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Justin Cavender
09-21-2009, 3:15 PM
I find myself in a situation where the government wants to pay me to go to school and pay for the school. But the only thing That interests me is the machinist course is there any employment for machinists or tool and die I know all the manufacturing jobs are going elsewhere. Does anyone know?

Ed Jolin
09-21-2009, 3:59 PM
Justin - fwiw, a year or so ago, I was taking a welding class, and I also wanted to take some machinist courses at out local community college for fun. They had mostly been shut down, and nothing was offered.

I later learned (from the welding instructor) that the college was finding welding coursework and degrees were better serving the population with locally employable skills. As he pointed out, in many cases (e.g. pipelines, bridges, heavy equip repair, etc), welding can be harder to outsource. So, the welding dept was actually growing rapidly to meet the need.

I suspect it also depends greatly on your location as to the market for machinists.

Good luck - I hope you find something of interest!

Clint Heidelberg
09-21-2009, 7:31 PM
Every town has a few machine shops. I work at a power plant and most of them have machineist(is that how you spell it:confused:) espically the old hydros since you can't buy parts for the machines. The goverment hydros sometimes will have postings for machineist(?). As you can tell spelling isn't one of my strong points. :o


Clint

Frank Guerin
09-21-2009, 8:04 PM
I believe my first real job after getting out of the service was a machinist. I loved it. Close tolerance on the old Red eye and Atlas missles but that was a long time ago. The last forty years that I worked mostly refinery the machine jobs were farmed out or at least most of them. I believe that reguardless of what field you choose or are fortunate to get into that contractor work is not your best bet for long term. Of course that is where many started and worked up. Todays economy makes it challenging but not impossible to find long time permament employment witth benefits.

Ken Fitzgerald
09-21-2009, 8:22 PM
With a large paper mill and saw mill in town and others in the surrounding areas, we have a machine shop ....several actually, that employ several machinests.

Chris Damm
09-22-2009, 8:17 AM
Around here if you want to become a machinist you had better learn to speak chinese too!

Rob Cunningham
09-22-2009, 1:04 PM
I've been a Tool & Die Maker for 27 years. In that time there has been a big decline in available jobs. Most jobs today that are called machinist jobs are production work, where you stand in front of a CNC machine and just load parts and push the "GO" button. If you can get into programming and running, that's a better job.
There's not a lot of Die shops around anymore but there are a lot of injection molding companies. I've worked in several, building molds for anything from simple furniture cups to precision medical instruments.
Another area to look for jobs is hospitals and colleges. I work for a local college in their machine shop. We design and build tools and equipment for teaching labs and professor's research.
There are also maintenance machinists that work for power plants and other large companies. Any company that has a production line will most likely have a machine shop of some kind.
It all depends on the type of work you want to do. Good luck with your decision.

Jim Rimmer
09-22-2009, 1:43 PM
There are a lot of machine shops in the Houston area. I work for a company that repairs control valves for the refineries and chemical plants on the ship channel. We have our own machine shop and send stuff out to local shops. Unemployment here is around 8 % but when things turn around there will be a lot of machining work.

Cliff Rohrabacher
09-22-2009, 3:11 PM
I find myself in a situation where the government wants to pay me to go to school and pay for the school. But the only thing That interests me is the machinist course is there any employment for machinists or tool and die I know all the manufacturing jobs are going elsewhere. Does anyone know?

God bless you.

Back when Jimmi Carter was President I was mastering the trade of Machinist/Tool Maker. Then within a very few years my whole entire trade craft was outsourced to history. I took jobs in research and development and with a university but in the world of regular jobs it was pretty much a dessert. The CNC had put all the real machinists out to pasture. Today one engineer can manage a whole factory of CNC machines and have a couple boys handy to change cutters and put fresh stock in the work holding vices.

So as for getting training as a machinist: I'd be surprised if there were even people still alive who were qualified to train any one at all.

And then, where would you work? I mean you need about 6 - 10 years just to get seriously competitive in the trade. And meanwhile who wants machinists? Even the custom car and bike shops are all CNC. Nobody knows anything about the trade any more and no one wants to. Every body wants to make impossibly complicated pictures on a computer and then let the CNC guy do it.

(when did I become so Cynical?)

Anyway get yerself eddykated in sumpin that you can turn a good living at.

A five year college program in business with an emphasis inf passing the CPA. That's a thing you can earn a living with.
And even then ya gotta go where the money is and your heart will break when you realize that more than half your work is being outsourced VIA satellite to India.

The "Satellite to India" thing has been a cancer eating away at every one for a while now. Even law firms are sending research work to India.

