to immediately turn down an RFQ, especially from the many clients who hold us in high esteem for our professional and high-quality graphite machining work. If a client needs a component machined from metal, what we prefer, rather than immediately return a “no quote” response, is to include a metal machining company in our response and work with that company to provide a quote to the customer. This kind of arrangement requires partners in the metal-machining industry. Just as graphite machining companies receive metal machining requests, so do metal machining shops receive requests to manufacture graphite components. At Semco, we see a great opportunity here to better serve our customers and collaborate with other businesses in an “everybody wins” arrangement. Such an arrangement would allow us to provide direct quotes to clients of metal machining shops for graphite components, and vice versa. If a RFQ for a metal component comes our way, we can work with the metal company to provide a direct quote for that component. This kind of collaboration has so many upsides for both machining shops. Here are just a few:
- Produces more revenue
- Keeps the customers happy
- Prevents competition by offering all-inclusive solutions
- Expands a shop’s customer base
Additionally, close partnerships with metal shops can provide our traditional customers with solutions that include metal machining, as well as materials and machining expertise when it comes to metal machining. Efficiency of scale can be achieved by allowing us to be competitive on all metal RFQs we receive, but cannot produce internally.
In partnerships with metal machining shops, Semco has much to offer as well. Not only can we offer 40-plus years of expertise in machining graphite and carbon materials, but we can also provide custom graphite grades from our large inventory of ISO-molded, molded, and extruded grades. Once an appropriate graphite grade is selected, Semco can offer application engineering and advice on design. Graphite, like any raw material, has idiosyncratic properties that our decades of experience have allowed us to master. Our engineers and machinists are great to have on a company’s side that has received an order for a graphite component that its shop cannot handle. Our shop floor, in addition, is superbly equipped to deliver a contaminate-free finished product. Our exclusively dry (no coolant) machining and high volume dust extraction system help us guarantee that.
Partnering with Semco not o nly allows a metal machining shop to return a more welcome response to a client about graphite components, but that shop can even offer, through Semco, value added services like application-specific purification, impregnations, and coatings. And if the graphite component a client needs must be produced internally, we can eliminate the need to buy full size blocks or rods of raw material by offering custom blank sizes to the metal shop.
If you are a metal machining company that has had to turn down requests for graphite components, we are interested in starting a dialogue with you. Perhaps we can work together to provide our customers with the highest level of convenience, an all-in-one machining experience. Let us know if you are interested.