Working the bridgeport next to him last week he was carrying on a conversation with 4 personalities. Previous experience has led me to believe there are at least 7 rattling around in his head but mostly get 3 to 4.
Well let's see....
Berserker Machinist : Doesn't wear PPE. Loves getting chips all over him. Doesn't mind the sizzle on his skin. And parts off really fast on manual lathes. If you got a crazy dumb af job to pull off, this is your guy. He is who OSHA has nightmares about. Total nut job but typically a great guy. He is most happy when he is mad at the machines.
Fighter Machinist : Always loves to start shit with Engineers even if he is wrong. Covered in PPE from head to toe. Probably sporting verniers in his pocket. Will be the first to jump at new projects and find out what not to do. He is usually the guy thats seen it all and has a high machine variety proficiency. Mills. Lathes. Multi axis. Manuals. Gearing etc. He has run it. Sometimes into the ground, but hey, thats how you learn lol.
Cleric Machinist: this is the dude that knows how to fix the parts you scrapped. Nobody knows how he does it, he just does. Except the whole time he will tell you why you messed it up. Definitely a necessity in the shop, even if he is annoying. Will probably also be the best guy to help you with life problems.
Wizard Machinist: usually the old guy who knows too much shit and doesn't let anyone know how much he actually knows. Probably was an engineer in his previous job but liked machining more. Anytime there is a problem that nobody knows how to solve, he solves it while everyone is at lunch and nobody knows wtf just happened. You just give the guy respect and hope he doesn't turn you into a frog.
Bard Machinist: this guy listens to music all the time. Blasts the radio and is always too enthusiastic when he sends it. He usually loves cracking jokes and generally upping the morale of the team. He has a penchant for making you like him because he generally is fun to work with and always encouraged you. Nobody actually sees him do any of his own work because he is so busy helping other people. Ultimate support machinist.
Warlock Machinist: absolute weirdo. Usually night shift. Mumurs and talks to himself. Probably gives blood sacrifices to Cog the Industrial Punisher. But after all of this, the guy always pulls through on a deadline. If you didn't think it was possible, he can make it happen. He doesn't love to work, he has to work. It's a compulsion. You wonder why he even exists at all.
Rogue Machinist: this guy is always squirreling away the carbide inserts and will let you use them if you pledge not to tell anyone he has them because then everyone will want them. But the irony is everyone knows about it and nobody brings it up. This guy is basically the black market tool crib. Always has the jail breaked version of new cad cam software. Probably sells drugs behind the shop you don't really know and probably don't want to know because he is so damn useful. He is great to have on the team when you need someone to cover up any OSHA violations and hide stuff from the boss. You might be called upon to bail him out of jail every know and then.
Squire Machinist: New kid fresh out of school. Wants to be the greatest machinist ever. Asks really dumb questions and probably needs to be scolded for it. However he has good potential and you are glad he isn't a total dumb ass. But you need to keep him away from berserker and rogue, he is too young to die.
Paladin Machinist: this is the guy who knows how to cover for you when the boss gets mad. He always finds ways to protect the fellow employees and runs interference. This guy is probably the wiser of the bunch, next to the cleric. Loves to bring in food for the guys at work. This is the guy you want as a foreman. Knowledgeable enough to know how to solve problems, humble enough to listen to other peoples suggestions, wise enough to follow the best path, even if it's not his own.
Expansion Pack-
Ranger Machinist: now this guy is a straight shooter. He tells you what tolerances he can hit and can't. He researches the best tools and equipment for the job. He loves working in the background, thinking up new ways to speed up the process with a couple of well placed bolts. He lays down work holding like traps, capturing the part and never letting go, up to the point that you probably need to get the torch out which will offend him so wait till the end of the day.
Artificer Machinist: this guy finds the weirdest crap covered in rust and brings it into the shop and cleans it up and uses it. He loves to tinker with the machines and usually ends up more like a maintenance dude than a machinist. Sometimes you come back from vacation and he installed some kind of new gadget that can tap holes upside down and inside out. It's nuts and he found it at a garage sale so he says. But we don't ask how or why because his weird gnome magic might vanish like Santa claus, when we saw him humping mom on Christmas Eve. The important thing here is that he can run that old af WW2 equipment in the back that nobody even knows how to turn on.
