Machinist?

[Kaos]

Anyone here a machinist? I had heard of places that need them so bad they're putting folks through classes as long as they go to work for them.

If you are..do you like the job? Is it monotonous? Is the pay good?

Just something I've been tossing around in my mind for some time now.

[Robert Kayland]

Anyone here a machinist? I had heard of places that need them so bad they're putting folks through classes as long as they go to work for them.

If you are..do you like the job? Is it monotonous? Is the pay good?

Just something I've been tossing around in my mind for some time now.

Back in the late seventies and early eighties I worked as a machinist... for the time, the pay was good, but only because you pretty much were guaranteed 50 to 55 hrs per week, with time-and-a-half over 40... not to mention 2nd shift differential, if you're willing to work 4:00pm to 12:00am (or 2:00am on the overtime).

But I took an initial pay cut in the mid-eighties in order to get into software engineering, and never looked back.

I occasionally look in the papers at the trades section, just out of curiosity, and the pay rates don't seem to be all that much higher than when I was a machinist nearly 30 years ago. But it's an honorable trade, just not one you'll ever get rich at. And yes, it can get monotonous at times.

If you're really interested in the trades, I'd go for HVAC, Electrician, or Plumber... especially since you can eventually go out on your own.

[fingers80002]

If you get anyone interested, I ran CNC for awile.
Better than wrenching!!!!!!!!!!

[Siobhra]

27 years as a machinist before going to college. I loved it at first. The big paychecks in the beginning. But Robert is right. The pays the same today as it was years ago and now the overtime is mostly gone.

[H.E. Pennypacker]

My grandfather was a machinist...and not that CNC stuff. Real machining.

Here's some stuff he's made if anyone is interested. I'm amazed at what he was able to do with a simple lathe, milling machine and drill press.

[Bmarshall91]

i was a machinist at a deep sea fishing equipment shop...

i too, like H.E. pennypacker's grandfather, was a manual lathe, and manual mill machine operator. No computers for me... just some handles to turn, and rulers! haha. I loved the job! did it for four years. Then again, i liked the idea of being able to say, i made that out of this!

My work can be found at www.nauticaldesigninc.com... i took raw material, and made these shapes, polished the material by hand, and then assembled the pieces! the only thing i didn't do was weld... got into that at another job.

i even did wood work!!!! hehe!

Some of the things i've made....







That last piece was all 316 stainless steel. The slides were like 4 foot long!!! that was a HEAVY piece to polish!

[ReefBlue]

If I was a machinist, I'd make my own receivers.

Is there workbench sized equipment that can used to make stuff?

[Bmarshall91]

The mill machine i used was about 6 feet tall, but wasn't very wide... it was belt driven, and you could change the belt position to change the speed of the bit.... didn't take up much room at all... it would fit in the basement of someone's house i bet. the lathe on the other hand... was much larger.. but it was made to fit very long pieces of steel. I'm sure you can get shorter lathes though... we had a woodworking lathe in our shop as well that was like 4 feet long end to end, and about 3 feet high.

[Steelblitz]

I use to to do tool and die work and built custom automated machinery, ie built cnc's, robotic, etc,,, that would build other machines, but got laid off a month after 9/11 with half the plant and I havent looked back since. A bunch of us would always make all kinds of crazy stuff on the side.

As far as the job, it can get very boring if you are standing in front of a mill, grinder, lathe, or cnc all day, especially if you are doing the same parts over and over in a large production run. That's not me, hence why I went towards the tool and die side which put me around something different all the time working in a manufacturing facility. Pay is decent if you got the journeyman papers, if not, it's just average. A lot of machining shops today set up their CNC's with guys with limited expereince and rely on one guy to do the programming and maybe another more experienced to watch over the machining centers, while the $10 an hour guy sit in a chair and just changes the parts out of the machine when they are done. Tool and die men and finding good machinists who can work on the stand alone mills, grinders, and lathes are part of a dieing trade from what I've seen.

I am appreciative of the experience I gained dong tool and die work. It helped me through doing some mods to my AK this week knowing what to expect from the material you're working on and the correct procedures to work with the stuff to get the results you want.

[Zef_66]

I was trained as a machinist in college as that was part of my degree. But I am currently a manufacturing engineer. The shop I work at, we do have a 30k sq ft machine shop where we make all our own tooling and do custom machining for the parts we make. We might be currently hiring through an employment agency, but I think only for 2nd or 3rd shift, and we don't pay for schooling much for our machinists. They are required to know how to be a machinst and then we specialize them to meet our needs. Finding a shop that will pay an inexperienced guy off the street to go to school to be a machinist is probably going to be pretty hard to find.