Absolute Machine Tools turns to LCCC

LEIGH KEETON LORAIN COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE

ELYRIA — If anyone says manufacturing is a trade of the past, they’ll be met with an emphatic “absolutely not” from David Zunis.

He’s director of service and applications engineering at Absolute Machine Tools in Lorain, which has been importing and selling CNC machinery for 35 years. Recently, the company has been forecasting the future of the industry and ramping up its turnkey automation and robotics departments. And they’re doing so, in part, to fill holes in the workforce.

“We’re pressing more and more toward automation because the people just aren’t there. We’re not replacing jobs, we’re filling vacancies,” Zunis said. “And when you’re into the automation and robotics world, you still need people to fix and program the robots.”

To keep pace with advances in automation and ensure employees have the skillsets needed, Zunis said Absolute Machine Tools has turned to its long-standing training partner, Lorain County Community College.

“We rely on LCCC to bring our workforce up to speed with the skillsets that we need in today’s manufacturing world,” Zunis said. “You need good math skills, good cognitive abilities. You have to understand data.”

The company had a hand in designing the college’s latest automated equipment focused program. Zunis represented Absolute Machine Tools among a host of local employers that helped design the curriculum of LCCC’s bachelor of applied science degree in smart industrial automated systems engineering technology.

LCCC launched the program in Fall 2022 in response to the rapid development of disruptive technologies that are shaping advanced manufacturing in Northeast Ohio. It’s the second bachelor of applied science degree launched by LCCC, and it stacks with LCCC’s associate of applied science degree in automation engineering technology.

“It actually blows my mind that we have a community college offering a four-year degree program within its ranks,” Zunis said.

One of the program’s earliest students is Emily Graven of Lorain. The 19-year-old is an automation engineer at Absolute Machine Tools. She started with the company as an intern while attending the Lorain County JVS and now Zunis sees her as someone who can help drive the company’s future.

“Emily is learning stuff that we are literally in the middle of working on right now with our customers,” Zunis said. “She’s learning exactly what we need her to learn, so it’s immediate payback.”

Graven grew up with an appreciation for the trades and knew from the time she was 10 that she wanted a handson career.

“A lot of my family is in the automotive trade,” Graven said. “I would watch my dad and my brother work on a motor and then put it in a car, and now that car’s running. I thought that was pretty cool.”

After touring the precision machine technology lab at the JVS, Graven said it opened her eyes to the possibilities in machining. She also took part in LCCC’s Career Technical Education Partnership Program with Lorain County JVS and received college credit for two classes. By her junior year, Graven landed her internship with Absolute Machine Tools.

“At that point, I didn’t know that I wanted to do robotics,” Graven recalled. “I didn’t know what automation was.”

But as Graven learned more, she began to see how automation would expand within the company, along with the entire manufacturing industry.

Zunis said the department’s growth over the past four years was a result of its strategic planning.

Wellington Kiwanis Club annual Pancake Day is returning to its normal February timetable and is set for Friday, Feb. 17 at the Wellington Eagles Hal, 631 S. Main St. The past two years the event was held in April due to the pandemic.

The club will serve from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. and then reopen from 4 to 7 p.m. Pre-sale tickets are $6 and can be purchased at

Bremke Insurance, 104 S. Main St.; Fifth-Third Bank, 161 E. Herrick Ave., or the Office on Aging on the third floor of the Town Hall. Meals are $4 for children 8 and under. Tickets purchased at the door will be $7. Take-out service will be offered.

Arrangements to purchase tickets can be made by email at wellingtonkiwanis@yahoo.com or at www.wellingtonohkiwan- is.org.

Proceeds support Wellington Kiwanis’ service leadership programs – the Wellington High School Key Club, McCormick Middle School’s Builders Club and Westwood Elementary School’s K-Kids. It also supports Kiwanis’ scholarship program and the club’s newest effort, raising funds for community playground equipment.

Tickets are also available at the same locations for the sixth annual State of Wellington breakfast, scheduled for Thursday, March 23 at the Wellington Eagles. Tickets are $15 and available at the same locations as the Pancake Day tickets.

Wellington Kiwanis is celebrating its 99th year. The club currently holds its meetings at 12 p.m. on the first and third Thursdays of the month at the South Lorain County Ambulance District on E. Herrick Ave. A Zoom link is also available through the club’s Facebook page.

“We looked at where we would need to be in terms of selling CNC machine tools and our services,” he said. “We asked what’s going to make us more profitable in the future, what’s going to put us ahead of our competition. And automation was a big part of that.”

Zunis said the company’s automation department might be its smallest, but it’s the most rapidly growing. And it offers Graven another opportunity to flourish, and perhaps become a leader, within a company that’s taught her everything she knows about manufacturing.

“I have learned a lot at work, but the college has opportunities to teach me new things that I can bring back to the job,” Graven said.

Her favorite class so far has been the programmable logic controller course where she learned to write ladder logic. She’s also been fully trained in robotics and has become Mitsubishi Electric Robot Maintenance Technician certified. Now she’s gaining experience with FANUC arc welding robots.