Video as Part of the PM Brand

Gardner Business Media videographers Austin Grogan (shown here) and Alfredo Peters joined me on a visit to Walter Bat Co., a new company started by production shop W.H. Bagshaw, to interview company principals to learn the reasons behind this new business endeavor. (Photo Credit: PM)

The travel we do to create articles for our magazine (available in both print and digital formats) also affords us the opportunity to capture video. This could be during a trip to a machine shop, while attending a trade show or while visiting a supplier open house. The types and styles of video vary depending on the topic and circumstances.

I’m saying this to say we continue to add video to our @productionmachining YouTube channel, and I thought I’d describe some of what we’ve recently produced.

The most recent, and one I had a lot of fun with, relates to last month’s cover story. Titled “Why a Production Machine Shop Started a Baseball Bat Company,” husband and wife Aaron and Adria Bagshaw describe the how’s and why’s of W.H. Bagshaw starting Walter Bat Co. to create one-off wooden bats that can be customized for Little Leaguers and all the way up to professional Major League Baseball players. The reasoning behind creating this new company is intriguing as is how Walter Bat Co. complements W.H. Bagshaw and helped create a stronger bond with the local community.

Senior Editor Lori Beckman helped with a similar story. A look inside this Arkansas’ BBInfinite reveals why the co-owners started the company and how they successfully marketed their product — a specially designed bicycle bottom bracket — on their own. This video includes Wes Wolfenbarger and Gary Mailhiot describing what sparked the idea for this unique bike part and how they went from the development of it to becoming an international company that produces over 100 different variations of the part.

In fact, that visit resulted in a couple other shorter videos in which Wolfenbarger describes the advantages of a bar puller with integrated cutoff tool. It also details how Verisurf mapping software runs on BBInfinite’s Renishaw Equator 300 gaging system to increase the accuracy of the probe’s tolerance measurement on the thin-walled aluminum tube machined by the shop.

These call to mind what I call “Tech Brief Videos” we produced as a result of some of what we discovered at the 2021 edition of the Precision Machining Technology Show (PMTS). Examples include dual thread whirling on a Swiss-type lathe; a vacuum parts extractor/collector for very small parts on another type of Swiss-type; the value of shrink-fit collets for turning applications; and a rotary stage added to an automated, 2D optical part measurement system that effectively turns the device into a 3D measuring device.

Although I’m writing this just prior to PMTS 2023, we’re hoping to score additional Tech Brief videos to share with you in the coming months. We’ll also be adding to our batch of interviews with winners from our Emerging Leaders program. In these videos, the winners, driven people in our industry who are under 40 years old, describe ways they’ve found to make their companies more efficient and profitable.

It’s our goal to build upon these with additional videos. I’d encourage you to subscribe to the channel and “ring the bell” as they say so you’re alerted when a new video is added.

And, if there are specific types of video you feel are valuable, machine shop testimonials, shopfloor tips/tricks or maybe tutorial-type information, let me know.