Factory/Plant Tours - Where Would You Go? 117
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? "
Corvettes in Bowling Green, KY (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
What time of day? (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Dams are interesting stops (Score:1, Interesting)
If you pass through Arkansas, consider touring the Greer's Ferry Dam. The tour was so nice, I took it twice in consecutive years. You'll never look at the outside of a dam the same again once you've been down inside!
Ben & Jerry's (Score:4, Interesting)
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. [benjerry.com]
Re:Three words... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Nuclear testing site (Score:3, Interesting)
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 [dreamlandresort.com]. That's what I'd check out.