A professional who lays out sheet or plate steel, and sets up and operates machine tools to make templates (replicas of cross sections of products to be extruded) used in manufacture of extrusion dies. Respnsibilities include:

• Analyzes blueprints to determine product specifications and plans operations, applying knowledge of template making, extrusion of nonferrous metals, shop mathematics and sheet metalwork.
• Applies copper sulfate solution to surface of steel plate, using cloth or brush.
• Computes dimensions, and measures and scribes outline of product cross section on steel.
• Saws, files, and operates drill press, arbor press, band-sawing machine, filing machine, and vertical milling machine to drill, saw, shape, and smooth workpiece to layout lines.
• Verifies conformance of template to specifications, using measuring instruments, such as micrometers, calipers, and protractors.
• May operate bench grinder to grind standard files to shape for particular operation.