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Woodworking Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Except Sawing

Tasks

Core Tasks Include:

Start machines, adjust controls, and make trial cuts to ensure that machinery is operating properly.
Determine product specifications and materials, work methods, and machine setup requirements, according to blueprints, oral or written instructions, drawings, or work orders.
Feed stock through feed mechanisms or conveyors into planing, shaping, boring, mortising, or sanding machines to produce desired components.
Adjust machine tables or cutting devices and set controls on machines to produce specified cuts or operations.
Monitor operation of machines and make adjustments to correct problems and ensure conformance to specifications.
Set up, program, operate, or tend computerized or manual woodworking machines, such as drill presses, lathes, shapers, routers, sanders, planers, or wood-nailing machines.
Select knives, saws, blades, cutter heads, cams, bits, or belts, according to workpiece, machine functions, or product specifications.
Examine finished workpieces for smoothness, shape, angle, depth-of-cut, or conformity to specifications and verify dimensions, visually and using hands, rules, calipers, templates, or gauges.
Install and adjust blades, cutterheads, boring-bits, or sanding-belts, using hand tools and rules.
Inspect and mark completed workpieces and stack them on pallets, in boxes, or on conveyors so that they can be moved to the next workstation.
Push or hold workpieces against, under, or through cutting, boring, or shaping mechanisms.
Change alignment and adjustment of sanding, cutting, or boring machine guides to prevent defects in finished products, using hand tools.
Inspect pulleys, drive belts, guards, or fences on machines to ensure that machines will operate safely.
Remove and replace worn parts, bits, belts, sandpaper, or shaping tools.
Secure woodstock against a guide or in a holding device, place woodstock on a conveyor, or dump woodstock in a hopper to feed woodstock into machines.
Clean or maintain products, machines, or work areas.
Attach and adjust guides, stops, clamps, chucks, or feed mechanisms, using hand tools.
Examine raw woodstock for defects and to ensure conformity to size and other specification standards.
Trim wood parts according to specifications, using planes, chisels, or wood files or sanders.
Grease or oil woodworking machines.

Supplemental Tasks Include:

Set up, program, or control computer-aided design (CAD) or computer numerical control (CNC) machines.
Operate gluing machines to glue pieces of wood together, or to press and affix wood veneer to wood surfaces.
Unclamp workpieces and remove them from machines.
Start machines and move levers to engage hydraulic lifts that press woodstocks into desired forms and disengage lifts after appropriate drying times.
Control hoists to remove parts or products from work stations.

The data sources for the information displayed here include: O*NET™. (Using onet291)