R197 refractory

R197 refractory has been formulated by George Blain director and founder of Ceramic Substrates and Components Ltd. R197 is a cost effective solution for refractory purposes and has recently seen an upturn in usage in the furnace market and other related industries. R197 (1250°C operating temp.) comes to its own where temperature and resistance to thermal shock is required. Here at Ceramic Substrates we can extrude in round and profiled forms as well as dry press. For more information regarding properties and specifications please look at our main website or click here and here. More from me after Easter, in the meantime we wish you all a Happy Easter holiday.

Upgrades

I had been expecting it for a while now, but after a meeting with our IT consultant, the dreaded word that no company MD wants to hear: “It is time for an upgrade.”


The office staff had been complaining about their office suite not being up to date with the current times and that it needed several steps to either open or create certain file types. We will be upgrading our database shortly, to make it more accessible for all of us and this will include internal communication from all workstations. Our IT man showed up at 0815 (always cheerful) this morning and at 0830 we were at Staples buying Microsoft Office 2007 Professional (including free 2010 upgrade). Running it through the till made me slightly nauseous and that was for just two copies. It was installed as soon as we got back to the office and it was all up and running within 2hours. The office staff are very happy and took great delight in showing me just how fast documents open and the possibilities with the new suite.

Next week I will tell you more about our R197 ceramic including history, applications and technical data.

New macor video

I have just uploaded a new video showing screw cut threading using MACOR® Machinable Glass Ceramic

emails all around

What I have been doing this week is what you would call the more day-to-day running of the company. It all started out with good intent on Monday morning, however due to illness with one of our admin staff a supporting role in other areas was needed. It was easy going until the afternoon when we were struck by an avalanche of e-mails and enquiries. Helping Sharon, this week has made me realise the amount of work that is involved when we are one person down. Sharon is coping very well with the extra workload and putting in extra hours to give our customers the same level of service as per usual. Our internet marketing seems to be working fine with new customers finding our websites. Our main website www.ceramic-substrates.co.uk/ but also our specialised Macor site www.macor.info/ . Now that I am more involved with the process, I have learnt that the internet marketing is not as easy as it looks. We are moving forward with new and innovative ideas regarding marketing and reaching our customers. Next week we will update the video on the www.macor.info/ site, which is at quite basic, but as you will understand we cannot give all our secrets away but we will try to give you a general idea.

More from me next week.