I was a machinist/welder in the Air Force for a number of years. It was a really good experience, I learned a trade, and they paid for school. I'm now an engineer and while it is nice to not be standing in front of a machine all day, I do miss it sometimes.

Walked over to the shop at work today and poked around a bit on the lathe. I'm definitely out of practice but it is nice to be able to make things like this rather than buy them.
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Tool and Die maker as well. Been at it for 7 years now. Work at a small job shop that does a lot of guages and assembly fixtures and your typical job shop kinda things. Just like a lot of others in here I am hoping to be self employed some day. I currently do a fair bit of automotive work on the side and am going to school for mechanical design. Once I've exhausted my night class options I'll quit this job and see if I can land a part time gig as a wrench. A part time gig as an engine machinist would be awesome!

Machinist turned Mechanical Engineer here. We make pipe fusion machines. I'm very fortunate in that we have a small shop just for engineering to make prototypes in with machining, fabrication and testing equipment.

http://www.mcelroy.com/images/no412_tracked_large.jpg

That green machine is awesome! The only thing I'll miss about being a tool maker is the access to the equipment.

Does that machine friction weld the pipes together?

It's basically 5-step process. The pipe is loaded into the machine, then faced off for a clean virgin surface, then a heater is put between the pipe and finally followed by removing the heater and fusing the two pieces together under pressure.

McElroy Machine Video

That's pretty cool!

Cool job, Bandit! We use McElroy exclusively for all of our HDPE runs.

That's neat to hear Supe. It's certainly a lot of fun, and a great company to work for.

If you ever come out to do some training in Tulsa, let me know as the engineering building and training center are right next door.

fabricator and machinist here, but currently in school for mechanical engineering.

I currently work as a fabricator at MAGNET where we build and design custom machines.

Id love to post pictures of some of the machines but sadly I cant due to my contract.

Mechanical Engineer here. Worked for Boeing on Space Station until I retired. Then worked on the things I love, race car suspension. I design the parts, and then program and setup the machines, always run the prototypes and frequently run the production runs.

Running an older Leadwell mill and a brand new Leadwell lathe.

CNC lathe programmer here. College trained welder and Manual machinist. Run a Mazak 200II MY..most of the time.
Greg