History

Rapid-Air & MTE Hydraulics Headquarters & Manufacturing, Rockford, IL

A History of Innovation

The year was 1959 when Dick Nordlof, an enterprising partner of Mechanical Tool and Engineering Company, located in Rockford, Illinois, pioneered and innovated the first self-contained air feed designed to drastically improve the metal stamping process. It was a device destined to forever change press room operations.

Mechanical Tool and Engineering was in the business of making tools and dies and producing precision stampings from some of the first, very complex and progressive dies in the country. It soon became evident to Nordlof, an MIT graduate engineer, that the dies couldn’t be used to their fullest capability, because there were no precision feeding devices on the market. And thus, with the introduction of a new air feed device, and Dick’s brother Ron Nordlof in charge of manufacturing, Rapid-Air was born.