A few weeks ago, FCA held a family open house to celebrate the 25th anniversary of CTC (Chrysler Tech Center). Chris started 21 years ago, when the building was pretty new. It has held up well! We only get to go inside FCA every 5-ish years, so this was a big deal! I think it was only my 3rd or 4th time inside!
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| Walking in to the entrance Chris usually uses |
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| It looks like a shopping mall inside! |
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| We hit the design dome first. Lots of neat cars in here...they look like toy cars in this pic! |
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| There were tons of cool models and prototypes lined up inside and outside. I won't bore you with all the car pics. |
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| Chris explaining design stuff to the girls in the Jeep design studio |
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| We got to play with a clay model of a Pacifica in the Chrysler design studio |
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| The interior office had clays, too! |
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| Walking down many long hallways...this building is the 2nd largest in the US, behind the Pentagon! |
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| We got to go to the 14th floor of CTC, to the pentastar that you can see off I-75! We're so cool! |
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| Selfie by the pentastar |
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| They had a great kids area sponsored by LEGOLAND. We got to build cars and race them. |
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| In the full scale wind tunnel. |
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| In the NVH lab (noise/vibration/harshness). Lots of cool instrumentations set up! |
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| In a room for crazy radio bombardment tests. There were several rooms like this, for all sorts of electrical/antenna/radio tests. |
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| In the -20 degree room for cold soaks. The door behind Megan leads to the next room... |
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| ...the +120 degree room for heat soaks!! |
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| Snow room, to see where snow and ice build up on a car |
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| Engine noise testing. Gotta get just the right purr.... |
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| Cool screen setup at this office |
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| A magician dazzled us! There were bands, freebies galore, food, etc. |
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| We finally got to see Chris' cubicle! It was so boring! |
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| The CTC cafeteria. Poor Chris is way too busy to eat here, he always eats at his desk. |
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| We saw how they plop on layers of clay to make their clay models. The clays often weigh more than a real car! |
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| The scanning guy explained how they can scan a car that an artist has made, and then can reproduce that car at any scale. |
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| Milling machine at work, using data from the scanner. So many clay poopies!! |
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| A very nice milling guy explaining how an artist really just has to create one half of a car. Then they scan it, and the milling machine will duplicate the other half perfectly! |
It was an awesome morning, with LOTS of walking, to learn what Daddy does and where he works. I think we also inspired some more enginerds in our family! The girls kept changing their minds on where they wanted to work someday!