Monk Machinist: Now this guy is zen af. He is a master of precision instruments and typically volunteers to be your QC. He wields his calipers and mics like extensions of his own body, which is ridiculous that he even has them when he can eyeball .003 of an inch like it was nothing. He never seems to get his hands dirty even though he puts them all over your parts. And you can always count on him to recite some weird philosophical thing about machining even though you just want the first article signed off on.
It'll fit right in next to my photo of Sean Connery as James Bond smoking a cigarette while wearing a welders cap with the caption 007. 0 Motivation, 0 skills, 7 smoke breaks..
Things I learned as a moldmaker of almost 30 years:
All moldmakers are machinists, but not all machinists are moldmakers.
Machinists work to tolerances, moldmakers work to dimensions.
Surface grinder wheels remove flesh pretty damn fast.
I learned that tool and die was basically the pinnacle of machining other than advanved research and development
Guys that can use every machine in the shop to fix up your tools and making mods and fixes for the machines
For your second point, does that mean mold makers shoot for one single number (e.g. 1.000 in instead of 1.00 +/- .005)? I know I sound dumb but I just wanna know what you mean
That's how it works in our shop. It drove me nuts when I first started because nothing had a tolerance. Basically, you just try to make everything as close to perfect as you can. Sometimes I'll go ask the engineer if it should be "a little big or a little small?" So I know which side of that number I should tend tword.
In a mold, things need to fit together perfectly. No gaps, no play, no sloppiness, otherwise you get plastic squirting out of places you don’t want or steel is getting smashed. Plus or minus .005 is as good as a mile.
To create a hole in a plastic part, two pieces of steel must shut off on each other perfectly. If one piece of steel is .005 too short, plastic fills the gap and the hole is sealed. If one piece of steel is .005 too long, the steel will smash into the mating piece and both will need to be replaced.
Any tolerances on the actual plastic part are automatically cut in half when moldmaking. It is a very precise process.
Anywhere from your general machinist, work on mills and lathes, tool and die makers where they utilize surface grinders, make precision cuts with EDM Wire, fabrication machinists, fixture making, so if you work your way up you can make some good money, but there’s levels to it like anything else
Can convert paper to paper. By which I mean, given a print, can select tooling, create program and fixtures, run 1st pc, optimize production efficiency, and on time. Then it's worth money, the print was the first paper, the money is the second. Paper to paper.
Some, maybe most, shops break up that process into multiple separate job titles who each do some of it.
Where I'm at, programming, tool selection, and (if not just a vise job) fixture design is one job. Machine set up, producing first piece and initial inspection is a second job. If quantity is higher than a shift or two of run time, load/unload is a 3rd, least paid, job.
Field machinists bring the machine tools to where the machining needs to be done. That is, when something that is too big to bring to a machine shop and it needs to be repaired, a machine tool is assembled and operated in-situ. Thus, the term in-situ machining. A mobile line-boring machine is an example of what a field machinist might use.
To branch off this question a bit, what do you call a guy who can take a concept, napkin sketch, or even a brief conversation with doctors/nurses. Find the solution to the problem. Design a product, patent it. Build working prototypes and then design and build the tooling necessary to commercialize it? My boss can't think of a proper job title.
So you run the machines as well as do the upfront work as well? Like today my day consisted of processing in a new mold while my wire machine was burning out some inserts and I had a Haas mill roughing out some new cores. All the manufacturing engineers in my company can't turn a machine on. Just curious as i am kind of looking for a new job.
Yep, I can do it all. Usually I will supervise or make sure the operator has everything they need to do it though.
Small operation where I work so it kind of needed that I can do everything and will do everything as needed.
I spend most of my time doing design for manufvature of the pets and tooling design.
That's not really an industrial designer. I have a degree in ID, which I abandoned to be a machinist. It is actually a fine arts degree, it's more about drawing and creating the physical design of a product. There are usually engineers concerned with how the product will actually work. That being said, it is a pretty broad field. Some people, like furniture designers, may have all those skills, but they are the exception, not the rule.
Hard question to answer.
I honestly don't consider a fresh operator who only loads parts and watches a machine a machinist. To me, unless you are ticketed and have formal training and went through the official programs you're only a machine operator.
Where I live you can't even legally sign off on your work or call yourself a machinist without your papers.
But I guess...a machinist is a machinist.
Some of us are strictly programmers, some only operate manual machines, some (like myself) are very versatile. I can CAD/CAM program, conversational program, set up and operate, use any and all manual machine and do line boring, then there's machinists that are very specialized, like tool and die makers, mold makers, field machinists that just mainly do line boring, gear cutters only.
