needleshy wrotego to a mechanical engineer machinist or mechanical technician or technologist
Fixed ?
Oh and some fitters and turners do milling as well these days
Small rant:
National diploma = Technician
B Tech = Technologist
BSc or B Ing = Engineer
(If you don't like that classification, take it up with ECSA!)
Engineers do very high level design and investigations, usually very mathematical and scientific in nature, typically on the level of projects undertaken by NASA, Denel, CSIR, Sasol etc. Technologists usually manage a factory or machine shop and are involved with product design based on existing concepts (engineers typically create and investigate the new ones). Technicians are the guys who usually get their hands dirty and do the actual mechanical work or manage/supervise the workers that do the work - the technicians are not usually involved with the conceptual design stage of products or processes.
This is all generalizing of course, since my boss is a technician yet he owns and runs a very successful company.
