MORE BLUE COLLAR ARISTOCRATS. The Milwaukee tradition continues.

The Milwaukee area has one of the highest concentrations of metal fabricators in the nation. And as veteran press brake operators retire from the work force, industry experts predict a shortage of people ready to take their place.

It's similar to the need for more welders and machinists.

"But it's a job that goes under the radar. Press brake operators are an invisible group within many companies," said Bruce Bohr, principal manufacturing engineer at Greenheck Corp., which makes ventilation equipment in Schofield and employs about 200 press brake operators.

The trade's wages range from about $12 to $26 per hour, depending on experience, skill and where someone works. Press brake work doesn't pay as well as welding, and its image lacks the sizzle associated with showers of sparks and hot metal.

We're not talking about stamping out multiple copies of the same part. Patternmakers and tool and die makers do the preparations for that. Any southern exile in Detroit can run a stamping press, or bolt the resulting pieces on.

A skilled press brake operator visualizes metal parts in multiple shapes and angles, making bends with tolerances measured in thousandths of an inch.

The job often requires blueprint-reading skills, mathematics and knowledge of metallurgy, machine tools and computers. It also requires a steady hand and intuition for placing metal in a bending machine just the right way.

Some people pick up the skills fast, while others can't figure it out no matter how hard they try.

It's still beyond the ken of robots.

And the job is still physical. Even with automated machines and material handling equipment, operators sometimes have to lift, turn and carry sheets of metal taller than themselves.

It's difficult to automate the process. Robots can do some of the work, but when making complex parts there's no substitute for a skilled operator, said John Wettstein with Northland Lasers, a Milwaukee distributor of Toyokoki press brakes.

"Bending metal, although it looks simple, is still a labor-intensive craft," Wettstein said.

Waukesha County Technical College offers press brake classes in its metal fabrication program.

Most companies train their own operators, but a lack of job security has scared people from manufacturing careers.

The flip side of companies training their own operators is that as the economy picks up, the companies that don't train their own might be poaching press-brake operators from the companies that do.