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Craft and related trades workers · code 7224

Metal polishers, wheel grinders and tool sharpeners

Metal polishers, wheel grinders and tool sharpeners polish and grind metal surfaces and sharpen tools. Tasks include - (a) operating fixed or portable buffing and polishing machines; (b) sharpening cutting tools and instruments using grinding wheels or mechanically operated grinding machines; (c) repairing, adjusting and sharpening saw blades and metal teeth of cylinders in textile carding machines; (d) dressing grinding wheels according to specifications; (e) monitoring machine operations to determine whether adjustments are necessary, and stopping machines when problems occur; (f) inspecting, feeling and measuring work pieces to ensure that surfaces and dimensions meet specifications; (g) selecting and mounting grinding wheels on machines according to specifications, using hand tools and applying knowledge of abrasives and grinding procedures. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Knife sharpener - Metal finisher - Metal polisher - Tool grinder Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Metal finishing machine operator - 8122 - Metal polishing machine operator - 8122

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 92 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • metal polisher
  • tool grinder

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

83.1
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 16.9 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 16.9 = 83.1

That's the whole sum, and you can check it against the ILO's study.

77.8
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, averaged across 2 US jobs

39
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 51.8 · hand skill 50 · cramped spaces 15 · averaged

Kind of hands-on work · hands-on 50+ · fiddly under 39.4 Hands-on, less fiddly work

Less fine handwork and fewer cramped spaces than a typical hands-on job. That clears one hurdle for machines. It doesn't mean machines are doing this work yet.

estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.7-work-setting measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

This number is probably too high

This score only looks at AI tools like chatbots. It doesn't look at robots at all — and this job rates 77.8 out of 100 for how hands-on it is, which is exactly where robots come in.

Have a look at the tasks below and judge for yourself. The ILO scored them low because a chatbot can't do them. Whether a machine with hands could is a different question, and we can't answer it yet.

The tasks behind the score

The score is the average of these. A job is really a bundle of tasks, and an average can hide how uneven that bundle is.

The task AI could do most of scores 28, while the average is 16.9. A big gap means some of this job is wide open to AI and some of it barely at all. That's quite different from a job where everything sits somewhere in the middle, even when the averages match.

  1. 28

    Monitoring machine operations to determine whether adjustments are necessary, and stopping machines when problems occur

    Low
  2. 15.8

    Inspecting, feeling, and measuring work pieces to ensure that surfaces and dimensions meet specifications

    Very Low
  3. 15.5

    Sharpening cutting tools and instruments using grinding wheels or mechanically operated grinding machines

    Very Low
  4. 15

    Repairing, adjusting and sharpening saw blades and metal teeth of cylinders in textile carding machines

    Very Low
  5. 15

    Dressing grinding wheels, according to specifications

    Very Low
  6. 14.8

    Operating fixed or portable buffing and polishing machines

    Very Low
  7. 14

    Selecting and mounting grinding wheels on machines according to specifications, using hand tools and applying knowledge of abrasives and grinding procedures.

    Very Low

7 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.7-work-setting

Helped, or replaced?

The score above can't tell a tool that makes you faster from one that does the task instead of you. Jobs and Skills Australia looked at those two things separately, and this is their result, matched to this job.

3 Australian jobs match this one, and we've simply averaged them. Treat the numbers as a rough guide.

AI helps you
59.7
AI does it for you
25.7

Helping wins by 34 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 3221, 3233, 7123

Compared with similar jobs

There are 65 jobs in the “Craft and related trades workers” group, averaging 83.5. This one is below that.