Maintenance Machinist

Maintenance Machinist
- Job Description Department

Maintenance & Engineering

Maintenance Manager / Director of Maintenance

Hourly
- Skilled Trades

Food Manufacturing

The Maintenance Machinist is responsible for manufacturing, repairing, modifying, and rebuilding precision mechanical components used on food-processing, packaging, conveying, and facility equipment. This position operates manual machine tools and works closely with Maintenance, Engineering, and Operations to minimize equipment downtime and improve equipment reliability. A key responsibility is the ability to reverse-engineer damaged, worn, or obsolete components when replacement parts or drawings are not readily available.

All work must be performed in accordance with plant safety, food safety, sanitation, and quality requirements.

• Operate manual lathes, milling machines, drill presses, saws, grinders, and other machine-shop equipment.
• Manufacture replacement components such as shafts, bushings, sleeves, spacers, pins, rollers, brackets, guides, and equipment hardware.
• Repair and modify damaged or worn production equipment components.
• Reverse-engineer existing or damaged parts using measurements, sketches, drawings, and equipment requirements.
• Perform turning, facing, boring, drilling, milling, tapping, threading, reaming, keyway cutting, grooving, and related machining operations.
• Machine internal and external threads and repair damaged threaded components.
• Perform precision measurements using micrometers, calipers, dial indicators, bore gauges, thread gauges, and other measuring instruments.
• Maintain required dimensional tolerances, fits, clearances, and surface finishes.
• Machine and repair shafts for bearings, sprockets, pulleys, couplings, seals, and other rotating components.
• Support repairs involving conveyors, rollers, bearings, gearboxes, motors, pumps, packaging equipment, and food-processing machinery.
• Assist Maintenance technicians during equipment breakdowns when machining or component modification is required.
• Manufacture temporary or permanent repair components when OEM replacement parts are unavailable or have extended lead times.
• Work with Maintenance and Engineering to improve component reliability and eliminate recurring equipment failures.
• Recommend improvements to component materials, dimensions, fits, or designs when appropriate.
• Read and interpret mechanical drawings, blueprints, equipment manuals, sketches, and specifications.
• Create basic sketches and record dimensions for fabricated or reverse-engineered components.
• Select appropriate cutting tools, speeds, feeds, materials, and machining methods.
• Maintain machine-shop equipment, cutting tools, fixtures, tooling, and precision measuring instruments.
• Maintain an organized inventory of commonly used raw materials and machine-shop supplies.
• Complete work orders and document fabricated components, repairs, measurements, and modifications.
• Maintain a clean, organized, and safe machine-shop environment.

• Follow all plant GMP, food safety, sanitation, and quality procedures.
• Use materials appropriate for food-processing applications when required.
• Understand the importance of sanitary equipment design and avoiding potential product-contamination points.
• Prevent metal shavings, cutting fluids, lubricants, tools, and foreign materials from entering production areas or food-contact zones.
• Properly clean fabricated components before they are released for installation on production equipment.
• Maintain separation and control of materials used for food-contact and non-food-contact applications.
• Support production equipment repairs while maintaining plant food-safety requirements.
• Coordina…