Take a Virtual -- and Real-Life -- Tour of Travis House of Fire Factory

You still have time to register for The Wednesday, December 16 tour of Travis House of Fire in Mukilteo, WA. Travis Industries manufactures Lopi, Avalon, and FPX hearth products, under one roof in their 476,000 sq. ft. state-of-the art facility.

In the video below, you’ll take a virtual tour of the factory and learn how highly-skilled workers (with help from some sophisticated equipment) convert 30 million pounds of raw steel into stoves. You’ll see how a Lopi Endeavor is made, from start to finish.

During your in-person tour, you’ll get up-close-and-personal with all the equipment demonstrated on the video. The tour—which is free of charge—takes place on the factory floor, and you get to walk right up to the equipment you’ll see on this video – you’re even invited to touch some of it.

During your tour, you’ll eyeball the following:

Laser – Cuts precise holes inside stainless steel secondary combustion tubes.

Turret Press – Sophisticated, computerized equipment that minimizes waste by pressing multiple parts for stoves into one flat piece of steel.

Press – The single largest piece of machinery in the plant, this impressive 600-ton press used to be a Chrysler bumper-making machine.

Bender – Bends the stove door opening and sides to create a strong firebox.

Welding – Robots do a precise weld; at each of five stations, additional pieces of the stove are welded together.

Finishing – Every stove is hand-scraped – even the unseen areas – to clean it up and remove any rough edges. Material is blasted onto the stoves to give them an ultra-fine finish and good paint adhesion.

Paint Room – Each stove is hand-painted.

Fitting – Stoves are fit with firebrick, the final trim work and handles, and are inspected for weld-splatter and paint to ensure that the entire stove is smooth and clean, inside and out.

Paint 2 – Accessories and panels are added, and brass doors are polished. Every solid brass door goes through four stages:

1. It is polished with a belt sander
2. A grease wheel rounds the edges and smoothes the door
3. Color buff takes out the scratches
4. Final color buff polishes the brass to a beautiful shine

Warehouse – The mammoth shipping facility has the capacity to hold an inventory of up to 16,000 stoves at one time, plus 2,200 different accessories and components that will be shipped to five warehouses around the country.

Engineering – In this final stop on your virtual tour, you’ll view computerized full and cutaway models of the stove, so you can see how the parts fit together before they are manufactured into prototype parts.

Lopi Wood Stoves - How They're Made from Travis Industries on Vimeo.

More tour highlights & info on how to register for your free tour of Travis House of Fire:

• Take This Hot Factory Tour – You Won’t Regret It
• A Man Who Loves Fire: Kurt Rumens, Founder of Lopi Stoves
• Travis House of Fire Factory Tour Gets Rave Reviews from Rich's Customers