Watched a 30 year hand at the refinery in Toledo go from torch cutting to a plasma table in 18 months

Alice Hall · 2026-09-17T09:30:04.457101+00:00

I started my apprenticeship at a shop outside Toledo about three years back and the old timers were still doing everything with a cutting torch and a chalk line. Fast forward to now and half the plate work goes through a CNC plasma table that showed up 18 months ago. The guy who trained me, 30 years in the trade, fought that thing for the first month, said it was for guys who could not read a tape. Now he programs his own nests on it and his scrap pile dropped by more than half. What changed was not the tech, it was the layout time. Jobs that used to eat a full day of marking and tacking now get cut while we are still setting up the rolls. I watched him knock out a set of nozzle cutouts in about 20 minutes that would have been a whole afternoon with the torch. The old skills still matter when something needs fitting by hand, but the math changed on what a two man crew can turn out in a shift. Curious if other shops are seeing the same shift, or if yours is still mostly torch and grinder work.

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Watched a 30 year hand at the refinery in Toledo go from torch cutting to a plasma table in 18 months | Boilermakers - The Community Guide