Awesome Factories

Between its two Vermont factories, Ben & Jerry’s cranks out a million pints of ice cream each day. Insider Business takes us behind the scenes to see how they make their delicious ice cream, along with a brief history of the socially-conscious company. For more Ben & Jerry’s fun, check out Rhett & Link’s 52-flavor taste test.

If you’ve eaten at a Japanese restaurant, you’ve probably seen a maneki-neko. These decorative cat figurines are believed to bring good luck to those who possess one, so they’re incredibly popular. Process X visited the Umetsuki Tomimoto Doll Garden factory, birthplace of roughly 80% of ceramic maneki-neko sold in Japan.

Process X takes us inside the Ishii Sports shoe factory to see how artisans create boots by hand. Each shoe starts by cutting shapes out of leather, refining its edges, then gluing and stitching the pieces together, adding lace rivets, and nailing it around a wooden form before sewing on its insole and attaching the layers of its sole.

Zoom in Progress takes us on a tour of a factory in Korea that produces full-color product packaging. Along the way, you’ll see their printing operations, along with their gluing, die-cutting, and box-folding machines. But the most satisfying part is when they use hand tools to remove the edge pieces from the cardboard.

We found ourselves hypnotized by the back-and-forth motion of this conveyor belt sorting system. Apparently, cameras or barcode scanners identify what objects are entering the conveyor, and the system rapidly changes the direction of each belt to ensure the item goes into the appropriate box.

The manhole covers here in the U.S. are pretty utilitarian. But in Japan, manhole covers can be works of urban art. This video from Process X takes us inside a high-tech factory that turns raw steel into embossed discs, then has artists embellish them with colorful enamels applied with squeeze bottles.

Mega Process takes us on a tour of a factory that produces unique, high-end pens using 3D-printed metal. Merain Korea uses a selective laser sintering 3D printer to melt together thin layers of metal powder, then painstakingly deburr, clean, and plate each pen before assembly and packaging.

If you’ve visited a Costco lately, you might have seen some chairs made from Polywood, a durable material produced by chopping up and melting down plastic, then extruding it into a weight-bearing and weatherproof lumber for making furniture. Popular Mechanics takes us inside the Polywood factory to see how they do it.

The buttons on our clothing are one of those things we take for granted. But it’s somebody’s job to make them for us. All of World Process takes us inside of a factory that cranks out buttons by the thousands. They pour liquid plastic into tubes or sheets, slice or cut out button shapes, then drill and tumble them until shiny.

King Process takes us inside a Korean factory that makes large industrial nuts. The process starts with rods of steel, which they heat in a forge, then use machines to shape the molten metal into hexagons, punch holes into them, and tap screw threads after cooling and polishing. If you need some bolts to go with, here you go.

This satisfying compilation video from Food Kingdom takes us on a tour of five factories in Korea that make different kinds of foods. We start off with rainbow-colored cake layers, followed by corn chip snacks, deep-fried and stuffed tofu pouches, chocolate nut mini brownies, and chocolate cakes. We’re so hungry now.

Process X takes us inside a Japanese factory that’s been making rubber boots for almost 90 years. They start with lumpy, raw rubber, then roll, stamp, form, and assemble pieces to create the body and soles. Then vulcanization applies heat and pressure to make the boots flexible and durable before finishing.

Animator MIKAN used the Unity game and graphics engine to create this engrossing video of an imaginary factory that churns out humanoids by the dozens. Watch as the individual components come together to form each figure, then stick around to the end to see how many pass the rigorous quality assurance testing.

Music on vinyl has made a comeback here in America, so a number of factories here can press records. But there’s only one record manufacturer in Korea – Machang Music & Pictures. All Process of World takes us inside the factory for a look at the process of creating a master disc which is used to press tiny grooves into vinyl blanks.

Chalk seems like a pretty basic thing, but it’s still interesting to see how it’s made. Process X takes us inside of the Tenjin Chalk factory which mashes powdered calcium carbonate with water and extrudes it into cylinders before slicing it into pieces. They add colorings and pour the mixture into molds for gypsum chalk.

We love watching videos of factories making things we take for granted. Process X takes us inside the Nitinen factory in Japan that makes 17 million cans of butane fuel each year. The assembly line ballet starts with printed metal blanks which they bend and assemble into cans, then attach lids, valves, and eventually fill with gas.

This fascinating piece of industrial equipment from WAFIOS takes thick steel wire and turns it into the kind of heavy-duty coil springs you might see wrapped around a shock absorber. It uses a series of rollers to feed the wire and computer-controlled bending wheels to ensure the precise shape and size of the coil.

The Process K channel shares videos of industry at work in factories around Korea. In this clip, you’ll see how thick steel bars are stretched and pulled while hot to create skinny lengths of rebar used for reinforcing concrete. Let’s face it, can you ever get enough footage of molten hot steel?

Like many of you, we enjoy spicy foods. In this wonderfully satisfying video from a factory in China, we see how they combine spices, oil, herbs, sugar, and even beer to create mass quantities of delicious chili oil for hot pot cooking. While we couldn’t find where to buy this exact product, there’s a similar hot pot base available on Amazon.

If you’ve ever watched Nailed It!, you know that it takes some skill to cleanly frost a cake. This piece of factory equipment from Unifiller Systems does the hard work by squeezing out frosting and smoothing it. The Cake-o-Matic 1000i can ice the top and side of a cake in just 1.3 seconds, and can also fill layers or decorate pies.

Process X takes us inside Japan’s Kita-Boshi Pencil Co., a factory that cranks out pencils by the thousands each day, shaving shapes out of cedar and cypress wood and filling them with leads before gluing them together, shaping, and sharpening them. Oh, and if you need an eraser, they’ve got you covered.

Germany’s Fatzer Brugg is one of the world’s leading producers of industrial wire rope. These thick braids of wire come together to form incredibly strong cables which are used for gondolas, ropeways, and bridges. This short clip shows one of the machines they use to twist together spools of wire to form a finished rope.

We’ve seen all kinds of specialized factory equipment over the years, showing off some ingenious engineering to perform repetitive tasks. One of the more satisfying machines we’ve seen in recent times is this contraption that rapidly applies stickers to lemons as they glide along on the conveyor belt below.