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Job Truth / Extruding and Drawing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic
What does a Extruding and Drawing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic
actually do all day?
top skill Operations Monitoringcore tasks 6median pay $47,720AI exposure 0/100
Extruding and Drawing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic is deadline-driven, on your feet, some people contact work.
What this job actually does all day
The representative tasks O*NET analysts recorded for this role — not a glossy job ad, the real work.
- Measure and examine extruded products to locate defects and to check for conformance to specifications, adjusting controls as necessary to alter products.
- Determine setup procedures and select machine dies and parts, according to specifications.
- Start machines and set controls to regulate vacuum, air pressure, sizing rings, and temperature, and to synchronize speed of extrusion.
- Reel extruded products into rolls of specified lengths and weights.
- Install dies, machine screws, and sizing rings on machines that extrude thermoplastic or metal materials.
- Change dies on extruding machines, according to production line changes.
Skills & environment
Bars are O*NET importance/intensity ratings (originally a 1–5 rating), rescaled so 1 = 0 and 5 = 100 — a relative reading, not a percentage.
The skills it demands most
What the environment feels like
Deadline pressure: constant deadline pressureConflict & friction: rarely deals with conflictNeed to be exact: precision is criticalTime spent sitting: mostly on your feet / movingContact with people: moderate
Go deeper on this role
How this is built. Tasks, skills, and work-environment ratings come from the
U.S. Department of Labor's O*NET occupational analysis — job analysts survey real workers, so this is the
closest thing to "what the job is actually like" in public data. Skill scores are O*NET Importance
ratings and environment measures are Context ratings — both on O*NET's 1–5 scale
(1 = the floor: not important / never). We rescale them so 1 maps to 0 and 5 maps to 100, giving a
relative reading for easy comparison — it is not a percentage. This task-and-skill detail comes straight from the O*NET database — it's
pulled straight from the survey, not invented. Figures describe the typical role, not any one person's job.
