The Complete Guide to Becoming A Patternmaker, Metal and Plastic

Chapter 1: What Does a Patternmaker, Metal and Plastic Actually Do?

Let's clear something up right away: a patternmaker, metal and plastic, is not the person who presses the "start" button on an injection molding machine. They're not the machinist running the same part, 500 times a day, watching the chips fly. They're the person who gets to build the thing that the machine will eventually run thousands of copies of. If you've never walked through a manufacturing plant, or if the word "pattern" only makes you think of sewing, you need a concrete picture before you decide this is your future. That's exactly what this chapter is for.

So, what is a pattern? In metal and plastic casting, you don't just pour molten metal into a blank hole. You need a mold, and most molds have to be produced by casting a material into a form or by machining a block. That original form — the thing everything else gets produced from — is the pattern. A patternmaker is the person who conceptualizes, designs, and builds that original. It might be a wooden shape that a foundry will pack sand around to make a sand casting. It might be a hardened steel block that gets used to form a plastic part. Sometimes the pattern itself is meant to be destroyed, sometimes it's made to last for years. Either way, you're the one who makes it happen.

Your day starts at the print, so let's talk about that first. As