My favorite thing to say about us is: ‘We are not the best stone company in Chicago because we are the oldest. We are the oldest, because we are the best,’” said Tom Van Etten, when speaking about his family owned business Galloy & Van Etten, which was started in 1899.

Technology continually is evolving to keep up with customer demands. In addition to improving upon CNC tooling and accessories that are already available for cutting natural stone and quartz surfacing, manufacturers are now developing new products for cutting alternative hard surfaces such as compact sintered stone and porcelain slabs.

Living in the digital age with technology at the forefront, Marmomac 2019 is stepping it up to offer attendees a virtual experience. It will be debuting its new app at this year’s exhibition, which is slotted for September 25th to 28th in Verona, Italy.

Prodim has been supplying complete digital templating package solutions to stone templators and fabricators for over two decades now. The Proliner measuring device has always been at the center of each package, completed by dedicated digital templating software for the stone industry.

FlexiCAD software from Laser Template Inc. has been designed to simplify the measurement process and allow anyone to use the system for precision measurements regardless of their experience level. Measure lines, arcs, circles and even oval or odd shapes with ease and ability to complete the full drawing on site.

The GLS Viper 4.0 bridge sawing machine is the ultimate machine for a diverse range of fabrication. It’s suitable for cutting marble, granite, quartz, quartzite and semi-precious slabs. 

With changing consumer shopping patterns, an accelerated pace of business and the need for real-time visibility, the Information Revolution has created a great need for technological advancement in the stone industry; it is up to all of us to answer the call together or be left behind in its wake.

As I write this, I’m sitting at Newark International Airport in New Jersey waiting for my flight to Indianapolis to board. My final destination is Bloomington, where my friends from the Indiana Limestone Institute will take me on a tour of several quarries in the area.

Prussiani introduces the new Platino Shuttle -— a revolutionary high-production CNC work center with a double table, optimized to eliminate all downtimes for table setup, programming and unloading. It is a continuous improvement of the CNC technology Prussiani has introduced since 1991 in the stone industry, updated to meet the actual needs of every stone fabricator, according to the manufacturer.