Pressers, Textile, Garment, and Related Materials

Career Description: Press or shape articles by hand or machine.

Industry: Production

Other Job Titles for Pressers, Textile, Garment, and Related Materials:

• Realistic: Realistic occupations frequently involve work activities that include practical, hands-on problems and solutions. They often deal with plants, animals, and real-world materials like wood, tools, and machinery. Many of the occupations require working outside, and do not involve a lot of paperwork or working closely with others.
• Investigative: Investigative occupations frequently involve working with ideas, and require an extensive amount of thinking. These occupations can involve searching for facts and figuring out problems mentally.
• Artistic: Artistic occupations frequently involve working with forms, designs and patterns. They often require self-expression and the work can be done without following a clear set of rules.
• Social: Social occupations frequently involve working with, communicating with, and teaching people. These occupations often involve helping or providing service to others.
• Enterprising: Enterprising occupations frequently involve starting up and carrying out projects. These occupations can involve leading people and making many decisions. Sometimes they require risk taking and often deal with business.
• Conventional: Conventional occupations frequently involve following set procedures and routines. These occupations can include working with data and details more than with ideas. Usually there is a clear line of authority to follow.
• First Interest High-Point: Primary-Rank Descriptiveness
• Second Interest High-Point: Secondary-Cutoff/Rank Descriptiveness
• Third Interest High-Point: Tertiary-Cutoff/Rank Descriptiveness

• Operate steam, hydraulic, or other pressing machines to remove wrinkles from garments and flatwork items, or to shape, form, or patch articles.
• Lower irons, rams, or pressing heads of machines into position over material to be pressed.
• Remove finished pieces from pressing machines and hang or stack them for cooling, or forward them for additional processing.
• Hang, fold, package, and tag finished articles for delivery to customers.
• Slide material back and forth over heated, metal, ball-shaped forms to smooth and press portions of garments that cannot be satisfactorily pressed with flat pressers or hand irons.
• Select appropriate pressing machines, based on garment properties such as heat tolerance.
• Push and pull irons over surfaces of articles to smooth or shape them.
• Finish pleated garments, determining sizes of pleats from evidence of old pleats or from work orders, using machine presses or hand irons.
• Straighten, smooth, or shape materials to prepare them for pressing.
• Finish pants, jackets, shirts, skirts and other dry-cleaned and laundered articles, using hand irons.
• Position materials such as cloth garments, felt, or straw on tables, dies, or feeding mechanisms of pressing machines, or on ironing boards or work tables.
• Spray water over fabric to soften fibers when not using steam irons.
• Moisten materials to soften and smooth them.
• Finish velvet garments by steaming them on bucks of hot-head presses or steam tables, and brushing pile (nap) with handbrushes.
• Finish fancy garments such as evening gowns and costumes, using hand irons to produce high quality finishes.
• Activate and adjust machine controls to regulate temperature and pressure of rollers, ironing shoes, or plates, according to specifications.
• Shrink, stretch, or block articles by hand to conform to original measurements, using forms, blocks, and steam.
• Clean and maintain pressing machines, using cleaning solutions and lubricants.
• Block or shape knitted garments after cleaning.
• Insert heated metal forms into ties and touch up rough places with hand irons.
• Brush materials made of suede, leather, or felt to remove spots or to raise and smooth naps.
• Use covering cloths to prevent equipment from damaging delicate fabrics.
• Press ties on small pressing machines.
• Select, install, and adjust machine components, including pressing forms, rollers, and guides, using hoists and hand tools.
• Examine and measure finished articles to verify conformance to standards, using measuring devices such as tape measures and micrometers.
• Sew ends of new material to leaders or to ends of material in pressing machines, using sewing machines.
• Measure fabric to specifications, cut uneven edges with shears, fold material, and press it with an iron to form a heading.
• Mount negatives and plates in cameras, set exposure controls, and expose plates to light through negatives in order to transfer images onto plates.
• Operate and maintain a variety of cameras and equipment, such as process, line, halftone, and color separation cameras, enlargers, electronic scanners, and contact equipment.
• Perform tests to determine lengths of exposures, by exposing plates, scanning line copy, and comparing exposures to tone range scales.
• Mix solutions such as developing solutions and colored coating solutions.
• Activate scanners to produce positive or negative films for the black-and-white, cyan, yellow, and magenta separations from each original copy.
• Attach nozzles, position guns, connect hoses, and thread wire in order to set up metal-spraying machines.
• Remove excess materials or impurities from objects, using air hoses or grinding machines.
• Clean workpieces, using wire brushes.
• Install gears and holding devices on conveyor equipment.
• Operate sandblasting equipment to roughen and clean surfaces of workpieces.
• Cut metal or other materials, using shears or band saws.
• Charge furnaces.
• Chase decorative designs on silver blanks that are to be used as models for steel production dies.

