Career Explorers 001- Machinist

Where are we going? Hmm, where are we going? Oh yeah, we're going to Scott Forge. Hello everybody, my name is Tony and I'm here with Jeremy at the Scott Forge building in Clinton, Wisconsin. Can you tell me a little bit about Scott Forge and the work they do here? So here at Scott Forge, we're an open die forging company. We make everything from aerospace parts to mining to infrastructure. Jeremy, clarifying, what is forging? Forging, we take a raw piece of metal, whatever the customer ordered. We use big presses, we press it into near net shapes and then we heat treat and machine them. Can you clarify what near net shapes are? The customer will have a drawing or a size as they want, so we'll forge it to as close as that as possible so then when it comes to machining, it takes less time, less material and it saves some money in the overall. So what's the job that we're going to learn a little bit more about today? So today we're going to go in and run a machine and see how that process works. I'm really excited to learn more about the machinist job here at Scott Forge. Sounds good, let's head inside. All right. Right now we're in the long lathe bay. Basically what a lathe does, we'll put our as forged part in between centers. When we turn it on, it's going to spin and then the tooling will actually cut the steel down to the customer's sizes. Right here, Tony, we're at the controls, the CMC control. I already have the programs ready to go. They match the print, so we're ready to start machining. So we can go ahead and turn it on. It's going to start spinning. We have a tool in there and then the tool has an insert. The insert's made out of carbide, so the carbide will actually cut the steel. We're going to start turning off that raw scale or that forging to start making the customer's finish sizes. How do you stay safe over here working with such big machines? When you're over here on an open machine, we have a lot of guards to help protect against flying chips, and then we also have all the safety gear. You have your eye protection, your hard hat, and we generally wear long-sleeved clothing. Do you always work on the same machine or same area, or how does it work? A lot of the times, we'll move around and run different machines, so you're usually not on the same machine every day. It is essentially the same as the machine we were at. It is a lathe. It runs a lot smaller parts and it's a lot newer. It's also all enclosed, so anything coming off the machine, it'll be caught. It won't come out. So I'm going to assume that these are the small spindles that you put in the machine. Yep, just like at which we were running a large spindle over here, these ones are a lot smaller. So the load spindles, we generally use an overhead crane or what we call a jib crane. What does a typical day look like for you here? So a typical day as a machinist at Scott Forge, you come in, we usually do like a safety briefing, and everyone gets their work instructions, and we come out to the machines and start running the machines. What kind of skills does someone have coming into this? General measuring equipment, such as a tape measure, being able to read that. Constantly using math skills to read blueprints and take measurements. For anyone wanting to go into this job, what kind of career path should they take? Coming into Scott Forge, I mean, you can come in and take an apprenticeship program. You can also do a student learning program and learn while you're at school also. Those are good paths to take. Also, you can come in right after high school and just put in an application. When students are coming here and also going to school, what kind of schooling would they be doing? Generally, if you came here for machining, you'd be taking those courses at Blackbuck learning about machining. Can you explain a little bit what that means? Scott Forge is an ESOP company, which stands for Employee Stock Ownership Plan. So every employee has stocks and shares in the company. It's important because that makes everyone care more about the job. Everybody really cares about the quality, makes sure we do everything right the first time. Working at Scott Forge, what keeps you coming back? I would say I like it at Scott Forge so much because of the people. People generally care about the jobs and everyone's working towards the same goal. And is there any last-minute advice you want to give to any high school students looking to pursue a career in this path? As long as you come in with a positive attitude, be willing to learn, we'd be more than happy to teach you. Thank you, Jeremy, so much for showing us around and explaining everything to us. No problem, Tony, anytime. All righty, and thank you so much for watching this video. If you have any further questions or looking to a career into manufacturing, you can go ahead and contact Scott Forge.