Obscure Jobs Within Manufacturing/Welding

[neohic]

So... I went to school for welding about nine years ago. After that, I went into working at a small fabrication shop that did anything from in shop or portable work, lawnmower handles to lining dump trucks, chromoly race car chassis to cast stainless pump housings... on a daily basis. Pretty much anything and everything you can imagine, I've welded it. After three years of doing that I started to slow down and had some issues keeping up with the rest of the employees (medical reasons) and I picked up a lab assistant job back at the tech college I went to school at. Since then, it's been five years now of doing this... and I'm getting bored. Sure, I'd love to hang around and move into a nice instructor position eventually, but I'm waiting behind a couple of other guys who have been there for a while now who are quite comfortable. The first few years were great!... but I want more than what I have available to me.

My question is, what other jobs are out there? I don't have much for education outside of high school, some college credits, my tech school diploma, and a bunch of welding certifications (3G-6G). I don't really want to get back into manufacturing or a repair outfit as I don't think my body will agree with that. What I'd love to get into is some kind of obscure/elite kind of job that maybe does some kind of prototyping or one-off pieces. Art metal is all sorts of fun, but I'd rather not rely on that for income.

So?... what else is out there? I'm located in west central MN if that changes anything. Thanks, dudes.

[Ltbadd]

What I'd love to get into is some kind of obscure/elite kind of job that maybe does some kind of prototyping or one-off pieces. Art metal is all sorts of fun, but I'd rather not rely on that for income.

So?... what else is out there? I'm located in west central MN if that changes anything. Thanks, dudes.

Not exactly in western MN, but certainly obscure/elite. Welder in McMurdo Station Antartica

[neohic]

I guess I was thinking more along the lines of other jobs that have to do with welding, but not necessarily hands on welding.

[Ltbadd]

Not sure what that would be outside of a shop helper, which doesn't sound like what your looking for. Or as you said doing art type work which probably doesn't provide a regular paycheck unless your established or well known.

[fjk]

if one were to look at, say, the miller web site's job openings section, one might find a number of jobs like "field application engineer" as well as sales/marketing jobs, technician jobs, and so on.

you could also check the hobart, lincoln, etc, sites.

check local welding suppliers to see if they have openings for jobs like trainers or "i'd-recommend-the-xyz-process" jobs or ...