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Is there no cnc machinist on the market??

g-coder05

Titanium
Joined
Mar 5, 2006
Location
Subic Bay
i have been trying but to no avail to hire cnc people for several months now. we have advertised in every online market we can think of "including PM" and cant get any responses. we offer free insurance "for the employee and there family", anything over 8 hours a day is time and a half. Saturday is time and a half for the first 8 then double time anthing over. sunday is double all day. and hollidays are tripple time. Did i mention a relocation bonus!! With all this i still cant even get a phone call. Should we offer more bennifits? or is there just nobody learning the craft anymore?

If anybody is hunting im looking for someone who can program in featurecam or mastercam. and is comfortable running either a 3 axis gantry cnc and or a large cnc vtl with live spindle "both fanuc 18 controled. for that matter even sombody that can run a haas vertical or horizontal mill.
surely theres sombody looking!!!

we are not fast paced just looking for quality single piece work.
 
Same problem here. Can't find a person to setup/run a Haas vf3. Simple automotive aftermarket aluminum parts. A person would have run of the shop. I am willing to pay a couple dollars per hour above the next shop. I would even have your coffee and donuts ready when you show up for work everyday. Wash/wax your car/truck for you on Fridays so your set for the weekend.

The local paper charges $70/week for an employment ad and your audience is very narrow. The state paper charges $250 week for an ad. Going a week without so much as a phone call gets expensive quickly.
 
"Is there no cnc machinist on the market?? "
NO

"With all this i still cant even get a phone call."
.. and those are definately better than the norm offerings...

"Should we offer more bennifits? "
Don't think it will matter much.

"or is there just nobody learning the craft anymore?"
BINGO....

Not to be so short... but this is problomatic in most cities across the country. This topic has been discussed in many forums (including this one), on TV, radio, cable/satellite, etc... in great depth. Bottom line,.... "blue collar" jobs don't carry the status that it used. All you have to do is look around at what kids are learning these days. When's the last time you heard a group of young'ns talking about their wood project, welding, metal shop or auto shop? Most high schools have shut down their "Industrial Arts" type of courses. It's all about "High Tech" ... computers, engineering (software/hardware), management courses, and the like. I guess they forgot about who has to make and build all of those components so that the above mentioned jobs can perform. With the lack of government support, schools operating on less and less money, lack of interest amongst the children, .... It's only going to get tougher.
 
Chips, If you can program, setup, and run this new horizontal, it's all yours with a nice fat,fat check to boot!!!! it just came in yesterday, big ec-1600 with all the bells and whistles, theres even an airconditioned office to program in!!! oh, and all the ot you can handle.
we service the utility industry "nuclear and fossil" and being that the government is releasing 33 new permits for new nuke plants theres gonna be no short of work.
 
Kinda related. I graduated high school where I had taken machine shop courses. OVer the summer was working at a grocery store. Kept catching guys shoplifting. The odd thing was they were stealing hamburg, bread, hotdogs, etc. Not the normal cartons of smokes and ribsteaks.

One day I asked one of them his story. He was laid off from the defense contractors ( new england 1990). Turns out almost all of these guys were and had exhausted unemployment and savings.

I loved machining but it didnt matter. Of to college for science I went. Funny thing is I ended up building lab and small scale process equipment and now own my own shop.
 
Chips, If you can program, setup, and run this new horizontal, it's all yours
Kind of tempting. I have owned my own shop since '89...with payments and employees out the yang. Finally got all the machines payed for and ran all the help off.
Last 4 years, scaled back to one guy part time. Now bored out of my mine ready to relocate (wayyyy up north) and crank up one more time...
Some times I think I was dropped as a kid.. :D
 
Good luck with you search.Im 30 years old ,been machining from the time i was in the 12 th grade which is about 12 years now .I have my journeymens papers for mold making .I can run all manual machines very well,set up and program cnc lathes ,mills and edms,the part that really makes me wanna get out of the trade and find a diffrent path is that at the end of the year with overtime im lucky to make 40 grand.Its very frustating to spend 6-7 grand on tools and make less money than people who just acquire jobs by walking into a agency and get put in front of a telephone and make calls all day.I really love what i do and take alot of pride in my work but that does nt seem to pay the bills lately,so i can why people dont want to be machinist and tool makers anymore.
 
I would suggest that you guys looking for decent cnc machinists realise one thing. Many of us got tired of the pathetic wages this trade has historically offered. Since we love what we do many of us have started our own small shops. You should be looking to farm work to us as we're reasonable and dependable and you don't have to pay our insurance.......why hire?

(Smallshop.... unofficial spokes person for the 1-3 person shops)
 
Here's a good one to kinda go along with what you're saying about not finding any help these days. My son who is nineteen has been working for me for a few years now and just a few weeks ago dropped down to part time hours with me and got a job at a grocery store making only $7.50/hr (half of what he was getting). He's says he's much happier now, and says it's not boring and he has more friends his own age. (I guess I can understand the friends thing)

So I guess for some, money doesn't really talk.......it's all about being happy in what you do!

I'm glad I'm happy......at least most days!


