Morgan Countian Blake Gamble Uses JobSight Services to Help Launch New Career in Advanced Manufacturing

Blake Gamble thought he was heading toward a career as an auto mechanic. It was something he enjoyed, and he was good at it. But in summer 2020, just a few months after graduating high school, he realized that perhaps a different career path was ahead of him when an opportunity arose to apply for training at an advanced manufacturing institute in Johnson County.

Blake Gamble, pictured second from left, is currently enjoying a career as a CNC machinist in Mt. Sterling, Ky.

“When I left high school, I was going to be an auto service technician, and I just saw that it wasn’t really as promising as I wanted it to be,” Gamble says.

A native of Morgan County, Gamble says he had heard about the east Kentucky Advanced Manufacturing Institute (eKAMI) before, but wasn’t sure exactly what the school’s program entailed. But during a conversation with Wendy Crain-Lawson, the workforce services director at the Gateway Kentucky Career Center JobSight, the topic of eKAMI came up again, and Gamble says he realized his own career path could benefit from the training offered there. 

eKAMI teaches advanced manufacturing and robotics at its facility in Johnson County. The school’s six-month curriculum trains students on a variety of topics ranging from old-style fabrication techniques to operating state-of-the-art CNC machines and writing programs to create a range of parts from metal stock.

“Machining is a great field,” Gamble says. “It’s hard to beat. You get to make things every day and see the product you put out.”

Gamble’s career advisor at the Gateway JobSight referred him to colleagues at the Big Sandy Kentucky Career Center JobSight in Paintsville, where eKAMI is located. From there, Gamble was assisted with the application and eligibility processes. Once accepted into the program, the JobSight was able to cover his tuition costs, assist with transportation to Paintsville from his home in Morgan County (nearly an hour and a half each way), and later on tools he would need to begin working a new job.

At the time, Gamble was a recent high school graduate and didn’t have the money to cover those costs himself. He says the assistance provided by the JobSight staff at Gateway and then Big Sandy was instrumental in his being able to both apply for and attend the training at eKAMI.

“A lot of this machining stuff is rather expensive, and to be frank I didn’t have the money at the time,” Gamble says. “They ponied up to help get a basic set of tools going, and I couldn’t have started this job without it.”

Gamble says one thing that appealed to him about a career as a CNC machinist was the in-demand nature of the industry, and that trained machinists are going to be needed well into the future to program machines and produce parts for machines, including automobiles and airplanes. In Gamble’s case, he was able to take advantage of that fact and landed a job before he even completed eKAMI’s curriculum, but says he wouldn't be where he is now if he hadn’t been able to attend the school.

Gamble is currently working for C&C Industrial in Mt. Sterling, Ky., where he’s building a career as a machinist. And it’s a job where he’s able to remain in Morgan County, which he says was important for him to do.

“It’s great,” Gamble says. “I’m making good money and I’ve got good, steady work, and I’m glad to have it.”

As a machinist, Gamble is helping produce parts of a number of different companies in a variety of industries. And just as importantly, he’s learning more along the way and plans to make a career from the skills he first learned about at eKAMI.

“I’m an apprentice,” he says. “I have people working alongside me who have been doing it 30 years, and it changes every day. It’s always a growing field.”

And for anyone who might find themselves in a similar position as he was just a few months ago, Gamble says he would recommend they visit their local Kentucky Career Center JobSight and check out the services available there. Those services helped him start a career, and he says they could do the same for others.

To learn more about career assistance options available through your local JobSight, visit jobsight.org.

EKCEP, a nonprofit workforce development agency headquartered in Hazard, Ky., serves the citizens of 23 Appalachian coalfield counties. The agency provides an array of workforce development services and operates the Kentucky Career Center JobSight network of workforce centers, which provide access to more than a dozen state and federal programs that offer employment and training assistance for jobseekers and employers all under one roof. Learn more about us at http://www.ekcep.org, http://www.jobsight.org and http://www.facebook.com/ekcep.