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Core77 Photo Gallery: The Impossible Project Factory Tour

By Core Jr - Oct 01, 2011

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  • Lia Saile The Impossible factory is located in Building Noord (North) of the former Polaroid plant in Enschede, Netherlands.
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Factory Floor Plan. When Impossible acquired all the machinery from the Polaroid plant, they had to consolidate four buildings worth of equipment into the three floors of Building Noord.
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile The last working large format 8x10 production machine was carefully relocated from Waltham (near Boston) in the US to the Impossible factory in 2009. It is planned to be put back to work once production of the PX integral film formats are running smoothly.
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile One of the original Polaroid machines.
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Impossible employees Henk Minnen, Jos Bakker and Paul Latka
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Film Production Machine
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Wires on the floor
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Impossible founder Dr. Florian Kaps
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Forklift on the ground floor.
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Looking up the stairwell
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Building Noord's foyer for visitors with old furniture from an abandoned doctor's office.
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Film Production Machine
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Film Production Machine
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Third floor: The Production Hall consists of nine giant production machines, several pod filling machines, one big slitter, the reactors, two molding machines and many additional tools.
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Storage for small parts in the warehouse.
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile The huge archive stores over 30,000 carefully preserved spare parts.
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile The Chemical Lab: Impossible are constantly testing new formulas to improve instant film and create new blends.
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile The Chemical Lab
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile The Chemical Lab
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Second floor factory corridor.
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Reactor for mixing film emulsion.
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Third floor: This area is the loudest part of the factory and the machines can be heard and felt throughout the entire building.
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Impossible factory shirts.
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Film Production Machine.
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Film Production Machine.
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Internal factory telephone.
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Commemorative wall celebrating former Polaroid employees with their ID tags.
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Control Panel.
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Making adjustment to a production machine.
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Work tools
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Nico Dikken at work
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Third floor: The Production Hall
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Third floor: The Production Hall
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Control Panel.
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Ventilation ducts on the factory roof.
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Wim Nijmeier, Quality Control Manager at work
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Spread sheets in the laboratory
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Factory windows
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Third floor: The reactor room
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Loading dock
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Third floor: The Production Hall
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Third floor: The Production Hall
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile switch on one of the production machines
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Third floor: The Production Hall
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Switch detail
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Third floor: The Production Hall
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Third floor: The Chemical Lab
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Ground Floor: Home of Jos Ridderhof, the godfather of camera repair. For many years he serviced, repaired and resurrected thousands of SX 70 cameras. Since the start of the Impossible Project he restored as many cameras as possible.
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Control panel maintenance.
    www.theimpossibleproject.com
  • Lia Saile Control Panel.
    www.theimpossibleproject.com

Take a look behind-the-scenes at the The Impossible Project Factory located in Enschede, a small industrial city in the far east of The Netherlands. In 2008 Impossible brokered a last-minute deal with Polaroid to purchase all the machines and equipment used to make instant integral film just before they were scrapped, and set up shop in Building Noord (North) of the former-Polaroid plant.

For those not familiar with the back story, getting the new film to market was not without it's difficulties, it was nearly impossible as Polaroid closed the chemical plant that produced their secret colored dyes almost two years earlier in anticipation of shuttering their analog business. In fact they only started dismantling the factories once all the reserves had been used up. The real challenge for the Impossible team — aside from figuring out how to modernize production — was finding a partner that could produce the chemicals necessary to make the magic of instant film work.

In March 2010, the first Impossible film — PX100 and PX600 — made it's debut, much to the relief of analog photography enthusiasts who had been stockpiling expired film in case they could never shoot their vintage Polaroid cameras again. Today the film range offered has expanded considerably with various monochromatic shades and colored blends available but the Impossible team are still hard at work perfecting the PX integral film formula. There are plans to resurrect the popular 8x10 format using the last intact production machine which was shipped from the US in late 2009, and they have started designing their own camera which will no doubt take strong cues from the iconic SX-70.

To keep our factory tour authentic, the first three quarters were shot on Impossible film and if you want to learn more about how the film is made, check out this great video from the Science Channel we posted a few months ago.

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