Thursday, August 19, 2010

A Picture Worth a Thousand Words




A few years back I walked into a machine shop to see first hand all of the machinery and equipment needed for a typical machine shop to crank out a multitude of products.

This picture above is a summary of my visit.




One can readily see the tremendous investment in equipment as listed on the left needed to machine the displayed parts and components quite common to many industrial applications. One can also imagine all of the time consuming operations necessary to machine just one part from a block of metal: drilling, tapping, milling, routing, mitering, deburring, sandblasting and other finishing. In some cases, hours per piece can be consumed to yield a finished product.

One can see by the text in the middle just how many marketing areas there are for a machine shop, and this list is hardly exhaustive.

Now, look at the picture without the machine and equipment list on the left. Instead, envision one liquidmetal die casting or injection molding machine instead.

Then, look at all the parts pictured, a second time. All of them may be net-cast with liquidmetal in minutes. Double click on the picture to enlarge it.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

John Kang, Resigns upon Jury Finding

The Board of Directors of Liquidmetal Technologies has announced the resignation of John Ho Kang as Chairman of the Board and Director. Several years ago he was forced to step down as President and C.E.O due to his indictment for fraud in the inflation of the value of sales for Medical Manager just prior to its IPO. It is for this he was found gulty by a jury of his peers in Federal District Court in the Beaufort Division, South Carolina.

Inspite of his being found guilty by the jury, the Board of Directors failed to take swift action to terminate his services and replace him with a competent COB and CEO at the time of his indictment five years ago. Resultantly, the Company has languished and has lost its stock value once at $22.00 and now at 8 cents per share.

Incredibly, the Board of Directors is maintaining Kang on the Company roster. They have been in complete denial as they have let him move virtually all of the productive assets out of the control of Liquidmetal and into the hands of his brother, James Kang, who operates a company called Grace Metals in China.

The Company maintains a plant in Korea which is utilizing a fraction of its floorspace for a greatly downsized operation. Two new members of the Board, real estate magnates from Iran, have yet unload this property and use the proceeds to pay down the Company debt built up by the Kang Brothers over the years.