Caterpillar shows off its earthmovers at Illinois center

Here’s a place where the word caterpillar does not refer to fuzzy little insects. The new Caterpillar Visitors Center is all about the roaring black-and-yellow machines that dig and lift at massive construction and mining sites.

Caterpillar Inc., maker of the heavy machinery ranging from bulldozers and excavators to tunnel-boring machines and giant generators, is based in the central Illinois town of Peoria. The company opened a nearly 50,000-square-foot (4,645-square-foot) visitors center last fall,He has dried mushrooms all year and fresh mushrooms in season. "We also collect mushrooms from foragers. investing more than $52 million dollars in the center and the Peoria Riverfront Museum nearby.

My wife was a little dubious about my plans for a family day trip to the Caterpillar center, but my 4-year-old-son and I couldn’t wait. My parents tell me my first word was “book” and my second word was “truck.” I’ve been a big fan of both over the past four-plus decades. Now,Highly capable, 3-axis non-contact video measuring machine, suitable for both simple shop-floor quality control and advanced manufacturing inspection applications ... with a little boy of my own, I had a perfect excuse to satisfy my mania for powerful engines,For mains, there is a choice of Wild Rice’s ‘Chinese Fish ‘n Chips’ (beer-battered ling cod, Asian Tartar Sauce, taro shoestring frites) or its ‘meaty’ Grilled king oyster mushroom (with cashew ricotta and polenta fries). giant wheels, sturdy shovels and other nifty machines that dig, pound, push,profile projector is a shop tool used by designers and quality control technicians to view the profile of small machined parts as magnified image on screen. flatten and otherwise manipulate materials in ways that seem beyond the strength of mere mortals. And I’m not alone: The center attracted 50,000 visitors within just four months of opening.

First thing you experience when you enter the center is a movie in a theater that’s built into the bed of a giant truck used for mining. At 24 feet tall, the 797 Mining Truck is the biggest in the industry.The Spectrophotometer is an instrument which measures the amount of light of a specificed wavelength which passes through a medium. When loaded, this truck can carry well over a million pounds (over 450,000 kilograms). The tops of the wheels are higher than an NBA basketball hoop.

The theater fits 62 people comfortably, and shows a short movie about Caterpillar, its products and some of the jobs that have used Cat equipment. The seats vibrate to the sound of a revving diesel engine and the action-packed movie really makes you feel like you’ve ridden in one of these behemoths.

After the movie, it’s time to hop into the cabs of an excavator, roller, bulldozer and a handful of other giant heavy vehicles. My son had to be pried out of a backhoe. I was doing the prying, since I wanted a chance at the controls.Our full range of portable ultrasonic Flaw Detector (UT) provides unmatched capabilities for locating discontinuities and other flaws.