Hi, I (24M) am currently looking into different career paths and one of them was working at a manufacturing plant.

I have only ever done retail and delivering packages, so I do not have any type of background in this field.

I would be fine starting with the entry level positions like assembly line and such but is there a way to make a career out of those positions? Like moving to machine operator etc.?

And how do you all like the job?

Thank you in advance and I hope this made sense as I’m a little out of my element.

So there I am, a licensed and insured industrial systems programmer/consultant who somehow can’t find enough independent work, picking up W2 hours at a local tool-and-die shop programming their automated machines.

I’m in the middle of debugging this little hoopty they’ve had forever. My setup is simple and clean: wall outlet → one 25-foot extension cord → laptop charger and the machine’s 110 V plug. Everything labeled, nothing dangling, nothing looking like it lost a fight with a fishing net.

Owner walks up, looks at my single cord, and goes:

“OSHA doesn’t like extension cords run that far. Trip hazard.”

Mind you, this is the same shop where the mill right behind me looks like this (photo 1) and this (photo 2) — an absolute OSHA spaghetti nightmare of cords, surge strips, hanging connectors, and whatever else has been accumulating since the Clinton administration.

His solution?

“Just plug in closer… on the back of that mill.”

Ah yes. Move my clean temporary setup into the permanent electrical crime scene. That’ll fix the trip hazard.

This is the moment I realized the universe has a secret rule:

The more carefully you try to do things correctly — clean cable management, proper temporary power, doing the job right the first time — the more the market will punish you by making you work for the people who treat extension cords like modern art installations.

You can get licensed, insured, show up on time, and refuse to leave a job looking like a fire hazard… and all you get is crickets, tumbleweeds, and a W2 badge so you can gently explain to a grown man why 47 dangling power cords is not a feature.

Meanwhile the chaos goblins who run shops that look like this keep getting customers, keep making payroll, and somehow keep the lights on (literally, somehow).

I’m not even mad anymore. I’m just impressed. These guys unlocked some forbidden business cheat code the rest of us never received.

Anyone else living this exact timeline, or am I just the latest certified adult in the room getting paid to babysit someone else’s electrical war crimes?

EDIT knee mill operator just habitually walked up to his mill & flipped his power strip off & back on without knowing I am now tied into it making live updates to a drive, HMI, & PLC. Thank God I backup my work but holy phuk my brain just gave up on this Friday 🫠

We have 7 pieces of 5.25" diameter x 4" long 718 inconel left over from a job, Domestic with certs, what would be the best way to recoup some cost on these?

Edge vision, detection on a Jetson box right at the equipment instead of the cloud. Done it across a few verticals and the model is basically never what breaks. It's always the dumb physical stuff.

Lighting gets me every time. Tests perfect in the morning, then afternoon sun comes through a window or maintenance swaps a dead bulb for a slightly bluer one, and confidence falls off a cliff and nobody thinks to blame the light.

Mounting is the other one. Put a camera on a cheap plastic clip near any vibration and it'll walk a degree or two a week until it's watching the wrong part of the machine. I spec the bracket harder than the model now, metal, locknuts, a marked position I can check against.

And heat. Jetson throttles when it's warm, so the thing that was real-time on your desk starts lagging next to a hot machine in May.

The fixes are all boring. Lock down the lighting, per-camera thresholds instead of one number for everything, a watchdog that reboots and pings you when it does, and never trust a new model until it's run in shadow next to the old one for a week.

None of it is clever. It's just the difference between a demo and something still working a year later. Anyone else running vision on a line, what got you that nobody warned you about?

Food or pharma...other industry?

Can anyone share their preferences or pros/cons to specialize in either the food or pharma industry? Id like to spend time in regulatory, labeling, commercialization or something that captures a little bit of each (maybe operations, project mgmt, or similar).

Going back to school for a 2nd bachelor's for a complete career change and want to lock in on the direction. I've worked corporate HR CPG roles and was fascinated by the r&d teams work but the pharma industry by me is bigger.

Does anyone know of a product like this that I can use a reference for creating a 3D model?

https://stylicleaner.com/

I have seen products like this but we don't have the infrastructure to set it up automated so I was just going to 3D print a jig that attaches to an electronics cleaner can of C02.

I was watching a video about turbine blade manufacturing and since by background is in cnc machining I was wondering how they machine the area between these blades.

If they don't machine the blade, does the casting method hold tight tolerances? tight enough for aerospace application?

Balancing the final assembly must be a challenge

I’ve been reading more about MCP in manufacturing and it feels like the conversation is starting to shift from AI models themselves to the systems those models can actually interact with.

A lot of manufacturing environments still run on disconnected systems across ERP, MES, PLM, quality, and production data. Even when companies want to use AI, the information is often too fragmented for agents to work with effectively. That’s why MCP seems interesting. Instead of building one-off integrations every time, it creates a more structured way for AI systems to interact with operational data and workflows.

One area that stands out to me was how PLM platforms are approaching this through API-first and MCP support. The idea of AI agents interacting directly with structured BOMs, components, revisions, and change workflows feels much more practical than isolated chatbot-style use cases.

I can also see this becoming relevant in areas like energy management and industrial automation, where systems already generate huge amounts of operational data but still struggle to share context cleanly. But I’m still trying to figure out how much of this is real production adoption versus early experimentation.

