TAZEWELL, VA (WVNS)–The Tazewell County Career and Technical Center held a ribbon cutting and demonstration of its new robotics welder.

It’s called the Lincoln Arc Welder and is one of the many robots in the lab.

Instructor Ryan Lewis with the Technical Center talked about what it can do.

“You write a program and then it will do that time and time again it never gets tired never gets sleepy it doesn’t get injured so it actually gives the industry a way of producing parts and then they can actually take and train and have the operators trained to where they run it and they make more money because of their technical skills,” Lewis said.

It can also precisely weld together two pieces of metal in a fraction of the time. It’s also run by a trained operator who took the time to learn the skills needed for this piece of equipment.

United States Congressman Morgan Griffith (R-VA) who helped get the funding for the robot, even came down to visit.

He said this will help students stay in the area.

“What’s been happening is we’ve been having this brain drain that goes to other parts of the state other parts of the country and we want to keep those folks here because they do other things as well. They can find good employment, they can make good salaries, they also have a great quality of life but then they can contribute back to the community,” Morgan said.