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Factory/Plant Tours - Where Would You Go?
kingelvis asks: "I have been thinking of putting together a road trip with a theme - Traveling to factories, manufacturing plants, etc all over the country and taking their (free) tours. I've already thought of a few places; Boeing, Auto factories in Detriot, Ben & Jerry's, Jack Daniel's distillery, and so forth. I'm interested in everything from 747s to bottled water, so please respond with any public tour you can think of. Where are some cool places you'd recommend visiting to see how stuff gets made? "
...several of the cool places I visited as a kid are now closed to tours: Kellogg's cereals, various Detroit factories, etc. I remember when Kellogg's closed (in Battle Creek, Michigan), they said it was to prevent corporate espionage. The car factory in my home town (Grand Rapids, Michigan) closed to tours due to liability concerns. But I wish you will in your hunt ;)
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If you're passing by St. Louis, don't miss the free Anheuser-Busch brewery tour. St. Louis is the headquarters and has the oldest, largest brewery, but they have breweries that give tours around the country. For more info check out their website. Best part of going on the tour - free beer at the end.
All Corvettes are made at the GM plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The plant tour is free and very cool. And the Corvette Museum is right next door. Be aware that the tour schedule can change with holidays and special events so you might want to call ahead. I have never (yet) done it, but I have heard that one option on buying a new Corvette is to take delivery at the plant or maybe the museum, I forget the details.
Motorola has/had a good tour in Schaumburg, IL. They even had a little museum that showed some of their history and some descriptions of their technology.
Also, most chemical companies have tours. In part, it's PR for the locals.
This seems like the way that shows like Insomniac get started.
Perhaps you should watch that show a few times and see where he goes. Nothing like a good tour of a brothel to add to your church group tour plan.
Wheeeee
My tour would be to see all of the publically displayed SR-71s.
All of the Ben & Jerry's factories are in Vermont. Personally, I've been on the tour at the factory in Springfield several times so I'll discuss that. You start out with a little multimedia presentation and then walk through some elevated paths above the work floor. After that you go and get free samples of whatever two flavors of ice cream that where produced the previous day.
Its a little more than my brief description, but it has always been fun. It'd probably be better to go during the summer so you can lounge around and enjoy a cone on the deck outside the factory.
Overall, its a nice cheap way to waste an afternoon if you're in the area. Although they're not factories, you'd probably want to visit some local agrarian type places like a farm, fruit orchard or (maple) sugar house.
More info can be found here.
You might try visiting the Coors Brewery in Golden, CO. You'll get to see the world's largest single-site brewery as well as the nation's largest aluminum can manufacturing plant. Naturally, they give several free samples at the end of the tour. For those of you who scoff at Coors, they also produce Killian's Ale (originally an Irish recipe, but produced in the U.S.) and Keystone ('the never bitter,' cheapest possible beer) if one of those floats your boat.
Be warned, students of the nearby college frequently take 'the short tour', which skips the bottles and chemicals, going straight to the beer. At a college that's around 75% guys, this could be a hazardous experience for females.
You like splinters in your crotch? -Jon Caldara
Don't miss the U.S. Bureau of Engraving & Printing tour (watch them print U.S. currency). Sorry, no free samples. For some reason they built the U.S. Holocaust Museum right next door.
I went to SanFran this summer, and I said...hey, why don't I drop in on Intel in Silicon Valley.
I took the train down, and dropped in...
They had some dinky ass little museum about how chips are made. And a single 20 inch tv screen showing 1 hallway in the actual production plant....
It was the lamest thing ever.
I had more fun pedal biking around the valley (and up the mountains) than at this excuse for a factory.
Maybe the only tourist attraction is the apple campus. But Silicon Valley is just basically overpriced suburbs...., nothing exotic.
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The hover dam had a very nice tour.
Don't miss Kennekott. It's the largest open pit copper mine in North America. You get to see where all those nasty heavy metals in your PC come from plus some HUGE trucks and explosions and smelters, etc.
I've been to a nuclear plant and a garbage burning one. The garbage incinerator was actually more interesting. You got to see their huge pit full of garbage, and the gigantic claws that would lift garbage like an arcade game claw lifting a stuffed animal. (They scared us by putting us by a window and then nearly hitting the window with the claw. The claw actually used to hit the window and broke it sometimes until they put in this I-Beam to stop it.) Then we got to look inside the incinerators. You can't really look inside the core of a nuclear power plant. They're both cool though, and there's more nuke plants than garbage burning plants. Good luck getting inside either these days, though.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
I wouldn't bother. I know someone who's seen a plant. There's basically a faucet, and water bottles go underneath it, and they get filled up.
