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REB Blogs
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Among many basic manufacturing industries, steel foundries are thriving, largely because their products are essential to infrastructure development and heavy equipment production. This process was outlined with some prescience in our pages four years...
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There were many more comments and reactions to this column (in the April 2012 issue of FM&T ) than I am used to receiving, and nearly all were positive, and that was a surprise, too. When I wrote that it was the peak of tax-anxiety season, and the...
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Last week SinterCast AB issued its quarterly report , an ordinary effort for publicly trade companies, but the Stockholm-based process-control developer has always been a more forthcoming about its technical progress than almost any other company active...
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Here's a cautionary tale for metalcasters, or anyone, who deals with government regulators in the course of doing their work: a (now former) manager at an aluminum diecaster faces up to seven years in prison, in a sense because the plant was too productive....
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A few years ago I wrote about the art museum established by Eckhart Grohmann , former chairman and president of Aluminum Casting & Engineering, at the Milwaukee School of Engineering. In my opinion it is an important statement about the role of art...
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I don’t have much doubt that the recent advances in 3D manufacturing — or “additive manufacturing” as we reported in the latest issue — will change the way metalcasting is done. Thus, it will change the nature of metalcasting companies. One of the companies...
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This story is a good example of the old aside, “No good deed goes unpunished”: a successful foundry grows a global franchise, in which many people are employed and much good is done. Along the way, one of its foreign subsidiaries manages to violate a...
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The last column I wrote was about fuel and energy – before the recent spike in gas prices, but obviously addressing the long frustration about fuel and energy costs: at the start of 2009, according to this site , the average U.S. price of a gallon of...
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The news of General Motors Corp.’s $7.6-billion profit for 2011 is welcome: no dispute about that, even from one who objected to the federal bailout. I want GM to succeed, even though I objected (and still object) to the way it was financed: using federal...
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I was about to hack out another (too typical) sarcastic blog entry about the federal budget proposed yesterday, and the assumptions it contains - and how that development coincided with my schedule, but who'll care about that in another day or two, or...
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Caterpillar Inc. is a solid company: last month it reported an annual corporate profit of $4.9 billion. Its products are much in demand around the world because its agricultural, construction, and mining equipment are critical to providing the most basic...
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The title is drawn from the observation of a structural engineer explaining the secret to a novel building design: essentially, it's one, mid-sized office building in Toronto that's being designed, in part, as an insert to an existing structure that has...
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"Reshoring" continues to be a hot topic among manufacturers. I wrote about the man many people recognize as the leading authority on the subject, but the trend has been observed for several years now. (NADCA is planning a panel discussion on the topic...
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I've written several times that the ongoing economic recovery is so unsatisfying because we continue to see high levels of unemployment, but that unemployment is a feature of the economic recovery - not a defect. See this entry, for example. The point...
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Economic predictions are still popular this week, but here’s an insightful analysis of recent economic trends that documents a simple and easy-to-miss point: “…most of the economy is (the results of) people doing normal stuff that they always just have...
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“World growth will slow in 2012—the only question is by how much.” That is the abrupt and sober opening from IHS Global Insight’s chief economist Nariman Beravesh in his Top 10 Economic Predictions for 2012 . We cannot blame bad news on him, but it’s...
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The U.S. Labor Dept.'s monthly employment report has become a ritual of the ongoing recession — “jobs” rather than GDP are the measure of our economic progress. As such, the November report from late last week was good news, revealing as it did that nationwide...
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The National Labor Relations board was established in 1935, by way of the Wagner Act , as an independent panel assigned to adjudicate differences between employers and labor interests. Lately, however, the NLRB seems to operate from the assumption that...
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Speaking only for myself, I have never much like trade shows, conferences, seminars, etc. I realize they are important routines for conducting business - and that a lot of people appreciate the opportunity to socialize and recreate with colleagues they...
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It’s hard to study robotics — as I did recently — without examining the human aspect of it all, meaning how the availability of robots (and advanced technology more broadly understood) intersects with the humans that install them. Most of us realize now...
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I attended an event in Canada about two years ago – a competition of vocational skills (machining, welding, carpentry, and much more) among young people (16 to 22 years old, I recall), from all over the developed world. Notably, there were very few Americans...
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I screen all sorts of links related to metalcasting, but this is a novel one: first-hand accounts of the survival of foundries in an oppressed and depressed country. Most of us probably don't think much about the misery of life in Cuba since 1959, where...
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Last week’s arrival of the U.S. Labor Dept.’s September employment report didn’t reveal much: there was some increase in hiring and economists feel the threat of a new recession has been averted. But, the unemployment rate is still 9.1% of the workforce,...
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Having written recently about the importance of recognizing the good works of people around us, I'm glad to be able to point readers to this article about one of the recent greats of the metalcasting industry. It happens that he's a member of the FM&T...
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The anxiety over employment totals continues to drive most discussions about the state of the U.S. economy, and so last week’s report indicating that August ended with no net improvement in the jobless rate is bad news indeed. However, headlines suggesting...
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