Advanced Machining CNC Machinist/Programmer Zach Whitten Becomes Compass Precision Employee of the Month
Life can often be all about finding oneself in the right place at the right time. That’s certainly true for how Zach Whitten came to work at Advanced Machining & Tooling, LLC.
While attending Rowan-Cabbarrus Community College in 2016, Zach’s professor recommended him to Advanced Machining President Keith Felts, who was visiting the machining program at the school. After an interview, Zach landed an entry-level position at the Compass Precision operating company.
Now about five years later, Compass Precision has named Zach the company’s Employee of the Month for April.
”Zach will claim that he was lucky to meet me back then,” chuckled Felts. “But the reality is that we were equally fortunate to be introduced to him.”
As opportunistic as Zach was to meet Keith while still in school, Zach was equally fortunate to even be at Rowan-Cabbarrus. Originally, Zach intended to earn a mechanical engineering degree at UNC Charlotte, but for a variety of reasons, he wasn’t happy with that career path.
Zach said he needed a change, and one of his friends provided him a solution.
“I had a buddy who went through the CNC programming or CNC machining program at Rowan, and just on a whim, I decided one day just to drop out of UNC Charlotte and go try it out to see how I liked it.”
The rest, as the cliché goes, is history.
In his interview for an Advanced Machining position, Zach told Keith that he was “so sick of wiping down cars at the car wash” that he “would come in and shovel chips if that’s what needed to be done.” Initially, Zach wiped down machines, packaged parts and helped clean everything else in the shop. From there, he worked his way up to machinist.
His current day-to-day tasks mostly consist of machine maintenance, which includes changing machine parts in the morning after lights-out production, checking machine fluids, and other various tasks. Additionally, Zach programs machines and designs fixtures. He will celebrate his five-year anniversary with the company this year.
Zach also reached a personal milestone last year. He married his wife, Kelsey, in October. Although COVID caused the couple to cut the wedding guest list in half, they did keep their originally scheduled wedding date.
When he’s not working, Zach likes to spend a lot of time on his porch, sometimes with a cigar. Zach and his wife also own an English bulldog named Penny.