One is that I am the last surviving industry active person to have written a die standards book for an OEM. From scratch. I guess that is kind of like being the oldest person alive in a morbid way.

The second is the organization of the book is still relevant today. The organization and technical numbering system were my invention alone. What hit me was it will be 19 years strong in a few weeks. This is the longest running die standards organization format in the history of GM.

The book prior to mine was in existence for about 8 years. The book prior to that also had a completely different numbering system and content organization. That book lasted for about 5 years. The one before that was in circulation for around 15 years or so.

The key is to create something that is specific enough to be useful yet general enough to be flexible as times change. If you can combine those two characteristics, then it will stand the test of time.

“Keremedjiev? Hell yes I know him! He is a rock star! Why do you ask?”, I respond.

“He is here in the conference room.”

I go find George and got a warm greeting. Not because he is doing business with my employer. He gave me a warm greeting because we have a mutual respect for each other.

And that feeling of respect came at a good time in my day (I have too many armchair Monday morning quarterback critics).

George, as you all know, has been the author of the monthly column, Electronics in Metalforming & Assembly in Metalforming Magazine for the past 25 years. I grew up on reading his excellent work.

He also specializes in domestic and global consultations/seminars for both technical and managerial personnel.

George proudly announced to the group that they had two PMA authors in the room. I was proud just to be standing in the same room as George.

George Keremedjiev is deeply passionate about dies and American manufacturing. He is currently doing something that no one else has done: He is offering free in-house die protection seminars.

That’s right. Free. You just pay a measily $500 in travel expenses. I can’t drive from Detroit to Grand Rapids for less than $500 in gas and speeding tickets.

He is not out to make a bunch of money by hearing himself speak. George genuinely wants you to eliminate die crashes and bad stampings. He wants you to succeed.

Do your company and me a favor: Take George up on his offer. The day rate for a die consultant is around $2000 USD. But, please, take me up on my offer: pay it forward.

If George is willing to visit you for a day for free, then at least pay him $995, plus the $500 for his flight, and get him a room and room service on your tab. If he saves you just one hour of downtime in the stamping plant, it just paid for his visit.

Why am I a big fan of George? He is simply the most knowledgeable person I know on manufacturing in general and specifically die protection. George is also an outstanding public speaker to boot.

His website, mfgadvice.com has the details.

Why? Because I know waterboarding lasts 40 seconds not 40 minutes. Plus, the psychological damage with waterboarding is only temporary. Shitty slide presentations are burned into my brain forever.

I especially like the ones where the pitch is “our software works magic in 5 minutes”. I am from Missouri. Show me.

If it really takes 5 minutes, then do a live demo.

No excuses. If you can’t do a live demo due to no internet, then do a Camtasia screen capture of it in action.

Seems simple to me.

Hell. When I used to this, I would ask the prospect to time me. If I said 5 minutes, I would usually finish in 4.

Under promise and over deliver. Hell. I would settle for just deliver.

Do it one better. Get one of your paying customers to come in and do the demo. What better testimonial is there than that? Walk in with one customer and leave with two.

Let’s take one trivial example. I am tasked with creating an automated calculation in Excel that computes the number of days waiting for a job to get reviewed. The existing table had the start and end dates that are manually typed by the user.

Simple enough.

Like I always say, anything worth doing is worth over doing. How can I over do something like this?

How about showing a blank cell if there is no start date? Clean.

How about automatically calculating the days waiting if there is a start date but no end date yet? Cool.

Hey, why not subtract weekends and paid holidays? Sweet.

Let’s color code the cells so that if the response is within 1 day, it is green. In 2 days, it goes to yellow. When we hit 3 or more days, we go red. Nice.

And take it one step further. If what is typed in the cell is not a date, then show a blank cell instead of an error message. Damn.

The equation is simple enough. It is:

=IF(ISBLANK(A4),”",IF(ISBLANK(B4),NETWORKDAYS(A4,TODAY(),Holiday)-1,IF(ISTEXT(A4),”",IF(ISERROR(A4),”",(NETWORKDAYS(A4,B4,Holiday)-1)))))

The A4 is the date out cell, B4 is the date in cell, and Holiday pulls from a list of dates. Click here to download an example (is an 2007 Excel file).

So, where does the drama start? I work with a guy that told me straight up that he does not want me working with him and all that. It could be anyone in the seat. He is just insecure. I don’t like dealing with insecure, irrational people. But, that is part of the game.

Well, my new buddy proudly announces today that he does not use the date in /out thing anymore since I added the calculation to it.

Not that I really give two shits, but it does make the “trying to get along” thing difficult. Perplexing to me, it is, when intelligent people behave like children.

Scratch that. My 8 year old was more respectful and mature when he was 2.

I digress.

Bottom line is I still have alot of game left in me. I may not be as fast or sharp as I was 20 years ago, but I have more experience than most in their 60s.

My goal is simple: I want to be on a championship caliber team. Plain and simple.

