I have been a Tool & Diemaker for the past 15yrs. My opinion is the wages will not start to increase because in larger companies we are the overhead. Plain and simple. I get alot of the " we have to pay you to be here" syndrome, and they quote jobs without making hardly any profit to support us. Let's quote it at $20 and hour. OK well how are we going to pay for the consumables that we use.
I did my apprenticeship under the older toolmakers, where you learned everything by hand before you moved on to CNC and CAD. Spent many a day grinding in mold sections to fit, with forms and profiles. I was lucky enough to start out in a shop were I learned stamping, draw dies, plastic injection moulding. And lucky enough aswell to have owners who started the business and new what it took to manufacture what was needed. Then got sold to bean counters and the rest went down hill. So I moved on, now doing prog dies and die casting dies. And I love a wire machine that I have learned to program and operate. Like mentioned, takes some of the pain of grinding away. But you cant always get away from grinding either.  |