ROCKFORD — What is billed as North America’s newest, largest and most advanced five axis mill machine was unveiled Thursday at Ingersoll Machine Tools, 707 Fulton Ave., on the Rockford's northwest side.

The company’s MasterMill will manufacture large components, including an 1,800-ton mount, for the Giant Magellan Telescope, which is heralded as a next-generation giant optical infrared observatory capable of altering the history of space exploration.

The mount will secure the seven giant mirrors in Magellan, which is scheduled to be installed in 2027 in an observatory in an earthquake-prone remote area of Chile, according to Chip Storie, CEO of Ingersoll’s parent company, Camozzi Machine Tools.

“Our mount is going to be able to control the precision that the telescope needs to look into deep space while those earthquakes are active,” Storie said. “This is one hell of an engineering feat and a manufacturing feat to be able to do something like that and it’s the Ingersoll employees who I give all of the credit to.”

More news:Rockford company to help giant telescope reach for the stars, peek at the universe

The MasterMill machine is housed inside Ingersoll’s newly constructed 40,000-square-foot manufacturing, assembly and extended testing facility.

The huge machine will also support the company’s work for the U.S. Navy.

“This is a recognition of the people, the women and men that generate the ideas, design the structures, buy the parts, cut the steel, count the dollars and assemble the thousands of parts that are put into this machine,” Ingersoll Machine Tools CEO Jeffrey Ahrstrom said. “Then they dutifully take that machine apart and send it off to another part of the country or the world and assemble it. That’s what we do.”

Ahrstrom said Thursday’s grand opening was a celebration of the growth of American manufacturing, private-public partnerships, job creation and developing the next generation of manufacturing leadership.

“It’s really exciting to see this expansion,” Mayor Tom McNamara said. “But, it’s also terribly exciting for a mayor of the city of Rockford to know that Ingersoll is continuing our community’s long legacy of having excellent manufacturing and excellent engineering. But, also, even more than that, we have an amazing corporate citizen when it comes to Ingersoll Machine Tools right here in Rockford.”

Ingersoll Machine Tools develops advanced machine tools for aerospace, transportation, energy and other industries. The company has about 200 employees.

Ingersoll International, the forerunner of Ingersoll Machine Tools, was founded in the 19th century and employed about 2,000 people during the company’s heyday in the 1960s and 70s. Ingersoll International went bankrupt in 2003 before the company was purchased by the Camozzi Group of Italy.

Ken DeCoster covers business news and features. Contact him at 815-987-1391, kdecoster@rrstar.com or @DeCosterKen. 

This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Ingersoll Machine Tools to help giant telescope reach for the stars