Double apprenticeship: Metal fabricator - mechanical engineering technician & draughtsperson

This profession involves metals, machines, and tools. Your work ranges from metalworking and manufacturing components and finished metal products to the construction and monitoring of entire machines and systems.

During your training, you’ll learn how metals and other materials are formed through various techniques such as drilling, sawing, bending, welding, soldering, gluing, lathing, milling, etc., as well as the use of special tools and the maintenance and repair of machines.

You prepare technical drawings, produce fair draughts, and see to the correction, reproduction, and storage of the drawings. Technical drawings include shop drawings for moulds and metal items, detail drawing and assembly drawings for systems and machines, plans for steel constructions, and wiring and circuit diagrams. Such drawings are needed in steel, machine, and plant construction. In recent years, the computer (CAD, or computer aided design) has become a key tool alongside conventional instruments like compasses, rulers, tables, writing stencils, and drawing templates.

As a draughtsperson, you act as a link between the designers and the workshops. You’ll produce accurate, detailed, and standard-compliant drawings for the manufacture of machines and systems based on the data and designs specified by the project planning department. A complete technical drawing contains information on the shape, size, and dimensions of the represented component, the material to be used, the surfaces to be treated (e.g. drilling, lathing, milling), and the number of pieces to be produced.

• Produce standard hand drawings (in the vocational school)
• Participate in project team meetings
• Develop projects in working groups
• Prepare technical documents like sketches and shop drawings
• Use 3D drawing programmes to develop machines and systems