Custom Carbon & Graphite Machining

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...

18 Jun

Graphite Material Quality Series: Part 2

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...

11 Jun

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...

04 Jun

Lorain County Joint Vocational School (JVS)

The best practitioners in any field are those people who remain lifelong learners. The fields of graphite design and graphite engineering are no different. We at Semco believe in the value of training for our long-term employees as well as for our newer hires. In an ongoing attempt to elevate the skill set and knowledge base of our workforce and team members, Semco Carbon has engaged the services of the Lorain County JVS (Joint Vocational School) to present weekly on-site classroom training. With the current record low unemployment rate we are experiencing comes recruitment challenges. To meet the increasing demands...