EXPOSED
The tending tier — loading bar stock, cycling parts, gauging with calipers and micrometers, logging counts — is exactly what bar feeders, robotic loaders, in-process probing, and lights-out CNC cells already absorb, and CAM software plus AI now drafts G-code and tooling strategies that operators once wrote by hand. What holds is the setup and troubleshooting tier: fixturing an odd part, dialing tool offsets, reading chatter and chip color, chasing a tolerance drift on a live job, and swapping inserts on a machine that doesn't care what the program says. The modal worker here straddles both tiers, which is why the number sits near the border rather than in the safe zone.
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier. Loading a bar feeder and pressing cycle-start is already lights-out work, but nobody has automated indicating a four-jaw chuck to a half-thou, hearing a boring bar start to chatter and dropping feed on the fly, or re-shimming a soft jaw because the casting came in oversize — the split between those two halves of your shift is what puts this at 10 and not 4 or 15.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments. You are inside the machine envelope with a dial indicator, changing inserts and toolholders, blowing out chips, dealing with coolant mist and hot swarf, and hauling bar stock — 14 rather than 18 because it's your own guarded machine on a shop floor, not a rooftop or a trench where conditions change on you.
No licence, no signature requirement. No licence, no stamp, no certificate anyone checks: a shop can hire you Monday on a trial run, and when a shaft goes out of tolerance the liability sits with the QC sign-off and the company's contract, not your name — the 1 rather than 0 is only the OSHA lockout/tagout duty you personally carry at the machine.
Anonymous artifact production. The turned part ships in a bin and the customer never learns who ran it; the 3 reflects that a programmer or shift lead comes to you specifically when a job won't hold size, which is internal reputation, not a client relationship that follows you.
Meaningful discretion. You decide when to bump an offset, when an insert is done, and when to stop the run and call it scrap — real calls with real money in them, but bounded by the print, the tolerance block, and the setup sheet, which is why this is 7 and not the 14+ of someone deciding what the tolerance should be.
Model Makers, Metal and Plastic EXPOSED
Maintenance Workers, Machinery EXPOSED
Has AI actually changed your work?