Rebuilding the Factory
3 July 2009 in FactoryWe’re all terribly sorry for not regularly updating the blog. We have a number of stories and photos we want to put up, but we’ve all just been overwhelmed between a slew of chocolate and trade shows along with doing pretty thorough renovating of our factory. We’re nearly doubling its size. We’ve also received quite a lot of equipment. I’d say new equipment except that it’s really not new and much of it was in an old Caribbean chocolate factory. All the equipment needs a lot of work. Months of work.
We’ve also been modifying a lot of our other equipment to make it more efficient, safe and productive. It’s been quite an undertaking with many plumbers, electricians, carpenters and others around not to mention all of us here at Amano doing quite a bit of work.
To let you in our what we’re doing I thought I’d share a few photos.
First up some photos from a couple of weeks ago when our equipment arrived. It had gone by boat to train to truck and finally was unloaded in our parking lot.
We’re already having several of the pieces sandblasted and will probably be getting new stones cut soon. (The conches have granite bottoms with a granite wheel that rolls over them – but the granite is in pretty bad shape)
While we’ve been working on all the equipment that needs restored we’ve been deconstructing some of our very old machines. Originally for winnowing (removing the chaff from the bean) we built our own equipment. It was very much a labor of love and we spent a lot of trial and error to get it so it would work right. Unfortunately even when it was working it was quite slow – often running all night to winnow a full bag of beans. Although we were quite proud that we were able to make our own winnower we were quite happy to finally be able to purchase our beautiful mahogany antique winnower. It does in about 20 minutes what our old winnower took all night to do.
We’ve left that old winnower up but today was the day we finally took it down.
(Yes, there was a lot of bean dust as we disassembled it – we were all covered in brown dust)
It was sad, but progress means always moving forward and seeing what we can do better.
As soon as we have the factory put back together we’ll try and do a virtual tour for you to see. We’re very excited with all the changes we’re making.
For those curious, here’s a picture of our current winnower. We’ve been doing a lot of work on it this week. As soon as we’re done I’ll show some pictures of it.
7 Comments to Rebuilding the Factory
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Gorgeous winnower!
The story is really very interesting. I look forward to read some more about the restoration of the machines and to see pictures of the job you have done with the new winnower. Your are doing a lot of work and it all pay out to produce a fabolous chocolate.
[...] Comment on Rebuilding the Factory by TraceyGorgeous winnower!Read More [...]
looks like fun. I hope the neighbors don’t mind or do you have the building to yourself now? GO Art and Company!
There are four large units in our building. We started in one and have slowly expanded until we are in three of the four. Our only neighbor in our building is our landlord who runs an air conditioning and heating business. This comes in quite handy though since he has a sheet metal shop for part of his business.
We’ve been able to have him help us build connectors for our winnower expansions as well as help us with our chimney for our roaster. I don’t think we could have put the factory together the way we have had it not been for many kind neighbors. For instance it was our other neighbor, Brian, who runs a metal fabrication factory who unloaded all our equipment with his forklift. He’s also been invaluable helping us with mechanical problems as we restore our antique machinery.
Even though both Art and I are very technical, the community has been invaluable in helping us do quite a lot of the technical work. I don’t think we could have found a better spot for our factory if we tried just because of all the help we received from our neighbors.
My last job was doing capital procurement for a semiconductor company. I miss the tool deliveries and installs…sort of. ;-) Good luck with your ramp-up and overhaul of the new-to-you equipment!
[...] we were using a winnower we’d made from scratch. It worked, but was very slow. We finally disassembled the winnower we built from scratch last summer. The “new” antique wood winnower we are using now is [...]