Bridgeport was booming. Remington Arms had to put 10,000 people to work and quick and for 30 cents an hour, Richard F. Moore started to work in the milling department. In those days, it was common to move around as there was no seniority, no vacation, nor pensions to lose, and so after several job shops he wound up in the Singer Tool Room. After several years at Singer, Richard Moore decided to start his own business.

With a late model 14 in. Hendy lathe, one Brown & Sharpe Miller, one Producto Drill, one LeBlond Universal Grinder one new American Shaper, a toolmaker and a boy to run errands, Moore Special Tool was founded.

A decade or so before Moore Special Tool was founded (circa 1914), a Jig Borer had been introduced to solve the location problem.  In 1932, Moore Special Tool couldn’t achieve the die tolerances for the clock and brass shops of the Naugatuck Valley on the equipment that was available at the time. So, Moore built a different kind of Jig Borer for its own use in. Hardened ground and lapped lead screws were used versus soft, compensated ones. The lead screw also made possible faster setting and led to the widespread acceptance of this design.

Moore invented the Jig Grinder, which overcame the problem of having to jig bore parts in a soft state and somehow try to compensate for the resultant hardening distortion.  Now holes could be ground to location.

Over fifteen hundred No. 1 Jig Borers and 500 Jig Grinders had been built and sold.  Of the No. 2 design, which was introduced in 1950, 800 Jig Borers and 750 Jig Grinders had been sold.

A higher generation of accuracy was envisioned by R.F. Moore.  The No. 3 machine design emerged.  Instead of only scraped ways, hardened ground and lapped ways were used. Instead of only one V-way, two V-ways were employed. “Kinematically unsound!” said the metrologists.  Not until years later when the design had been successfully employed in measuring machines and ruling engines and then in thousands of jig borers and jig grinders, did the simple genius of the design begin to be understood.  Then others began to recognize what was already known by Moore….”elastic averaging,” and “ unbelievable control of movement of a lapped lead screw”.

The roller-way design was used to produce the first numerically controlled Continuous Path No. 3 Jig Grinder, which was a revolutionary concept for precise machining of gages, cams, dies and components.

Expansion oversees helped protect the Moore business as a nationwide US recession hit and the machine tool business hit extremely hard. Accounting for as much as 50% of sales, without the market beyond US shores, the company’s future would have been doubtful. Over the years, many different machine applications were developed that took advantage of the superior Moore geometry and stability. Ruling engines and diamond turning machines were two prominent examples of Moore geometry.  Over 6,000 jig borers and 8,000 jig grinders have been manufactured and several hundred ultra-precision special machines have been designed and built by Moore to serve a wide range of industries including optics, aerospace, and defense.

The Moore Special Tool Company and its European subsidiary, Moore Special Tool AG were acquired by the Producto Machine Company and the PMT Group was formed.

Moore Nanotechnology Systems, LLC. was founded as a separate business unit under the Moore Tool Company in Keene, New Hampshire.  The business focus was ultra-precision machinery for diamond turning, deterministic grinding systems and glass press molding equipment, in the production of advanced plano, spherical, aspheric, conformal, and freeform optics.

Construction of a new 36,000 state-of-the-art facility was completed in Swanzey, New Hampshire and all Moore Nanotechnology operations from the original Keene facility were successfully transferred in December of that same year.

Moore Tool Company continues to become a vertically integrated supplier of key sub assemblies and other components in the manufacture of Moore Nanotechnology equipment.

Moore Nanotechnology Systems opened a process development center in Concord, NH.

The PMT Group sold Producto Corporation (doing business as Ring Precision in Jamestown, New York) and subsidiary Dieco (Solon, Ohio) to the Culper Group.

Moore Nanotechnology Systems opened a 50,000 square foot facility in Charlotte, North Carolina to provide a world class customer training facility and industry-leading process development center. This facility also provides incremental production capacity to meet the demands of a rapidly growing market. The M600 Ultra Precision Jig Grinder is launched to achieve sub micron level accuracies.

Today, Moore Tool continues to be a a part of the PMT Group.  Built over a century, the PMT Group continues to be a pioneer in innovative technology and systems for ultra-precision and precision manufacturing across the most demanding customer applications, globally.