What heavy equipment or farm equipment manufacturing plants have you toured? And if you haven't toured any ind or ag plants what large plants have you toured? Tell us about them and post pics if you like. The only heavy equipment plants I've been through is K-tec Earthmovers shortly after they started up. Back then it was just a small shop. Don't know what it is now. Other than that its been Boeing in Seattle, Mercedes Benz in Vance, Alabama and Weyerhauser's former high speed stud mill in Carrot River, Sask. and their former paper mill in Prince Albert, Sask.
I got to go to several Cat plants. Aurora excavator plant, Peoria Track Type Tractors, Engine foundery, Engine plant, and the Decatur plant where scrapers, graders, and haul trucks come from. I think the Decatur plant showed the best in terms of people, morale, and pride in workmanship. The engine plant is at the other end of the spectrum.
Was to the Northwest plant in Green Bay Wisconsin. They even had a hardwood floor made out of 4" X 4" blocks driven on end into the floor.This was over 40 years ago. Interesting to see them building the machines.
I have been to the Peoria and Aurora Cat plants as well. Peoria is probably the only place I have every seen three new D11's at the same place at the same time. Funny thing was, all three D11's were being built for Drummond Coal in Alabama. A couple of really interesting processes I saw was stamping track links and the robotic welding of the excavator carbody's. It's impressive to see a machine that not only holds a 330 size carbody in the air but rotates it while the robot welds it. The engine block "pickers" - they operate/function similar to the human arm as far as dexterity goes - who dig the engine blocks out of the casting sand as the molds are split and then hang them on the cooling rack was interesting as well. It looked like something out of a Mad Max movie.
I was able to visit the Cat crawler plant back in 87', treated us like kings, hi tracks were still new then, they were building 8's 9's &10's. The foundry impressed me the most, they were casting 3406 blocks at the time also hardening and finish grinding the crankshafts. Saw them shearing and punching track pads, casting rollers. Raw iron in one end and finished tractors out the other.
I've been in a number of manufacturing plants all over the world (IBM, Hewlett Packard, 3M) but at the other end of the spectrum from heavy equipment. I worked 20+ years for a couple of company's that make automated equipment (robotics) used mostly in the computer and electronics industry. I suppose some of the stuff could have ended up in the heavy equipment used today. Sorry, no pictures. Cameras were never allowed.
CM I almost mentioned the pickers. That was a pretty impressive part of the tour. Looks like a really nasty job though. Also impressive was the pouring of the molten steel from the pots into the moulds. I remember the guy down on the floor adding the alloys to the molten steel in the pots. Looked like another job I was glad someone else had to do. I did not get to see the track shop though. It sounds like another good experience. In Aurora, when I was there they had a 994 mainframe on the robotic welder jig. It could rotate the complete 994 frame on any axis for perfect welding position. At the timre, the first 2 993K field follow units were being completed, but we were not told what they were, or even allowed very close. I only realized a couple of years later when the first reports of them in the field showed up. At Decatur, the first production 657G was near completion, and we got to climb all over it. Another member of the group had some on order, so we got to spend extra time there. In all the machine plants, there was a sense that the employees really cared about making the best product possible. Too bad I could not say the same about the engine plant. The managers seemed to care and take pride, but the line workers mostly seemed to just be there for the check, not really caring about the product like I seen in the machine plants.
I have toured the Volvo Road machinery plant in Shippinsburg PA, and I have also toured the Ponsse Forestry plant in Vierima Finland, both were very cool and I defiantly learned a lot of how these were made.