Once the experimental stage of the development of nylon was complete, the next step was to design a plant that could produce large amounts of nylon fiber at a relatively low cost. DuPont tested prototype machinery in two trial facilities, the semi-works (1936) and the pilot plant (1938), before full-scale production began at Seaford, Delaware in 1939.

The semi-works was housed in a high warehouse-like building. Interior scaffolding supported a series of apparatus. Nylon manufacture began at the top of the building with salt making and polymerization and ended with bobbins winding up finished thread at ground level.

The pilot plant was a miniature factory testing the prototype equipment designed for the commercial plant. Both buildings contained similar machinery but the scale was larger in the pilot plant.

Feeding nylon chips into the spinning machine

The no. 3 spinning machine

Filaments being wound into thread at the windup

Steam chimneys

Detail of windup

Cold-drawing and twisting the nylon filament

BJ-4 drawtwister, Pilot Plant, detail

Yarn inspection

Spinneret filter pack

Components of the spinneret filter pack

Making the nylon salt

Polymerization

Producing the nylon ribbon

Nylon ribbon windup

Nylon ribbon from the semi-works, 50-pound autoclave

Glass spinning cell

Detail of glass spinning cell

Yarn samples, submitted by H. S. Toole

Inspecting the creel that fed the laboratory staple drawing machine

Hot relaxing plates

Overall picture of the Drawing Machine and Creel

New Design Crimper

Pilot plant

War Production Board Award to Joe Labovsky