Best Regards,
Russ
 
I agree with Russ, to me it is more about being happy in what I do and take alots of pride in my work
.
I work full time job as mahinist for 12 years now, I do want to work on CNC machine and programing as same time but my work doesn't seem like to promote me so last year we bought few equipment and have it set up as small machine shop in garage and doing this as part time, hoping someday with work from home full time.
( I hate to say this but sometime I think it because of my age and color )
 
There is the same problem here in California.
I get job offers all the time. Recent was to reloacate to Northern Cal for 75 to 85 K. No thanks. I am happy where I am making 65 to 70 k with 3 to 5 percent raise and also bonus. Lets face it for all we have to know and the tolerances to hold and checked on CMM its not worth it to people. The stress etc. its really to much for some people. So they want you to know everything and they wanna pay crap. At my level and many of yours we are just below a engineer or should I say I know more then the design engineers at work. My wife is paying ladies at her bank $17.00 dollars an hour to be a loan,sales,acount rep with only 3 year experience. People with some skills and some education make 13 to 18 dollars and hour here working for the cable company, truck driving etc...you get my drift.
The job shops in town use cheap labor and the guys that need an experienced CNC/Machinist/programmer can't find help.
Also take in consideration there are guys running shops like in a big company say for instance a medical, electronics comp. who are an old manually machinist and the CNC guys quite because they are dealing with a fossil who is a dumb **** and they would rather leave then put up with it. Get into engineering and prototypes which is what I do. The pay is better and the stress level is much lower. Also it depends where you are offerin your job.
 
i have been trying but to no avail to hire cnc people for several months now. we have advertised in every online market we can think of "including PM" and cant get any responses. we offer free insurance "for the employee and there family", anything over 8 hours a day is time and a half. Saturday is time and a half for the first 8 then double time anthing over. sunday is double all day. and hollidays are tripple time. Did i mention a relocation bonus!! With all this i still cant even get a phone call. Should we offer more bennifits? or is there just nobody learning the craft anymore?
Offer me a green card, a supply of beer and chocolate, a comfy office chair , a 3lb lump hammer, an endless supply of operators , and a scratching post for the cat*


If anybody is hunting im looking for someone who can program in featurecam or mastercam. and is comfortable running either a 3 axis gantry cnc and or a large cnc vtl with live spindle "both fanuc 18 controled. for that matter even sombody that can run a haas vertical or horizontal mill.
surely theres sombody looking!!!
Aww sorry bud, I can only do Bridgeport VMC's and Hardinge turning centers

Boris

* alternatively, the cat can use the operators as a scratching post :eek:
.
.
come to think of it, the cat maybe a better operator than some of the guys I have to put up with...... and smarter too :D
 
"Offer me a green card, a supply of beer and chocolate, a comfy office chair , a 3lb lump hammer, an endless supply of operators , and a scratching post for the cat*"


Boris...mr slammy can come also....no need to replace him. :D


I've had job offers too....but when some one acts like a $25 hr offer is a kings ransom to design,make blue prints, plan, order material, deal with operators,inspect parts, grind custom tools, setup and run onsies-twosies, deal with customers......you suddenly realize that mailing the invoice is the only thing you haven't learned and you're willing to try.......

non-paying customers is another story :rolleyes: ......maybe I should take some of those job offers....
 
Hey g-coder05,
Your best bet may be to scour the local tech schools and community colleges. Find someone willing to work, who is taking something at least similar to machine shop...drafting, welding, auto mechanics, hvac, etc.
Bring them in and train...train...train.
Tell them if they ever consider leaving, to come to you first. Be prepared to make some counter-offers as the years go by. If they are good, and vital to your shop, don't let a little money or benefits stand in the way.
One of the many reasons I am a 1 man cnc shop.
Good luck.
 
I had many friends leave this trade because they were tired of being laid off everytime something went wrong like Sept.11 they are driving big rigs hauling all the stuff that people are ordering from E-bay. and they are not coming back. these guy's were top dawg's in the industry.
 
As I was driving home from Arkansas last weekend with a new to me welder, I heard a radio station in Tulsa, OK advertising for cnc machinists. They stated wages to $26.00/hour, and a multi million dollar backlog. I had never heard an ad for cnc machinists on the radio before, so I figured things were getting tight.

As for workers, have you tried advertising in the Detroit area? My friends from when I lived there say the area is very slow. There are (or were) alot of top notch machinists in the area.

When I was hiring machinists in the Detroit area in the late '80's to mid '90's, many of the good ones had 2 to 4 years of oil patch work in the early '80's, the last time Detroit tanked big time. At that time Detroit was so bad there was a billboard leaving town asking the last one to leave to please turn out the lights. There may be someone willing to leave now.
 
had many friends leave this trade because they were tired of being laid off everytime something went wrong like Sept.11 they are driving big rigs hauling all the stuff that people are ordering from E-bay. and they are not coming back. these guy's were top dawg's in the industry.
I'm one of them. After 9/11 co asked for (and got) across the board 10% pay cut. I took extra pay cut as I was 'Working Foreman'(Lost Foreman pay too, ran Mazak and helped other on setups,etc.) I was still doing the same job but for a lot less money. Then they decided it was cheaper to move to Mexico. I bought a truck but I would still rather be doing CNC work and using my brain. I have applied for several jobs in Portland OR and the requirement is almost universal: "Must have H1-B Visa" I can't get one 'cuz I was born here.
"White Male Americans need not apply"
Note: I'm not a racist, this is just an observation.
 








 
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