The guy was in advertising though, and he described his involvement with the bottled water company as convincing idiots that paid $1 for a bottle of tap water that $2 was a fair price.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
I would highly recommend a book called "Watch It Made in the U.S.A.". I don't have the latest edition, but the previous edition has a lot of great detailed information (cost, freebies given, hours, nearby attractions, etc) for all kinds of tours.
Also, the Travel Channel's website has a list of the Best Factory Tours for Kids in the U.S. in case you want to act like a kid.
General Electric's Appliance Park
Louisville Slugger bat factory/museum
Ford truck assembly plant
National Corvette Museum/assembly plant (in nearby Bowling Green)
Howard Steamboat Museum/JeffBoat(U.S. largest inland shipbuilder)
Zimmerman Art Glass factory(Corydon, IN - 30min drive)
Falls City Ironworks
...and enough Kentucky bourbon distilleries to make a man giddy. Other than those, I can't think of any production facilities that encourage public tours. The McAlpine Locks & Dam (not sure if the power plant is open for tours) is a pretty interesting site, even if it isn't a factory.
See how electricity is made - specifically in pressurized water reactors. This exhibit covers pretty much every aspect of the power generation and transmission business - nice interactive displays and helpful guides and experts to answer questions! Also includes nature trails in some of the southeast's most fragile, preserved, ecosystems. Site below has 360 degree images of all displays and also has contact info and directions. Hutchinson Island, Florida http://www.fpl.com/learning/contents/energy_encoun ter_overview.shtml
The place where the Cape Cod chips are made.
Yes, it is a dinky little tour, but it does not take that much to make the chip, and it is amusing to see the frying kettles.
Oh and make sure to pick up a bag of dark Russet chips...that is what the real chip tastes like.
badness 10000
Not exactly a factory, but I highly recommend touring EBR-I (Experimental Breeder Reactor I) if you are anywhere near the INEEL Facility in Idaho. This is the coolest facility I've toured *ever*. For those of you who don't know, this is the place where electricity was first generated by nuclear power.
Another fun idea would be to visit a prototyping plant. Often these have more secrecy than production plants, but IMHO the prototyping plants are more interesting. There are large stereography machines that are basically gigantic 3D printers. You'll find large devices that drag tiny needles all over a surface, recording dimensions. The prototyping plant I worked at had the largest wood workshop that I've ever seen. They designed prototype airintake manifolds, and castings often start out as a wooden model. Other parts of the plant included huge CNC lathes that you could park a car under and a various injection molding tools/dies/machines. They also had a blow-form machine that would take tiny little plastic slugs and inflate them into water containers, 2Liter soda bottles, anything.
Tours of manufacturing plants are definietly cool.
Keeping
Any power plant. I'm not sure how much you'd see on a tour, but there's some neat tech in these. (My dad works at one so I've seen everything there is...) It's mostly 'low' tech, other than things like control systems. But the scale and the amount of power going through is neat.
NORAD in Colorado Springs, CO or Offutt AFB in Omaha, NE. Norad has some neato tech, and the 'building' is way cool. Offutt AFB has a bit more modern tech (I used to work there, maybe I'm biased), but is basicly the same thing. Both are very high security, so call in advance (at least a couple weeks, maybe a month) so they can do a background check. But it's worth it to see the coolest vax clusters on the planet. (You won't get to actually see them, just the output, but it's still cool. Again, maybe I'm biased, they were my babies for several years) The SAC museum is in Omaha too if you like bombers and stuff.
Any type of steel or metalurgical plant. Those places boggle my mind. (usually located near power plants for cheap electric, at least around my home town)
Chemical plants. Not sure what the security is like near these but it's neet to see how stuff is all heated and mixed together to produce whatever it is they're making. I've been to chevron, dow, and dupont plants (all near my home town also - they call the mid ohio valley, 'chemical valley' for a reason). I'm suprised I don't have an extra limb or something.
Maybe I'm a geek, but I'd like to see some microchips getting made and some surface mount boards getting assembled.
Anyplace that uses robotics is cool. My uncle gave me a tour of the biotech company he built the robots for. If you can get the tour guide or the geeky looking guy standing around at the factory to explain some of details of the tech, do it. I had no idea how far robots had come.
Think about something a little more old fashoned. A hand made wood working shop, a metal shop. Then work your way up to more modern things like windows, and lumber mills.
Get your Laverne and Shirley on at a brewery. Hit someplace that makes snack food or candy. From watching shows on food tv I've noticed they seem alot like chemical plants...
Hmm I'm hungry now. Have a good trip tho.
Don't know if it has been said or not, but a tour of a printing plant (ie, large newspaper or magazine publisher) can be very interesting...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Forget bottled water. Drinking fountains are what it is all about. You should contact Halsey Taylor and see if they give tours.