Emerging Tasks

• Identify and treat spots on garments.
• Perform "preflight" check of required font, graphic, text and image files to ensure completeness prior to delivery to printer.
• Proofread and perform quality control of text and images.
• Mix and apply glazes to pottery pieces using tools such as spray guns.
• Operate gas or electric kilns to fire pottery pieces.
• Pack and ship pottery to stores or galleries for retail.

• Analyzing Data or Information: Identifying the underlying principles, reasons, or facts of information by breaking down information or data into separate parts.
• Assisting and Caring for Others: Providing personal assistance, medical attention, emotional support, or other personal care to others such as coworkers, customers, or patients.
• Coaching and Developing Others: Identifying the developmental needs of others and coaching, mentoring, or otherwise helping others to improve their knowledge or skills.
• Communicating with Persons Outside Organization: Communicating with people outside the organization, representing the organization to customers, the public, government, and other external sources. This information can be exchanged in person, in writing, or by telephone or e-mail.
• Communicating with Supervisors, Peers, or Subordinates: Providing information to supervisors, co-workers, and subordinates by telephone, in written form, e-mail, or in person.
• Controlling Machines and Processes: Using either control mechanisms or direct physical activity to operate machines or processes (not including computers or vehicles).
• Coordinating the Work and Activities of Others: Getting members of a group to work together to accomplish tasks.
• Developing and Building Teams: Encouraging and building mutual trust, respect, and cooperation among team members.
• Developing Objectives and Strategies: Establishing long-range objectives and specifying the strategies and actions to achieve them.
• Documenting/Recording Information: Entering, transcribing, recording, storing, or maintaining information in written or electronic/magnetic form.
• Drafting, Laying Out, and Specifying Technical Devices, Parts, and Equipment: Providing documentation, detailed instructions, drawings, or specifications to tell others about how devices, parts, equipment, or structures are to be fabricated, constructed, assembled, modified, maintained, or used.
• Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships: Developing constructive and cooperative working relationships with others, and maintaining them over time.
• Estimating the Quantifiable Characteristics of Products, Events, or Information: Estimating sizes, distances, and quantities; or determining time, costs, resources, or materials needed to perform a work activity.
• Evaluating Information to Determine Compliance with Standards: Using relevant information and individual judgment to determine whether events or processes comply with laws, regulations, or standards.
• Getting Information: Observing, receiving, and otherwise obtaining information from all relevant sources.
• Guiding, Directing, and Motivating Subordinates: Providing guidance and direction to subordinates, including setting performance standards and monitoring performance.
• Handling and Moving Objects: Using hands and arms in handling, installing, positioning, and moving materials, and manipulating things.
• Identifying Objects, Actions, and Events: Identifying information by categorizing, estimating, recognizing differences or similarities, and detecting changes in circumstances or events.
• Inspecting Equipment, Structures, or Material: Inspecting equipment, structures, or materials to identify the cause of errors or other problems or defects.
• Interacting With Computers: Using computers and computer systems (including hardware and software) to program, write software, set up functions, enter data, or process information.
• Interpreting the Meaning of Information for Others: Translating or explaining what information means and how it can be used.
• Judging the Qualities of Things, Services, or People: Assessing the value, importance, or quality of things or people.
• Making Decisions and Solving Problems: Analyzing information and evaluating results to choose the best solution and solve problems.
• Monitor Processes, Materials, or Surroundings: Monitoring and reviewing information from materials, events, or the environment, to detect or assess problems.
• Monitoring and Controlling Resources: Monitoring and controlling resources and overseeing the spending of money.
• Operating Vehicles, Mechanized Devices, or Equipment: Running, maneuvering, navigating, or driving vehicles or mechanized equipment, such as forklifts, passenger vehicles, aircraft, or water craft.
• Organizing, Planning, and Prioritizing Work: Developing specific goals and plans to prioritize, organize, and accomplish your work.
• Performing Administrative Activities: Performing day-to-day administrative tasks such as maintaining information files and processing paperwork.
• Performing for or Working Directly with the Public: Performing for people or dealing directly with the public. This includes serving customers in restaurants and stores, and receiving clients or guests.
• Performing General Physical Activities: Performing physical activities that require considerable use of your arms and legs and moving your whole body, such as climbing, lifting, balancing, walking, stooping, and handling of materials.
• Processing Information: Compiling, coding, categorizing, calculating, tabulating, auditing, or verifying information or data.
• Provide Consultation and Advice to Others: Providing guidance and expert advice to management or other groups on technical, systems-, or process-related topics.
• Repairing and Maintaining Electronic Equipment: Servicing, repairing, calibrating, regulating, fine-tuning, or testing machines, devices, and equipment that operate primarily on the basis of electrical or electronic (not mechanical) principles.
• Repairing and Maintaining Mechanical Equipment: Servicing, repairing, adjusting, and testing machines, devices, moving parts, and equipment that operate primarily on the basis of mechanical (not electronic) principles.
• Resolving Conflicts and Negotiating with Others: Handling complaints, settling disputes, and resolving grievances and conflicts, or otherwise negotiating with others.
• Scheduling Work and Activities: Scheduling events, programs, and activities, as well as the work of others.
• Selling or Influencing Others: Convincing others to buy merchandise/goods or to otherwise change their minds or actions.
• Staffing Organizational Units: Recruiting, interviewing, selecting, hiring, and promoting employees in an organization.
• Thinking Creatively: Developing, designing, or creating new applications, ideas, relationships, systems, or products, including artistic contributions.
• Training and Teaching Others: Identifying the educational needs of others, developing formal educational or training programs or classes, and teaching or instructing others.
• Updating and Using Relevant Knowledge: Keeping up-to-date technically and applying new knowledge to your job.