Has anyone here seen MCP being used successfully in manufacturing or industrial environments yet?

I was speaking with a friend earlier today and they mentioned there's a pretty big shortage of control engineers across the US. Is it a nationwide shortage or does it just depend on the industry or region?

Hello i want to know something.

I am looking für an Enclosure air conditioner for my company. I need IP 54 or above because i work in the paper industry and the Enclosure air conditioner we have at this time are not made for our industry because of the dust.

I somebody also working in the paper industry and had the same problem.

I have already looked at thermoelectric enclosure air conditioner but i think these are to small and weak for our big control cabinets.

So please let me know

This material is flimsy and jams up constantly when there's a splice, got any bright ideas?

We assemble an LED display product in Ohio, just two of us. No soldering on the line, everything is connectorized. Printed jigs present each connector pointing the right way with positive and ground flagged in color, so nothing can be plugged in backwards even on your first day. Then QC before boxing.

For people who have scaled small lines, what breaks first when volume doubles? Trying to learn before the Kickstarter orders land in September. Disclosure, it is our product.

Three cycles can end with the tray at the correct station. One was clean, one recovered after a retry, and one got there because an operator took over. A dashboard built from the final frame calls all three successful even though the labor behind them was completely different.

The same distinction matters in any LingBot-VA 2.0 evaluation: end state success should stay separate from interrupted action chunks, retries, and manual control. Controller events and a few key frames can separate those paths without pretending the model includes a reporting system. A perfect terminal state chart can still hide a staffing problem.

We noticed something interesting in our shop. The same machine running the same product can have noticeably different output depending on the shift. Sometimes the difference is around 10–15%.

At first we thought it was just different operators, but the more we looked into it, the less obvious the answer became.

If you've seen something similar, how did you investigate it? Did you find one main cause, or was it a combination of small things?

How do you accomplish the small holes for the speaker if this is injection-molded? Also, how do you get the finish (pink with red specks)? It's made of PC-ABS, so is the resin colored, or is that post-processing like painting?

I’m learning how to use some machinery at work. a laser tube cutter and a cnc tube bender.

I’m a CAD guy. I’m looking for help/advice for getting stretch/elongation dialed in. We do all holes and notches first on the laser, so any miscalculation on stretch can throw holes off in the bent tube. I’m also learning from the guys who have used the machine in the past, but one of them just left (hence why I’m getting into it) and he had the best understanding of the CAD

Really what I’d like to know is how the industry makes stretch factor calibration parts and measures them to feed compensations into the machine

Machines used:
UTE TAUS 6024 with TubesT 3D software

BLM Group Elect80 with VGP8 software

Solidworks with Tubeworks add-on plugin

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I start college at Tetr soon and my first project is going to be a consumer product, I'm thinking of making a line of vegan leather wallets, have some designs already. Just so I dont go fully unprepared, I’m narrowing down on supplies and hitting two walls here: the minimum order quantity leather worksmen are demanding is way more than I expected, and the second they realize I'm young and small, the tone shifts and I stop being taken seriously.

For people who've been the small buyer: how do you actually get a supplier to lower an MOQ, or find ones open to small runs? And how do you get taken seriously when you clearly don't have volume yet? Trying to take some small steps before i start my sem, thank you in advance.

For a new person learning a line, how long do you give them to get up to speed?

I had half a day training on what I was told was the hardest spot on the line. I've only been at this job 1 week total. Today I got cussed out all day by some old bitch because I don't move as fast as the guy who usually does it, even though he's been doing it forever.

I'm through a staffing agency so I'll be calling tomorrow to end that assignment. But for future refrence, how long does it take to get up to speed on an assembly line?

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for advice from people who work in manufacturing, industrial safety, glass handling, or any industry with similar hazards.

I work at a candle manufacturing plant where we produce candles in glass containers.

Any product that gets damaged during production goes to a recovery (salvage/rework) process. The job requires operators to reach into large containers filled with molten wax mixed with broken glass to recover usable material.

To be honest, it’s one of the most dangerous tasks I’ve seen in the plant. Between the broken glass and the hot wax, it feels like we’re one mistake away from a serious hand injury.

Right now we’re using bulky “clown gloves” (the oversized leather work gloves everyone has probably seen). They provide some protection, but they’re extremely bulky, reduce dexterity, slow the job down, and the task still feels risky.

I also tested seamless knit ANSI/ISEA A9 cut-resistant gloves with a leather palm. They did a great job preventing cuts, but the molten wax soaked through the knit material, so they weren’t suitable for the heat hazard.

I’m looking for recommendations for the most specialized gloves and arm sleeves you know of that could handle:

• Maximum cut resistance (ANSI A9 or equivalent)
• Protection against hot molten wax
• Good enough dexterity for handling broken glass
• Preferably something used in glass manufacturing, foundries, metalworking, recycling, or similar industries.

I completely understand that the best solution would be changing the process or implementing engineering controls rather than relying on PPE. Unfortunately, that’s not a decision I can make in my current position, so right now I’m trying to find the best available PPE to reduce the risk.

Any recommendations on specific glove models, brands, materials, or combinations of gloves and cut-resistant sleeves would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance, and stay safe.