CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Derek Ford had a big smile on his face Monday when Alcoa announced that its 50,000-ton forging press in Cleveland was ready to go back into service.

The forging press was part of his own family history. He spent several months in 2009 taking apart the massive machine that his uncle Betro Polk had helped build in 1954. Workers discovered cracks in the press in 2008 that made it unsafe to use.

"It needed to be redone. It was over half a century old, and it was showing its age," Ford said.

Alcoa decided in 2009 to spend millions of dollars to rebuild the press at the Cleveland Works plant instead of moving the work and its 700 jobs elsewhere. The final pricetag for the rebuilt press was $100 million.

Ford said one of the toughest jobs was removing the cast-iron columns that supported the press - massive towers of metal that go seven stories under the plant's floor and five stories above it.

"They used to call in Big Bertha when they were putting it in," Ford said.

"That was hard work, getting those out," Ford said. He called the entire deconstruction project hot, dirty and hard. He said he joked with his uncle that he did too good of a job installing the parts because they were so tough to remove.

The massive press is the heart of the forging operations at the plant. When workers discovered the cracks, many people worried that Alcoa would close the plant, said Gena Lovett, Alcoa's chief diversity office and director of the Cleveland Works complex when the problems with the press started.

"When I started here [in 2007], everyone told me, 'You'll be okay, as long as that press doesn't crack. As long as that one's running, everything's going to be fine,'" Lovett said.

Lovett and other Alcoa officials praised state and local leaders for immediately coming to the company's aid after it discovered the cracks. City, state and county officials teamed up for a $20.7 million incentive package to encourage what was supposed to be a $68 million rebuild.

Built in 1954 for the military (a story in The Atlantic magazine details some of the history behind the military metals program), Alcoa ran the plant as a contractor. It bought it from the government in 1982.

Lovett said getting the new press running will allow the company to dramatically improve its productivity.

When Alcoa shut down the old press, it moved most of the work to an adjacent 35,000-ton press.

"The 35 is less powerful, so it took more hits with the 35 to do the same work the 50 could do in one," Lovett said. That meant it took more man hours and more cost to do the same amount of work on the smaller machine. "That wasn't something we could pass on to the customer. We took a loss" on those extra work hours.

Eric Roegner, president of Alcoa's forgings and extrusions business, said Alcoa is excited to get the new forging press into service. In rebuilding the machine, he said the aluminum company upgraded its controls so the new press is more powerful and more precise than the machine it replaced.

"Our customers can design parts as they never have before," Roegner said.

The forging press uses massive steel dies (typically heated to about 800 degrees) and to press heated chunks of aluminum into large machine parts. The vast majority of the press' work goes to aircraft.

On the old press, the aluminum piece that left the forging press needed a lot of finishing work before the aircraft company could use the parts. Parts leaving the new press will still need some finishing, but he said there will be less wasted metal, and the machine will be able to produce thinner parts that are still strong enough to be used in airplane structures.

"As aircraft programs go through redesigns, we'll have more opportunities to win more work," Roegner said.

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