Detailed Work Activities

• adjust production equipment/machinery setup
• apply cleaning solvents
• attach or mark identification onto products or containers
• block knitted garments
• clean equipment or machinery
• cut or trim fabric or leather
• examine products or work to verify conformance to specifications
• identify type of stain in fabrics, such as wool, synthetics, or silk
• install equipment or attachments on machinery or related structures
• load or unload material or workpiece into machinery
• load, unload, or stack containers, materials, or products
• measure, weigh, or count products or materials
• operate hoist, winch, or hydraulic boom
• operate sewing machine
• operate steam press
• operate textile production equipment/machinery
• package goods for shipment or storage
• press garment or fabric
• read specifications
• read tape measure
• read work order, instructions, formulas, or processing charts
• recognize characteristics of cloth or fabric
• remove stains from fabric or carpet
• spray water, steam, or air over fabric or leather
• spread fabric or clothing article on worktable or ironing board
• use hand iron
• use hand or power tools
• use portable electric fabric cutter
• wrap products
• perform safety inspections in manufacturing or industrial setting
• prepare artwork for camera or press
• process photographic prints
• proofread printed or written material
• read blueprints
• read production layouts
• read specifications
• read technical drawings
• read work order, instructions, formulas, or processing charts
• set page layout or composition
• set up production equipment or machinery
• strip negatives
• understand technical operating, service or repair manuals
• use color analyzer
• use computer graphics design software
• use computers to enter, access or retrieve data
• use densitometer
• use drafting or mechanical drawing techniques
• use hand or power tools
• use precision measuring tools or equipment
• record test results, test procedures, or inspection data
• sort manufacturing materials or products
• test manufactured products or materials
• understand engineering data or reports
• understand measuring devices
• understand technical operating, service or repair manuals
• use computers to enter, access or retrieve data
• use electrical or electronic test devices or equipment
• use hand or power tools
• use hazardous materials information
• use interpersonal communication techniques
• use knowledge of investigation techniques
• use knowledge of metric system
• use long or short term production planning techniques
• use oral or written communication techniques
• use precision measuring tools or equipment
• use quality assurance techniques
• use research methodology procedures within manufacturing or commerce
• use spreadsheet software
• use technical information in manufacturing or industrial activities
• use x-ray or magnetic inspection techniques

Overall Experience
No previous work-related skill, knowledge, or experience is needed for these occupations. For example, a person can become a cashier even if he/she has never worked before.

Job Training
Employees in these occupations need anywhere from a few days to a few months of training. Usually, an experienced worker could show you how to do the job.

Education
These occupations may require a high school diploma or GED certificate. Some may require a formal training course to obtain a license.

Examples
These occupations involve following instructions and helping others. Examples include taxi drivers, amusement and recreation attendants, counter and rental clerks, cashiers, and waiters/waitresses.

• Average hourly wage (2007) -$8.87
• Average annual wage (2007) - $18,440.00

• Employment (2006): 77,182

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