10 min read
When we think of the machine shop, a few things come to mind immediately. It’s most likely a place that is kind of dirty and smells oily, that probably has an old drill press and one functioning lightbulb. The reality is, yes that can be true. Machine shops have existed since medieval times really, someone who can take elements and work with metal as the medium and create a product. Whether that’s a sword from a blacksmith, you’re a subcontractor in a rented garage space, or a bonified production company. What defines a modern day machine shop may depend on who you ask. I’ve been exposed to a wide variety of shop environments in my life, to include 3 professional machine shops, one automotive shop, one massive Dixie paper plant, a metal supply company, and technically my college and high school machine shops. Some were quite clean and others were so, so dirty. Biologically dirty even (more on that later).
I believe the misunderstanding that all machine shops are gross really deters a lot of people from pursuing this career. Based on all my experiences, I would define a modern machine shop as a place containing fixed machine tool equipment designed for modern service manufacturing or production manufacturing. However I want to try and illustrate the differences of present day manufacturing in the United States.
Wait, there’s two types of machine shops?
Absolutely, two different set ups for two different purposes. The service machine shop or ‘job shop’ provides a machining service to the general public. Usually engineering companies will use these types of machine shops for short runs of parts they need right away. Then you have mass production manufacturing. These companies will be outfitted with the latest and greatest equipment designed to make at least thousands of parts as fast as possible. I personally have never worked in production because, frankly I find it extremely boring looking. The way I’m wired I need to be doing different stuff each day. I’m a contractor and maybe its my way of rebelling against The Man. The job shop is rewarding in that way, but the biggest con is the simple fact that job shops profit far less. In short, production manufacturing companies is where the money’s at.
I was fortunate to have a really awesome high school machining program, in fact this is where the Acsis Systems story begins with Alex and myself 10 years ago. One day on a field trip, we visited a company here in New Hampshire that specialized in making turbo impellors for diesel engines. It was a huge building with fancy glass windows and multi story office. The shop was really cool, very high tech, outfitted with 5 axis mills that primarily ran ball endmills to make complicated billet machined turbo parts (as opposed to aluminum casting which is far weaker). Obviously our whole class was gawking at the sheer scale of this place. I remember how uncomfortably loud it was in there with dozens of machining centers whirring at 15,000 RPM. While the machining environment was pretty cool, there was a lot of employees. Probably 50 workers on the floor, all at different stations doing their thing. Some were machine operators, some drove fork lifts, some took the parts from A to B. I quickly sensed that was not an environment I would thrive in.
Why is a bigger company better?
There are a lot of benefits to this kind of workplace. Especially once you turn 26 and won’t have health insurance from your parents anymore. A lot of smaller companies simply can’t afford the best health insurance and it could cost the employee up to $70 a week. The big companies can also afford to put you through training and skills you can take with you in life. When we make the choice to not go to undergrad college, we accept that a lot of the jobs out there might be kind of… crappy. These companies are able to hire someone off the street, start them off on a production role and give them that opportunity. From there you’d progress as the years go by just like any other career. This could very well be the means to an end for a lot of people who might have families and struggle to give their families basic health care. Especially in that area of New Hampshire where there isn’t a whole lot of opportunities.
For the sake of simplicity, I’ll say 50% machine shops are job shops and 50% are production. Production could include one owner that just runs two HAAS VF-1’s in his garage all day. I’d say most production shops started off as a job shop at first. There’s an evolution that occurs where you build a name for yourself and you meet better customers, resulting in better contracts that might give you ‘that one’ job that lasts 7 years or something crazy. This just happened with my brother in laws plumbing company. After probably 20 years in the game they landed a huge job for their tiny crew. It can and does happen. It’s inevitable actually if you’re persistent enough and have a good reputation.
Job shop
The cards that were dealt to me led me on the path of the job shop. Mind you, when I was 16 I knew this career was my destiny. But I had no idea really how the world worked or what type of environment I’d end up in. My uncles and father were all machinists, both grandfathers too. And I was sort of the black sheep of the family and friend groups that joined the trades. One of my uncles did this route and worked his way up to the point where he’s now a government employee with either a secret or TS clearance. His route was machine maintenance which I personally find so fascinating. Who would of thought one day there would be a huge demand for people with the skills to repair broken down CNC machines. When production is so critically analyzed, it is so important to not have any equipment down for an extended period of time.
