FACTORY TOUR!!!! The magical world of Plaques.

Since i made the jump to my new career in award components i've had trouble explaining what we make to people. It's not that i have trouble describing what we do, it's just that most people think of a trophy shop when i tell them that we manufacture plaques, trophy bases, etc... I've found that once people see the actual factory it helps them understand the scale of what we do. In a nutshell we are a manufacturer plaques and bases made out of MDF (medium density fiberboard) and covered with a foil (actually a mult layered paint that is applied with heat and pressure) to make the pieces look like differnt types of wood or marble or other colors. Half of our building is used for manufacturing and the other half is our warehouse where we inventory the stuff we manufacture along with other items that we offer in our catalog. (colored metal engraving stock, plastic figures, solid walnut items and other accessories used in the trade.) We try to offer all the pieces required to create the finished trophy or plaque.

Here are some pics from the factory:

Here is a view from outside of my office window. The factory is approx 80,000 sq. ft. half of which is shown here and the other half is the warehouse
this is a pic of the front and back(below) of our panel saw. This saw is programable to cut the desired size pieces out, and will cut 7 sheets of 5/8" MDF at a time.

Here are the CNC routers. Similar to CNC mills for metal working, these routers can do all sorts of cool things. Any shape we want, cut outs for pictures, fancy border work for perpetual plaques. We actually keep the programs pretty simple, but these things run everyday. Depending on how busy we are we run them 8 hours/12 hours/16 hours a day. Right now we are running 12 hours a day.this one just finished it's cycle...1 sheet of this plaque down...79 more to go. (there are 72 of this style plaque per sheet)

The machines in this photo are the edge foil, they take the plaque, shape the edge with a concave or bevel, sand it smooth and then apply the foil.

These plaques are waiting to be top foiled. Just like it sounds, foil is applied to the front and rear, then the plaques are boxes and taken over to the warehouse side for storage or shipment.

Here is a poor quality picture of the warehouse. You can see the back of my sister's minivan that is for sale...anyone needing a 2002 Caravan?

There ya have it. The Factory. I can't help ya with finished plaques, but i can get you the pieces.