Panama, Tariffs, and Power, with Andrew R. Thomas-EP 237

02/18/25 • 53 min

When Trump was elected President for a second term, I expected there would be a lot of talk about tariffs, but I didn’t anticipate all the attention on the Panama Canal and Greenland. So, it seemed like the perfect time for Lloyd and I to talk to one of our favorite geopolitics experts, Dr. Andrew [...]

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My STAR CNC Swiss Guru, with Dave Polito—EP 169

Dave Polito is my Star CNC guru. He’s always been there when I’ve had questions, whether I was asking about a 1999 Star SA12, or a sweet SV38R located in Asia, or the ever flummoxing Siemens control on an ECAS-20. Dave is the owner of Quality Machine Tool Services, the Star distributor for Illinois and [...]

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Becoming the Machining Doctor, with Erez Speiser- EP 208

Have you ever dreamed about combining your expertise and passions to become an entrepreneur?

My guess on today’s podcast did just that. Erez Speiser is the creator of machiningdoctor.com, a site for professionals in the machining industry to get technical information to simplify their work. The site offers resources such as a sophisticated feeds and speeds calculator for six types of machining processes. It even contains a machining encyclopedia.

Before creating Machining Doctor, Erez worked for cutting tools giant ISCAR for over 20 years and managed a Swiss machine shop. But serendipitous elements, namely a love of hiking in his home country of Israel and a global pandemic, led him on an entrepreneurial path.

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Interview Highlights

In 2018, Erez built his first website for a side business called Israel By Foot that provided advice to vacationers hiking in Israel. The company helped people plan for self-guided hikes throughout Israel, providing maps and explanations, booking lodgings, and even dropping tourists’ baggage at hotels.

When COVID-19 hit, the hiking tourism business turned non-existent. At the same time, Erez found himself working at home with a smaller workload for his day job at ISCAR Cutting Tools. The new skills Erez had developed while building the website for Israel By Foot gave him the idea to build a new website devoted to machining, the field he had based his career on.

Machining Doctor Features

Erez says the most popular features on Machining Doctor are calculators that help people assess the correct cutting speed, surface finish, and power consumption for machining jobs. The feeds and speeds calculator works for a number of applications such as turning, milling, parting, grooving, drilling, and threading. It takes into account material groups, types of units, and other variables.

Machiningdoctor.com gets around 250,000 page views and 100,000 unique visitors per month. Erez monetizes Machining Doctor with Google Display Ads on the site, but he wants to change his business model to a subscription based one without annoying ads, in which users pay $1.50 per month. I asked him how he could make money charging users such a low price and he explained that if 100,000 users paid $1.50 per month it would mean $150,000 per month.

Erez has a lot of ideas to boost the value of the site. He is now posting original educational videos about machining. He also plans to use the site to generate clients who want assistance in their machining jobs. He plans to provide complete solutions to jobs, including tooling layout, CNC programming, and simulation tools like VERICUT.

What It’s Like to be an Israeli Living in Israel Right Now

Erez lives in Rakefet, a town in northern Israel, so I decided to ask him a few questions about what it’s like to be an Israeli during such a dark time. His son is a reserve paratrooper and has saw combat for three months. He said the manufacturing sector hasn’t been affected that mu...