This is the exciting part! Machinists support a great variety of industries. Depending on the certifications of your shop and the type of equipment it uses, such as multi axis lathes and mills, Swiss lathes, horizontal mills, precision grinding, Electrical Discharge Machining (EDM), as well as the inspection equipment selection and the engineering know-how of the staff, you can be making almost anything. Some shops will even make parts that go into space!

Shops must follow very important requirements. For example, when manufacturing for the Aerospace industry, shops must have an AS 9001/ISO 9001 certification which requires the shop to track material from mill to customer, manage inspection equipment, document employee training, and have inspection plans to control all the variables of the manufacturing process.

Other industries and items that machinists supply parts to are robotics, transportation, medical equipment, demolition, performance race cars, computers, construction, hydroelectric plants, climbing equipment, bicycles, motorcycles, prosthetics, and many more.

Attributions

1. Figure 1.12: 3-Axis milling machine by Damon Donner, for WA Open ProfTech, © SBCTC, CC BY 4.0