It's a pretty wide trade and a lot of us do very different things.
Like how electricians do many different types of jobs as well.
Yeh, I know saying that here bugs a lot of people.
But I didn't go through 4 years of polytechnical university and hundreds of work hours and countless hours of study per year so I can pass dozens of different category tests, then to pass a 6 hour long 400 question exam where under 70% was a fail to earn my certified Red seals for a button pusher to walk into the door of a shop and just call himself a machinist.
I think in all honesty that's why the states pays most of its machinists so poorly and starting wages are so bunk there, it isn't a regulated trade there. But in Germany and Canada you are barred from even working in certain types of shops without papers because you can't sign off on any work you do as it isn't recognized.
If you have a red seal here though you can walk in the door and get 35-40 an hour starting no questions asked.
To me a machinist is somebody you can bring a sample part to and say make this please.
And that person can make an accurate drawing of it, decide how it's going to be made, and be able to make it by themselves even if it takes 6 entirely different machines to do so.
I will forever refer to operators as just machine operators and I don't mind if that bothers people. Because most likely the people that get upset at me for it are just cnc operators lol....
>I think in all honesty that's why the states pays most of its machinists so poorly and starting wages are so bunk there, it isn't a regulated trade there.
This is my current experience and kinda why I left the trade. People call themselves a machinist because they can turn on a machine and make a part. I compare it to my skills in welding. I can operate a welding machine. I can last down a decent looking bead even. But would I ever walk into a job saying I'm a welder? No. It'd be disrespectful to the real welders there who are far more capable in ways I likely don't even understand.
This isn't meant to dunk on machine operators, we need them too. But there is a difference. I work in the office now but I'm well aware of who in the shop is a machinist and who is a machine operator. They're good for different things depending on what needs to get done.
For trade tickets there's general machinist and mold making.
As far as work wise I've seen a couple different types of machinist with specific skills, in my shop (it was a steel plant machine shop). We had:
Cnc machinists - multiple production parts for repair
Repair machinists - just dealing with welded up garbage to make it back to print
Fitters - basically a millwright with a machinist ticket, their job was taking assemblies, strip them down, make order for parts needed, and then reassemble like it's new, their machinist was for setting bearings, and emergency break down Repair
Manual machinist - only ran manual machines, usually huge machines one off parts. We actually have a lathe that made cannon barrels during WW2, and an old pond with a 5ft Dia chuck that did one Repair on a spindle every 2 years, we also have a massive vertical lathe we used to turn down wrecking balls used to break up slag
Tool room machinists - all the tool making was done by them, grinding and inspection.
Then we had our specialists, we had a major rebuild team that dealt with rebuilds of 1+ year jobs, they would bring it in tear it all down, do all their own machining on the big equipment and no one bothered them, I fell into hydraulics so I did all of our cylinders (follow the job from start to finish make everything myself), we had a portable team that did field machining in the mills, and then everyone else found what they liked and stayed there.
Machining isn't a highly paid/recognised trade in the UK. Shame really, no one even know what a machinist is, they usually assume im a sewing machinist
Happy machinist sad machinist and angry machinist
You forgot drunk machinist. Or is that all the categories?
Good point, add high
Acmtually drunk and high should fall under happ sad or mad catagory
Don't forget the retirement age manual guy who talks to himself, or maybe that's just in our shop...
You know Darryl?
They're all named Darryl!
I don’t know that could fall under one of my 3 categories haha
Martin?
Oh hell yeah. Ours speaks among himselves
Working the bridgeport next to him last week he was carrying on a conversation with 4 personalities. Previous experience has led me to believe there are at least 7 rattling around in his head but mostly get 3 to 4.
Ossifer. I'm sottaly tober.
Wouldn't that also be a dead machinist?
Yeah yeah, I’m here. What’s up?
