{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/patternmakers-metal-and-plastic/", "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology", "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.", "scored_at": "2026-08-11", "model": "claude-opus-5", "occupation": { "title": "Patternmakers, Metal and Plastic", "soc_code": "51-4062", "category": "Production", "us_employment": 1470, "median_annual_wage": 58000 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 42, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 12, "embodiment": 16, "liability_shield": 1, "trust_premium": 5, "judgment_accountability": 8 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "At 12 the split is real: CAD-driven CNC and 3D-printed cores have taken over the layout math, shrink scaling, and roughing that used to be your bench work, but chaplet placement, matchplate fitting, draft correction after a foundry rejects a casting, and hand-rubbing a pattern to a finish still need someone at the bench with a rasp and a straightedge — that's why it isn't 6, and why it isn't 16 either.", "embodiment": "16 reflects that you work inside a foundry pattern shop: mill and lathe setups, band saw and router work, lifting and clamping half-patterns and core boxes, checking parting lines against a plate by feel, and troubleshooting on the foundry floor where sand, heat, and a live mold line are the environment — not a fixture-controlled cell a robot can be taught once.", "liability_shield": "1 because nothing in the pattern shop requires a licence — no state board, no stamped drawing, no certification a customer must see; the foundry's engineer or the casting buyer's spec owns the consequences if a shrink allowance is wrong, and your protection is your reputation and your journeyman background, neither of which is a legal barrier to anyone replacing you.", "trust_premium": "5 because the pattern ships to a foundry and the casting is what the customer sees — a purchasing agent choosing between your shop and a printed-sand vendor is comparing lead time, tolerance, and price, and while a long-running foundry relationship earns you the tricky jobs and repeat rigging work, it does not survive the customer deciding not to buy a pattern at all.", "judgment_accountability": "8 fits because you make consequential calls that aren't in a procedure — how much extra stock to leave for machining, where to break a pattern for draw, whether a section will trap sand — but you make them against established shrink tables, industry allowances, and a print someone else approved, so the ambiguity is bounded and the expensive decisions about alloy and casting design sit upstream of your bench." }, "rationale": "The hands-on core — laying out, machining, fitting, and hand-finishing wood, metal, and plastic patterns and core boxes to shrinkage and draft allowances — is skilled physical work that AI and current robotics cannot replicate. The exposure is upstream and structural: pattern geometry, shrink factors, and gating layout increasingly come out of CAD/CAM and solidification simulation, and additive manufacturing plus printed sand molds bypass the physical pattern entirely. This occupation isn't being automated task-by-task so much as engineered around, and at 1,470 US jobs the shrinkage is already far along.", "outlook": "Employment keeps eroding as printed sand molds and direct CAM take over new work, leaving a small, well-paid remnant doing repair, legacy patterns, and prove-out for foundries.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Task-mix shift as CAD/CAM and printed sand molds absorb the routine new-pattern work, leaving the residual job as repair, rework and reverse-engineering of legacy patterns with no digital model — hand-fitting worn core boxes, correcting castings that came out of tolerance, and salvaging tooling for obsolete parts where scanning plus print is uneconomic at lot size one. Watch for shop advertising shifting from 'pattern fabrication' to 'tooling repair and reverse engineering'.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "embodiment", "change": "If defense and nuclear-component casting reshoring (DPA Title III foundry grants, Navy submarine industrial base castings funding) sustains demand for large, one-off match plates and core boxes in materials and sizes outside printed-sand build envelopes, the surviving work is disproportionately the unpredictable hand-fitting tier.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 2 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Where the patternmaker becomes the person who owns shrink, draft and gating calls that simulation flags ambiguously — signing off on first-article tooling before a five-figure casting run — the role absorbs consequential-call ownership formerly held by a foundry engineer. Recognisable as patternmakers named on AS9100/PPAP first-article approval records rather than only as fabricators.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "trust_premium", "change": "Narrow route only: restoration and heritage casting (architectural ironwork, historic machinery, art foundry) where clients specify hand-carved wood patterns as part of the commission. Real but tiny, and cannot absorb the industrial workforce.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 2 } ], "ceiling_note": "No plausible liability route: patternmaking is unlicensed and liability sits with the foundry and design engineer, not the patternmaker. And no lever addresses the core problem — the occupation is shrinking because the artifact itself is being bypassed by printed sand and additive tooling, not because tasks are being automated. Higher scores here would describe a smaller, more defensible remnant, not a stable occupation." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 3200, "wage": 45030 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 2880, "wage": 45840 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 3010, "wage": 46910 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 2400, "wage": 48160 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 2090, "wage": 48090 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 2230, "wage": 54970 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 2150, "wage": 49670 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 1570, "wage": 54540 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 1470, "wage": 58000 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": -54.1, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "welders-cutters-solderers-and-brazers", "title": "Welders, Cutters, Solderers, and Brazers", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 62, "median_wage": 53750, "overlap": 82, "skills_to_close": [] }, { "slug": "refractory-materials-repairers-except-brickmasons", "title": "Refractory Materials Repairers, Except Brickmasons", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 65, "median_wage": 61290, "overlap": 77, "skills_to_close": [ "Repairing", "Troubleshooting", "Equipment Maintenance" ] }, { "slug": "automotive-body-and-related-repairers", "title": "Automotive Body and Related Repairers", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 65, "median_wage": 54890, "overlap": 74, "skills_to_close": [ "Repairing", "Service Orientation", "Troubleshooting", "Management of Financial Resources" ] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }