John Deere Harvester Works

Oh my god, it's the entrance.

Oh my god, it's a deer statue.

Oh my god, it's the outside of the world headquarters.

Oh my god, it's the outside of the Harvester Works.

Oh my god, it's the inside of the Harvester Works.

Oh my god, it's our tour guide.

Oh my god, it's the waste paint consolidation system thing.

Oh my god, it's the built combine parking lot.

Oh my god, it's some guy welding augers for corn heads.

Oh my god, it's the "Thank You" sign.

Oh my god, it's some dudes from Renville.

Oh my god, it's the John Deere Harvester Works tour wrap-up. I was lucky to go with Haener and Buck to East Moline, IL last Thursday to go on the "Gold Key Tour." So we started off with roughly a 5.5 hour (from my house) drive to the John Deere World Headquarters. The first area you walk in to is a huge building that has a combine, a couple of tractors, a grater, a gator, and other misc. Deere equipment. Oh, and you come in on the second floor. So you're standing above all this. Very cool. Then we got to strap the feedbag on and take a little tour of the headquarters. The outside of the building is Core-10 steel. And yes, it is supposed to rust. And that seals it, so you don't need to paint. For a building that was built in the 60's, it still has an impressive look. The inside is pretty nice too (they could use new signs though). After that, we strolled around the "showroom" a little (and trying to figure out how they got these machines in to the building) and then took a short drive to the Harvester Works. This is, in lay man's terms, the combine factory. We watched a little video about the factory and then we headed out to the factory. Where we hopped on a trailer with seats while a John Deere lawn mower pulled us around the 80 acre (just one building is 80 acres, zoinks) factory and a little bit outside the factory. It's very impressive. Here's just some of the fun facts: 80 (I may be off on this number but it was somewhere around here) laser cutting machines, 70 robotic laser welding machines, a bunch of press', and a ridiculous overhead chain-driven conveyor system. The paint system alone is crazy. They dip each piece in 7 or 8 different tanks to clean the pieces, degrease them, and paint. And then these pieces go in the robotic painting booth. And then two people hit the pieces with more paint. And all the excess gets funneled into this huge waste paint consolidation tank thing. They only go through 30,000 gallons of paint a year. Damn. Roughly 20 gallons per combine. I could probably go on for hours, but I won't. Basically, if you want to see something awesome being made, check out the Harvester Works. You can just get a regular tour but if I were you, I would just buy a new combine so you can get the "Gold Key" tour. It's so worth it. You get free food, a hat (that says "Gold Key Member"), and an actual gold key to start your combine with.