Newbie Machinist Seeking Advice

[chineshop_guy]

Regardless of the Op, It is a good title and so if posters stay to the subject it can be a useful thread for any newbie seeking a start in the tooling trades.
So far it looks like the best recommendation is to take a tooling job at a decent shop and figure that you will make low pay for 3 to 5 years to gain talents.
*I think a newbie could create personal projects to get experience by asking to work over on non-pay time to learn and on-the-sly show off talents the boss or company did not know you have. For example, study truing an angle plate to .0002 by going to youtube for a few weeks to learn every detail and having all the tools and gauges ask the boss if you can stay over to tweak-in your angle plate. The boss will have a new appreciation for the newbie, you.
*The same goes for the mill or lathe..make some Do Dad for your toolbox, with part of the intention being to show off a talent.
*Becoming a master of a certain machine like a lathe or grinder can enhance one's pay advancements, take the book How to Run a Lathe and learn everything in the book...start with the
"Application Of Lathe tools" ..and do the whole book.
Get a Surface Grinding Book and study every talent, often tool guys shy away from the grinder so you might become the shop's grinder hand.
* Another thing is to be helpful to the shop and to the boss (even if the boss is a jerk).
->Yet another possibility is to take a lesser job in a big tool shop like John Deer or the like and put in for an apprenticeship.

yep, what you say there is kind of the road i took. doing things after hours and such. also invested a lot of my own time learning things that served me well in the trade.
i was pretty good with the surface grinder and form grinding and i'll never tell anybody. hate those things

 

[eKretz]

I stayed after almost every day during my apprenticeship. Worked as a helper for the more experienced guys for free so I could ask questions and watch what they were doing. Often for half a shift. Okayed it with the supervisor first, he had no issues with it.

 

[chineshop_guy]

two years at a tech school isn't a lot and certainly isn't like being in a real shop.
the main things you can do early on.
get your foot in the door.
show up in timely manner
have good attitude
be eager to learn
take the crappy jobs, do them well
show some initiative
care about everything you do
if you can't do those few things nobody is going to invest much in you.
most of what i've seen happen with younger people is they'll get stuck loading parts and pushing the green button. after only a week or so they get bored and discouraged.
at that point you need to be able sensibly communicate that you want learn more about setting up and programming and such and hopefully have some one that thinks enough of you to invest the time in training you.
it takes time working your way up the food chain.