PARIS – Even after 50 years in business, many of its neighbors still don’t know exactly what Maine Machine Products does.

“A lot of people wonder what we do here,” David Sutton, the company’s pump unit manager joked with a group of visitors Thursday. “They say ‘oh, there’s a machine shop in town. Let’s take the car over and they’ll change the tires.'”

In celebration of its 50th anniversary, MMPCo is inviting the public to an open house Saturday, where anyone who is still unsure of what the company does will be able to find out on a tour of the factory floor.

Far from changing tires, the tour will show how the company makes parts for the defense, aerospace, semiconductor, and medical industries. It will include a rapid prototyping machine, which could grow a polycarbonate tire, if the company should ever decide to go into the tire-changing business.

As a way to include the employees in the 50th anniversary celebration, the company decided to make commemorative clocks for every member of the team – the company employees 150 people. The 4-inch tall clocks started, like many of the parts produced at MMPCo, as a solid piece of aluminum. The aluminum blocks were machined, essentially whittled down, into the desired shape. All of the working parts were created at the plant and assembled in the “clean room.” Finally, each clock was engraved with the company’s name.

“Everybody had their hands in this one,” said Jim Osborne, a machine operator. The team effort that went into this, and every product that MMPCo makes, shows the heart of the company, Osborne said. “You gotta have heart. If you don’t have heart, nothing’s going to come out of it.”

Osborne is one of MMPCo’s success stories. The Bridgton native was one of nine students to graduate from the Machine Operator Skills Training program at the Career Center in Paris. The Gulf War veteran went on to join the MMPCo staff and has been “loving every minute of it,” he said.

Tours Saturday will be offered between 1:30 and 4 p.m.