I have the skills, knowledge, and experience to take any die group to the highest levels. But, somehow, I keep finding myself in these situations where politics and psychology seem to take precedence over profit and prosperity.

I totally get why Brett Favre changes his mind about playing football about as much as I change mine about being in this business. It is tough getting older.

I am certainly not getting any younger. I may have mellowed some, but my tolerance for babies and bullshit still hovers around zero.

I won’t be blogging on dies and stamping for a while – if ever again. I have said all I have to say for the time being. And all I say is met with skepticism or criticism – so I will save us all the bother and not be one.

The time has come for me to move along.

The store closed just minutes before I arrived, and I needed a bolt.

After a day in the cutthroat trenches of the die world, I found that the little things matter. Funny how things turn out.

See, we just moved to a new community in a small town in Michigan that I call home. My son met a friend, and that friend broke the hand brake on her bicycle earlier that evening.

While I am no longer in the comfortable financial position I was at the start of the century, I wanted to help this kid out. So, I drove to two bike shops to burn $40 on a new hand brake and a kickstand.

Like most dies, you go to fix one thing and see a few more things in need of repair. I get the new hand brake on and discover the gooseneck is so loose that the handbars are about to pull right out of the frame.

Fixed that.

Then, I notice the tires are seriously low on air.

Fixed that.

I go to put the kickstand on and discover the carriage bolt that came with it is about 10 mm short. So, I run to the local hardware store. A real hardware store.

As I pull into the parking lot, I see the lights are out. Two men are chatting in the parking lot. “You probably just closed, right?” I ask.

“Yeah. You look like you are in a bind. What do you need?”

I hold up the carriage bolt and say, “This one is about 3/8 too short. I can come back tomorow. No big deal.”

To me, it was a big deal because tomorrow to the little girl meant tomorrow night.

“C’mon,” Mr. Martin says as he waves to follow him back into the store.

“Really?” I am in disbelief.

He opens the store, goes in the back, and gets the new carriage bolt. I am now holding the bolt in one hand and cash in the other.

“Next time you come in, give 29 cents to the cashier,” he tells me.

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

Now, I know we are talking about 29 cents here. But it is the principle. No way in hell Home Depot or Lowe’s will let you do that. Their respective return policies kick ass, but they don’t have a forward policy that I am aware of.

“I will be in tomorrow, Sir.”

“No. The next time you are in, just leave 29 cents. No problem. I am glad I could help you out of a bind.”

Are you serious?

Guess where my first choice for hardware products is now? It is the little things that matter.

As for my son’s friend, she is estatic that her bike is fixed.

The world is changing around me and I can’t stop it.

Back in my day, being friends with someone meant you could go to lunch together.

Share a good meal.

Share a few laughs.

Escape from the hell of your day for an hour.

These days, I dine alone.

Why? Because the people who I thought were my friends go greeting card shopping for lunch.

What the fuck?

But, a good friend will do that. I guess.

You know. Get you a clever get well card.

Just in case you should ever get sick.

Well, I am sick of getting old.

And sick of eating alone. Laughing at my own jokes.

Happy trails to all my friends with their sick sense of humor.

I have been in the professional moving business lately. In the past 7 months, I have moved 7 times. I am not talking about moving from the couch to the kitchen table. I am talking about household moves.

Seven.

Five of these came in the past 10 weeks. Most recently, last week.

And that was the last one. I hope.

We had environmental issues at the last place that forced me to move in and out. In and out. In and out. In and out. In and out.

How real pro movers do this day in and day out for a living is beyond me.

Then again, they probably say the same thing about die guys. How can we keep working with the same shitty product designs and the same shitty software? Program after program.

“Yes”, I say.

“How about different form steels?”

“Yes.”

“How about different materials?”

“Yes.”

“Well, try different materials until you find one that works,” the engineer says to me.

Now, nevermind that the forming condition is impossible to make in any ferrous material. The product design is simply not manufacturable.

But, give me an inch of rope and I will take about 10 feet of it, find a tree, and end up hanging you with it.

Which leads me to my latest invention: Super Steel.

I found a material that will work. Are you ready for the mechanical properties? Here they are:

• Yield Strength: 5000 MPa
• Tensile Strength: 20,000 MPa
• n: 0.5
• r: 2.0

This is super formable yet super strong. I am working on a super coating so that instead of the die surfaces wearing, the die actually gets better with use. No more polishing and sharpening required. This means inserts and all that are a thing of the past.

Sure. I have to work out something with press force and energy. But I shall find a way or make one.

The illustration below captures how I believe dies should be built based on the combination of production life and material strength:

There are three main categories of architectures: Low, Standard, and High. It works like this: Depending on the combination of production volume and material tensile strength, the low and high architectures are variations of what you would consider a typical or standard die to look like. The Low variety uses less inserts and lower grade materials. The High variety uses more inserts and higher grade materials to sustain the tool under high force and high hits conditions.