Maybe the best thing would be to get a truck a license and start a medical waste collection business. There's going to be lots of waste in the medical fields soon enough.

Rob Cunningham
09-24-2009, 7:09 PM
One thing I forgot to mention. If you do decide to go into this trade, be prepared to work long days/weeks. With the exception of the job I have now at the college, every shop I work in required overtime. My average work week was anywhere from 55 to 75 hours per week. I missed a lot of my kid's growing up because of work. There were days my kids were in bed when I left for work, and in bed when I got home. Just something to consider when making your decision.

Orion Henderson
09-25-2009, 12:05 PM
I hate to say this-as I own a very small shop that does some machining-but there is not the career path I would recommend. I employ one machinist and a few shop people to do production. Someone with machinist training is overqualified for most of my workload. Welding seems like a much better option. I see guys on a weekly basis come in looking for machinist work. I just don't have it and I don't really see where they will go in the future. Sorry.

mickey cassiba
09-25-2009, 6:35 PM
Too true. I am a self taught machinist with over thirty years of hands on experience. MOST of today's machinists are button pushers and part loaders. The learning curve is steep, and lately the rewards are minimal. I've got a friend who owns an impressive shop with 3 engine lathes, a couple of Bridgeports and presses out the yang. These days he pays the rent by rebuilding hydraulic cylinders and selling seal kits. It's fast becoming a lost art. Sad to say, but true. American machinists literally built this country into the super power it is. I am currently a "maintenance machinist. repairing and making parts for machines that are made overseas.
Sorry for the mini-rant but it's true and no one can change the truth.
Mickey

george wilson
09-25-2009, 6:49 PM
I was Master Tool and Instrument maker in a museum.Stayed there 39 years. I made pretty decent money after several years. From frequenting the Practical Machinist's Forum for several years,I was rather surprised at the low pay figures that were talked about. Also about the number of jerks who seem to run a lot of the shops.

I did a LOT better than just about any of those guys,and you have to know a lot to be a true machinist. Other than that,you are really just a machine operator. At worst,someone who loads metal into a cnc machine.

I advise you to check around and see what kind of pay future you might be getting into. Also,there are likely a lot of unemployed machinists out there looking for work. Manufacturing in this country is not in good shape.

Justin Cavender
09-25-2009, 9:43 PM
So instead of that I was also thinking about a degree in cad. Anything with a degree will pay better than what I am doing now I am embarassed to even post what my income is it is low and I work hard and do a great job for my boss but he doesnt want to pay good.

James Stokes
09-26-2009, 12:47 AM
Well right now there are an abundance of cad draftsmen out of work and looking. I recieved a cad degree about a year ago and I have only managed to get one interview since then. I also have 2 differant head hunter firms trying to get me work and they are coming up empty handed plus I recieved the retraining through the state and they will pay 75 percent of my wages for the first year and that has not helped.
But it has helped me out with the laser Business though.

David Freed
09-26-2009, 8:11 AM
So instead of that I was also thinking about a degree in cad. Anything with a degree will pay better than what I am doing now I am embarassed to even post what my income is it is low and I work hard and do a great job for my boss but he doesnt want to pay good.

I graduated high school with very good grades, but never considered going to college. Even though I could make good grades without really trying, I despised school. I started my first job when I was 15 at $1.40/hr. After a few jobs and several years I was finally able to become self-employed. After being self-employed for fourteen years, I borrowed heavily to start a second business. After 4 years of hard work and long hours, it finally sucked me dry financially, and I had to close both businesses. I won't say it was completely because of the downward spiraling economy, but that was a very large part of it.

The only job I could find was a terrible place to work and it took a week at $10/hr to make what I used to make in a slow day. On several occasions I made more in 1 day than I could make in a month at this job. I looked for almost a year trying to find something else. I was finally able to land a job two weeks ago at a great place to work with a significant pay increase.

There were a few times when I was really discouraged that I wondered if I should have tried to go to college for something, even though I still despise the thought of going to school. Now, even though my income is still less than when I was self-employed, I am making more money than many people that have a college degree.

I am saying all this because there are a great many people that think you are a nobody and a loser if you don't go to college. The fact is that there are more occupations now than in the past that pay fairly well and require no degree. I am not trying to talk you out of going to college. I am just suggesting that you look at all options before you spend a lot of money to get a piece of paper that will let you get a job that isn't going to pay really great. Not only that, but if you borrow the money, you have a lot of school loans to pay back just to get back to broke even.

The job I have now pays more than the average wage for a machinist or cad draftsman, and almost as much as the high end of both pay scales, and I didn't spend any money for a degree.