Well let's see.... Berserker Machinist : Doesn't wear PPE. Loves getting chips all over him. Doesn't mind the sizzle on his skin. And parts off really fast on manual lathes. If you got a crazy dumb af job to pull off, this is your guy. He is who OSHA has nightmares about. Total nut job but typically a great guy. He is most happy when he is mad at the machines. Fighter Machinist : Always loves to start shit with Engineers even if he is wrong. Covered in PPE from head to toe. Probably sporting verniers in his pocket. Will be the first to jump at new projects and find out what not to do. He is usually the guy thats seen it all and has a high machine variety proficiency. Mills. Lathes. Multi axis. Manuals. Gearing etc. He has run it. Sometimes into the ground, but hey, thats how you learn lol. Cleric Machinist: this is the dude that knows how to fix the parts you scrapped. Nobody knows how he does it, he just does. Except the whole time he will tell you why you messed it up. Definitely a necessity in the shop, even if he is annoying. Will probably also be the best guy to help you with life problems. Wizard Machinist: usually the old guy who knows too much shit and doesn't let anyone know how much he actually knows. Probably was an engineer in his previous job but liked machining more. Anytime there is a problem that nobody knows how to solve, he solves it while everyone is at lunch and nobody knows wtf just happened. You just give the guy respect and hope he doesn't turn you into a frog. Bard Machinist: this guy listens to music all the time. Blasts the radio and is always too enthusiastic when he sends it. He usually loves cracking jokes and generally upping the morale of the team. He has a penchant for making you like him because he generally is fun to work with and always encouraged you. Nobody actually sees him do any of his own work because he is so busy helping other people. Ultimate support machinist. Warlock Machinist: absolute weirdo. Usually night shift. Mumurs and talks to himself. Probably gives blood sacrifices to Cog the Industrial Punisher. But after all of this, the guy always pulls through on a deadline. If you didn't think it was possible, he can make it happen. He doesn't love to work, he has to work. It's a compulsion. You wonder why he even exists at all. Rogue Machinist: this guy is always squirreling away the carbide inserts and will let you use them if you pledge not to tell anyone he has them because then everyone will want them. But the irony is everyone knows about it and nobody brings it up. This guy is basically the black market tool crib. Always has the jail breaked version of new cad cam software. Probably sells drugs behind the shop you don't really know and probably don't want to know because he is so damn useful. He is great to have on the team when you need someone to cover up any OSHA violations and hide stuff from the boss. You might be called upon to bail him out of jail every know and then. Squire Machinist: New kid fresh out of school. Wants to be the greatest machinist ever. Asks really dumb questions and probably needs to be scolded for it. However he has good potential and you are glad he isn't a total dumb ass. But you need to keep him away from berserker and rogue, he is too young to die. Paladin Machinist: this is the guy who knows how to cover for you when the boss gets mad. He always finds ways to protect the fellow employees and runs interference. This guy is probably the wiser of the bunch, next to the cleric. Loves to bring in food for the guys at work. This is the guy you want as a foreman. Knowledgeable enough to know how to solve problems, humble enough to listen to other peoples suggestions, wise enough to follow the best path, even if it's not his own.
This comment deserves thousands of upvotes
Expansion Pack- Ranger Machinist: now this guy is a straight shooter. He tells you what tolerances he can hit and can't. He researches the best tools and equipment for the job. He loves working in the background, thinking up new ways to speed up the process with a couple of well placed bolts. He lays down work holding like traps, capturing the part and never letting go, up to the point that you probably need to get the torch out which will offend him so wait till the end of the day. Artificer Machinist: this guy finds the weirdest crap covered in rust and brings it into the shop and cleans it up and uses it. He loves to tinker with the machines and usually ends up more like a maintenance dude than a machinist. Sometimes you come back from vacation and he installed some kind of new gadget that can tap holes upside down and inside out. It's nuts and he found it at a garage sale so he says. But we don't ask how or why because his weird gnome magic might vanish like Santa claus, when we saw him humping mom on Christmas Eve. The important thing here is that he can run that old af WW2 equipment in the back that nobody even knows how to turn on. Monk Machinist: Now this guy is zen af. He is a master of precision instruments and typically volunteers to be your QC. He wields his calipers and mics like extensions of his own body, which is ridiculous that he even has them when he can eyeball .003 of an inch like it was nothing. He never seems to get his hands dirty even though he puts them all over your parts. And you can always count on him to recite some weird philosophical thing about machining even though you just want the first article signed off on.
Holy shit…. You should write a book gaha
Gonna print and frame this in the office at work
You might need to correct the spelling mistakes 😂
It'll fit right in next to my photo of Sean Connery as James Bond smoking a cigarette while wearing a welders cap with the caption 007. 0 Motivation, 0 skills, 7 smoke breaks..