Coinciding with doing community college full time, I worked part time at two places. The first job, which full disclosure I was at for two days, was sold to me as being a CNC water jet operator at a metal distributor. Me being a socially awkward kid accepted a position as a general laborer and they had me doing the dumbest tasks straight away. What really sealed the deal for me was a coworker telling me you had to work there for something like a year to even use the band saws. Through sheer luck and word of mouth, I immediately found another job which I worked at for 6 and a half years. A great family owned job shop that did some really cool stuff. I call these my apprentice years because I was terrible at the it for so long.
Production company or job shop?
Having these two frames of reference, being that high school field trip and my professional experiences, it can be hard to say which one is the better path. They are both modern machine shops with the same level of quality but two totally different attitudes. Both will turn you into some type of machinist over time. Both jobs start you off running a CNC, loading in parts, making 11 bucks and hour. Pretty sweet deal in my opinion. This is where you learn to use measuring tools, and learn what all the types of tools do. I tried to study the G code my boss had programmed but I was just simply not mature enough to want to even attempt CNC programming. Here’s where the split happens.
While I went off on this trajectory to become a master manual machinist (note: cringe title), a person who joins up with a production company will be going straight into CNC set up and then programming. If you show the correct aptitude and interest, your management will notice and move you up. Otherwise, you can pick up your things and find another company that might be willing to move you up immediately without a ‘vetting process’. It’s not uncommon in the corporate world to perhaps cross paths with former employers again, so it’s important to not burn bridges. The company you worked for 10 years ago might want you back. You might be put in a position where you need them back.
If you like working with your hands doing something different every day, you fall into the ‘general contractors’ of the machine shop world. While we probably won’t be rich, it is the most uncompetitive position; once you’ve become highly skilled, you have so much leverage. Small shops always need help, and learning all the physics of machine tools makes CNC programming much easier. Yes there’s speeds and feeds charts but actually having the physical experience on top of that makes everything faster. The goal is to be good at manual and CNC, that way you’re fully hirable anywhere.
Immediate red flags in a machine shop
I want to briefly talk about the worst place I’ve ever worked. While the people were really nice, the machine shop was frustratingly old school. It was the story of the kid taking over dad’s business and not upgrading anything. I worked at this place for a year, it being my 2nd machinist job. I was still only doing manual stuff but added a bunch of obscure skills to my trick bag which was really cool. I do appreciate the work the company was doing, but the equipment was just too old to be accurate and fast. Paying me $20 an hour to run a manual bridge port (with no computer/servos) isn’t always the best way to compete. As an experienced ProtoTrak mill user, I pleaded with them to buy a couple of these machines. Bridgeport knee mills that only have hand cranks are kind of useless in the professional manufacturing world. With the exception of “this Bridgeport is used rarely when the other machines are tied up”. It shouldn’t be the headliner milling center. Our lathe chucks were also non adjustable, meaning no set screws to tram the part in. They barely used soft jaws. It blew my mind some of the junk this place had still in service. I love old lathes and they’re great but when you have ones that blow fuses all the time because the voltage has been transformed 7 times, or one machine that’s missing an entire gear, “this one can’t thread metric because the metric gear has a broken tooth”. Stuff like this is seriously something to watch out for if you’re looking for a modern place to work. You will not learn anything worthwhile in this environment. Thankfully I was already pretty advanced so I could deal with it. The worst part was the bathroom. Nobody ever cleaned it, and there was arterial blood splatter on the wall facing the toilet.
The light at the end of the tunnel
Unfortunately, yes there are still a lot of gross machine shops. Those places will soon find out that retaining employees is no longer possible, and then blame a political party for their hardships. You want to work at a place that’s growing. Modern machine shops are not blacksmith forges anymore. They aren’t WW2 factories in Detroit anymore. The frequent use of CNC machines in both production and service type shops have greatly reduced the amount of grime and danger of machining that use to be the norm. If you Google image search machine shop, you’re only going to see the nice ones. Fear not though, you have a pretty good shot at finding a great place you can call your home. Hopefully my personal experiences are valuable to someone who’s interested. I’m 27, so I am very much a product of modern society.
I believe manufacturing in the United States is going to be forced to make a comeback. With global tension always changing between our near peers, how on earth will we be able to support ourselves? The trend is definitely looking like small shops with a few employees. The main problems are cost of labor is high, and the days of building empires with dozens of employees is very limited right now post-pandemic. Manufacturing extends it’s talons to touch so many aspects of society. Whether you like it or not, manufacturing will always be necessary. It all begins at a large or small place of business with fixed equipment to make parts for other companies. Modern day machine shops are becoming a more and more comfortable environment to work in, and I fully encourage anyone to consider taking on this challenging yet highly rewarding career.
