Plastics+Engineer

1. Job Description - Plastics engineering encompasses the processing, design, development, and manufacture of plastics products. Depending on your qualifications, your day could be spent in different ways. Such as: Working on or processing the material/product, designing new products or making improvements to old ones, and supervision of others while they are working.

(plastic injection molding)

2. Personality Characters - Materials engineering technologists need the following characteristics: They should enjoy doing precise work with tools, equipment and instruments, analyzing test results and finding innovative solutions to problems, and taking a methodical approach to their work.
 * an aptitude for mathematics and science (especially physics and chemistry)
 * mechanical ability
 * an interest in working with processes and equipment
 * the ability to work independently when required
 * good interpersonal skills for working effectively and co-operatively as part of a technical or engineering team.

3. Working Conditions - The working condition can greatly vary based on how good you are at your job, If your really good, then you could be sitting in an office designing, or on a jobsight supervising. If your not very good, then you may not get to make decisions and implement your ideas in to the everday enviroment. You could get to travel to various places around the country of around the world based on what you know and how well you do your job. (molded plastic peices/products)

4. Places of Employment - This job is not in great demand, but you can find jobs more easily if you have a masters or even a doctorate. These jobs are available in all parts of the country, but will slightly vary based on the geographic location. For example, the plastic products in Arizona may vary from the productsbeing made in New York because the resources available in New York are vastly different from the resources in Arizona. New York is also much more accesible to imports of crude products that are used to make plastic products. Plastics are mainly made from oil, and therefore greatly depend on the import of oil. Due to the recent exploration of alternate energy sources, plastics may not be produced in such abundance. However, if you can create new ways to develop plastics products, then you could be very helpful, and make a lot of money in the process.

5. Job Outlook - This career is very up in the air as far as how many jobs will be in demand in the future. The oil industry will play a major part in the demand for jobs in this field. The exploration of alternative energy has the potential to hurt this profession, but if you are good at what you do, and you can come up with alternative ways to create and engineers plastics products, then you could be okay.

6. Salary- Most engineers make $55,000 a year coming out of college with a Bachelors degree, $65,000 with a Master's degree, and 75,000 with a Doctorate.

7. Recommended Education and Training-A Bachelor’s degree in engineering is required for almost all entry-level engineering jobs.

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