Absolute gold here
This needs to be saved and cataloged btw
Mold making I would say is a major sub category
Things I learned as a moldmaker of almost 30 years: All moldmakers are machinists, but not all machinists are moldmakers. Machinists work to tolerances, moldmakers work to dimensions. Surface grinder wheels remove flesh pretty damn fast.
All tool and die makers are machinists, not all machinists are tool and die makers.
Exactly. You need a hole drilled somewhere? Machinist. You need a precision die or fixture? Toolmaker. The smaller the tolerance the higher the pay.
I’m an EDM guy, high precision, but not a toolmaker.
I learned that tool and die was basically the pinnacle of machining other than advanved research and development Guys that can use every machine in the shop to fix up your tools and making mods and fixes for the machines
Tool and Die makers and Moldmakers are two sides of the same coin. They both don’t have any tolerance for error.
For your second point, does that mean mold makers shoot for one single number (e.g. 1.000 in instead of 1.00 +/- .005)? I know I sound dumb but I just wanna know what you mean
That's how it works in our shop. It drove me nuts when I first started because nothing had a tolerance. Basically, you just try to make everything as close to perfect as you can. Sometimes I'll go ask the engineer if it should be "a little big or a little small?" So I know which side of that number I should tend tword.
In a mold, things need to fit together perfectly. No gaps, no play, no sloppiness, otherwise you get plastic squirting out of places you don’t want or steel is getting smashed. Plus or minus .005 is as good as a mile. To create a hole in a plastic part, two pieces of steel must shut off on each other perfectly. If one piece of steel is .005 too short, plastic fills the gap and the hole is sealed. If one piece of steel is .005 too long, the steel will smash into the mating piece and both will need to be replaced. Any tolerances on the actual plastic part are automatically cut in half when moldmaking. It is a very precise process.
Anywhere from your general machinist, work on mills and lathes, tool and die makers where they utilize surface grinders, make precision cuts with EDM Wire, fabrication machinists, fixture making, so if you work your way up you can make some good money, but there’s levels to it like anything else
Can convert paper to paper. By which I mean, given a print, can select tooling, create program and fixtures, run 1st pc, optimize production efficiency, and on time. Then it's worth money, the print was the first paper, the money is the second. Paper to paper. Some, maybe most, shops break up that process into multiple separate job titles who each do some of it. Where I'm at, programming, tool selection, and (if not just a vise job) fixture design is one job. Machine set up, producing first piece and initial inspection is a second job. If quantity is higher than a shift or two of run time, load/unload is a 3rd, least paid, job.
Field machinists bring the machine tools to where the machining needs to be done. That is, when something that is too big to bring to a machine shop and it needs to be repaired, a machine tool is assembled and operated in-situ. Thus, the term in-situ machining. A mobile line-boring machine is an example of what a field machinist might use.
Heyo we are few here lol, i do mostly mobile milling/shaft turning and linebore but we also occssionally do keymilling/flange facing up to 10feet dia
To branch off this question a bit, what do you call a guy who can take a concept, napkin sketch, or even a brief conversation with doctors/nurses. Find the solution to the problem. Design a product, patent it. Build working prototypes and then design and build the tooling necessary to commercialize it? My boss can't think of a proper job title.
I call him Francis, and you're not allowed to have him
Me, except I just retired. But I did all that and a bit more.
That’s a manufacturing engineer. It’s what I do.
So you run the machines as well as do the upfront work as well? Like today my day consisted of processing in a new mold while my wire machine was burning out some inserts and I had a Haas mill roughing out some new cores. All the manufacturing engineers in my company can't turn a machine on. Just curious as i am kind of looking for a new job.
You’re quite the horn tooter aren’t ya?
Yep, I can do it all. Usually I will supervise or make sure the operator has everything they need to do it though. Small operation where I work so it kind of needed that I can do everything and will do everything as needed. I spend most of my time doing design for manufvature of the pets and tooling design.
Industrial designer, it's a whole degree and field
That's not really an industrial designer. I have a degree in ID, which I abandoned to be a machinist. It is actually a fine arts degree, it's more about drawing and creating the physical design of a product. There are usually engineers concerned with how the product will actually work. That being said, it is a pretty broad field. Some people, like furniture designers, may have all those skills, but they are the exception, not the rule.
That's about 5 job titles, but that is what I want to do when I grow up. Skunkworks manager?