This sig intentionally left justified.
Every once and a while they take a bunch of people out to the facilities they built, then blew up at the Nevada nuclear testing sites. That's what I'd check out.
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I worked in Springfield Vt's manufacturing plant. It was neat at first, but then it became like any other job. I stood at a conveyer belt and put peace pops into boxes for 8 hours a day. Real thrilling. But the process was kind of interesting. There was a giant vat that the cream and other ingredients were mixed in, then onto a machine that turned them into a somewhat frozen state and ploped them onto a belt. Then sticks were placed in the ice cream, and it went through a long freezer to shock cool them. After spending 10 or so minutes in this freezer, they came out, and were picked up and dipped into molten chocolate. The chocolate dried quickly, and off into the wrapper they went. Then out of that machine and down to me, where i stuck them in boxes.
It was decent work for VT, and not too stressful. Plus they made us eat ice cream every day for quality assurance. Sounds nice, but try eating a peace pop every day for 3 months, you get absolutely sick of them very quickly.
I think there is a plant up in Waterburry VT where you can see ice cream being made, and it is kind of neat to watch for a few minutes.
They're just about the only worthwhile thing to see in West Virginia, but they're a treat. There are still people that sit down with a pole and a lump of glass and a furnace and stick the glass in the thing, and then work with a spinning, glowing, very hot mass of glass. Sparks, flames, glowing colors, and really nice looking finished work. They're realized how much people like watching them, and at one of the ones I've seen, they have an observation deck and a parking lot and a gift shop, simply because of all the people that come through.
May we never see th
For the college ACM chapter to which I belong (and am president), we have an annual habit of touring the Leinenkugle Brewery and Cray facility in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. It's a few hour drive for us in northern Minnesota, but it's worth it and makes a great day out for a bunch of college nerds! :)
:)
We may not do it this year, problems with making the trip to Cray. Not sure if they give tours anymore, bring a bit down and out... but it's quite the tour!
Plus, you get the benefit of drinking decent beer. I saw someone else reccomend a tour of the Busch and Budweister plants- I say "plants" because they could hardly be called breweries! Leine's may not be as good as Moose Drool, but it sure as hell isn't the torture like most of the stuff AB makes...
If you're up in the Duluth area, there is also the Lake Superior Brewing brewery that deserves a tour- some really tasty beer! Hell, their Kayak Kölsch is pretty light, yet full of real flavor for those of you who may venture north but are used to drinking piss instead of the good stuff...
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
If you're into military aviation at all, the USAF museum in dayton is one of the most disgustingly cool places on the planet.
Not only do they have an SR-71, but they also have the XB-70(The mach 3 strategic bomber, one crashed) When I was there, the whole SR-71 was parked under one of the wings of the XB-70. Also there is the YF-12(or is it yf-11? I can never remember) Anyways it's the interceptor that became the SR-71.
Also there is a YF-22, X-15, A-10, just about every army air corps aircraft from ww2, and numerous rare ww2 fighters(Notably the me262 and me163). Not to mention the slew of weapons, engines, and so forth.
IIRC, it's has more aircraft on display than any other museum in the world.
http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/
Has a complete list of everything at the museum, and info on much that they don't have.
The Tillamook County Creamery Association's cheese factory gives free tours. You get to sample all manner of dairy products, too.
It's in Tillamook, Oregon on the Oregon Coast.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
Other parts of the plant included huge CNC lathes that you could park a car under and a various injection molding tools/dies/machines. ...
/. free of grammatical errors for ~5 years.
Tours of manufacturing plants are definietly cool.
Keeping
What have you learned about grammar, nazi?
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
My shop teacher in highschool told me he was out there one time, and pulled up to Hoover Dam at like 2am. He said he just walked right in, and did his own little tour. no one was on guard or anything. He said he only ran into one maintenance guy, down in the generator room.
Starrett Instruments in Athol Ma has a tour - call first. If you want to see how precision measuring tools are made
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Powerplants always have pretty interesting tours. Try and visit a couple of different types.. coal, nuclear, hydro, etc.
Research reactors are good, too. Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) used to offer tours of three nuclear reactors just 3 hours up the road from Ottawa, in Chalk River.
You were actually allowed to stand on the NRX nuclear reactor there, while it was running, and look down into the calandria to see the pretty blue glow. It was nice and warm up there, with a thrumming under your feet from all the pumps and support equipment running.
Of course, all tourists were outfitted with dosimeters and screened thoroughly before and after.
I worked there as a co-op student one summer, it was great fun. The NRX was my favorite, but I think it's decommissioned now.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Area 51.