A professional who sets up and operates one or more gear grinding machines to grind surfaces of splines or gear teeth, following machining instructions and applying knowledge of gear grinding techniques. Respnsibilities include:

• Reads blueprint or machining instructions to determine fixtures and grinding wheel to use, machine settings, and gear dimensions and tolerances.
• Clamps workpiece in chuck or fixture, or presses it on arbor and mounts between centers.
• Positions and secures wheel on arbor in relation to workpiece, using wrenches.
• Moves levers or mounts gears in machine to set feed rates and rotation speeds of wheel and workpiece in relation to each other.
• Turns handwheels to feed wheel to workpiece or vice versa, and to index workpiece, and engages automatic feeding and indexing device.
• Turns valve and directs flow of coolant against wheel and workpiece.
• Sets up and operates wheel dressing device to dress and true abrasive wheel.
• Verifies conformance to specifications, using micrometers, gear measuring wires, and involute checker. May compute data, such as gear dimensions and machine settings, applying knowledge of shop mathematics.
• May work on nonmetallic materials.
• May be required to have experience with custom or production work or with particular material, gear type, or size, type, or trade name of machine.