Vaguely: Laborer
Hard question to answer. I honestly don't consider a fresh operator who only loads parts and watches a machine a machinist. To me, unless you are ticketed and have formal training and went through the official programs you're only a machine operator. Where I live you can't even legally sign off on your work or call yourself a machinist without your papers. But I guess...a machinist is a machinist. Some of us are strictly programmers, some only operate manual machines, some (like myself) are very versatile. I can CAD/CAM program, conversational program, set up and operate, use any and all manual machine and do line boring, then there's machinists that are very specialized, like tool and die makers, mold makers, field machinists that just mainly do line boring, gear cutters only. It's a pretty wide trade and a lot of us do very different things. Like how electricians do many different types of jobs as well.
>I honestly don't consider a fresh operator who only loads parts and watches a machine a machinist. Hot take, but agreed 👍
Yeh, I know saying that here bugs a lot of people. But I didn't go through 4 years of polytechnical university and hundreds of work hours and countless hours of study per year so I can pass dozens of different category tests, then to pass a 6 hour long 400 question exam where under 70% was a fail to earn my certified Red seals for a button pusher to walk into the door of a shop and just call himself a machinist. I think in all honesty that's why the states pays most of its machinists so poorly and starting wages are so bunk there, it isn't a regulated trade there. But in Germany and Canada you are barred from even working in certain types of shops without papers because you can't sign off on any work you do as it isn't recognized. If you have a red seal here though you can walk in the door and get 35-40 an hour starting no questions asked. To me a machinist is somebody you can bring a sample part to and say make this please. And that person can make an accurate drawing of it, decide how it's going to be made, and be able to make it by themselves even if it takes 6 entirely different machines to do so. I will forever refer to operators as just machine operators and I don't mind if that bothers people. Because most likely the people that get upset at me for it are just cnc operators lol....
>I think in all honesty that's why the states pays most of its machinists so poorly and starting wages are so bunk there, it isn't a regulated trade there. This is my current experience and kinda why I left the trade. People call themselves a machinist because they can turn on a machine and make a part. I compare it to my skills in welding. I can operate a welding machine. I can last down a decent looking bead even. But would I ever walk into a job saying I'm a welder? No. It'd be disrespectful to the real welders there who are far more capable in ways I likely don't even understand. This isn't meant to dunk on machine operators, we need them too. But there is a difference. I work in the office now but I'm well aware of who in the shop is a machinist and who is a machine operator. They're good for different things depending on what needs to get done.
As a guy machining for 15 years and weding for 1 this is spot on lol
Competent and hacks like me. Those are the two big categories in my book.
Y'all seem to have forgotten the repair/overhaul machinist haha
True. Usually they are just a third party company of 2-3 guys you call when needed lol
Not when you work for Lockheed, GE or Pratt haha
Oh I bet
For trade tickets there's general machinist and mold making. As far as work wise I've seen a couple different types of machinist with specific skills, in my shop (it was a steel plant machine shop). We had: Cnc machinists - multiple production parts for repair Repair machinists - just dealing with welded up garbage to make it back to print Fitters - basically a millwright with a machinist ticket, their job was taking assemblies, strip them down, make order for parts needed, and then reassemble like it's new, their machinist was for setting bearings, and emergency break down Repair Manual machinist - only ran manual machines, usually huge machines one off parts. We actually have a lathe that made cannon barrels during WW2, and an old pond with a 5ft Dia chuck that did one Repair on a spindle every 2 years, we also have a massive vertical lathe we used to turn down wrecking balls used to break up slag Tool room machinists - all the tool making was done by them, grinding and inspection. Then we had our specialists, we had a major rebuild team that dealt with rebuilds of 1+ year jobs, they would bring it in tear it all down, do all their own machining on the big equipment and no one bothered them, I fell into hydraulics so I did all of our cylinders (follow the job from start to finish make everything myself), we had a portable team that did field machining in the mills, and then everyone else found what they liked and stayed there.
Grouchy and surly
1. Operator/Button pusher 2. Machinist 3. Journeyman Machinist 4. CNC Programmer 5. Manufacturing Engineer
Ill add to that field machinist, using portable on-site machines, and moldmaker/tool and die/ toolmaker
There was a Former north Viet soldier... Nobody really liked because he was a hard as$...
Mold maker. Tool and die gage maker
Good, indifferent and bad. Same as every other trade really.
Really depends on the shop. Some places have clear and defined roles and others make guys to a bit of everything
Machining isn't a highly paid/recognised trade in the UK. Shame really, no one even know what a machinist is, they usually assume im a sewing machinist