Lu Ming

These machine tools have a uniform feature: the bed which consumes the most material is made of marble.

Marble has precise structure, uniform texture, good stability, high strength, high hardness, no rust, acid and alkali resistance, no magnetization, no deformation, and good wear resistance. It is an excellent material for machine tool beds.

As long as it is not a type of machine tool that requires a strong impact, in fact, marble can be used as the bed.And these marbles were all manually lifted from the central mountain range.

Site survey, logging, blasting, quarrying, transportation... After the Nanyang slaves paid the price of continuous death, huge pieces of marble were carried out from the deep mountains by a group of dozens of slave workers with wooden poles and hemp ropes .

These marbles come to the kiln area, after being polished and shaped, they will be installed with other accessories to become a standard machine tool capable of producing parts.

The operators of the machine tools are all native Ming people.Without exception, these people are apprentices brought out by the industrialists during their early pioneering, and now they have become the backbone of their respective factories.

……

But having said that, the difficulty of training a machine tool operator is much easier than training a chemical dog.

The machining industry does not have high requirements for the quality of personnel.At the end of the Qing Dynasty, there were already many factories set up by people from various countries in Shanghai. Most of the workers here were illiterate.

After that, during the founding period of Rabbit, a large number of young workers called from the countryside into factories were actually illiterate or semi-literate. All the technical and cultural knowledge of these people was gradually replenished after entering the factory.

Traveling through the crowd is no exception here. Most of the newcomers who get it are also illiterate, even though these people originally relied on handicrafts for a living.The only difference here is that the machining industry is intuitive.After the initial "surprise", the newcomer can quickly understand the principle of cutting the workpiece with the cutter head.

Chemicals are different.Without basic theoretical knowledge to come to the bottom, it is impossible for these people to imagine various chemical reactions in the autoclave out of thin air.

That's why machinery factories are thriving now: the shortage of technicians isn't as big as in chemical factories.

Under the guidance of a master, an ordinary apprentice can usually cut a simple workpiece by himself in about half a month.As for those who have been learning knowledge from the backs of Crossing the crowd more than a year ago, some of them can already operate the CNC machine tools in the second workshop and input some processing programs into the host computer.

This is the threshold of the industry. Those who have been playing chemical industry for one year have not yet graduated from primary school.

The second workshop is the CNC workshop.Here are some imported CNC data lathes.The "localization rate" of this kind of lathe is quite low. Except for some cast iron and marble bases, most of the accessories including guide rails, spindles, lead screws, motors, and computer operating systems are imported.

And some of the "precision instruments" used in the crossing country today are produced by them.For example, most industrial gears, such as the old-fashioned wood gas engine that rumbles every day, is as stupid as a cow, and carries two iron stoves as the power source.

Chapter 253 Steel Mills and Ore

Unlike the first workshop where there are many apprentices, the second workshop has time-travelers here.Where "precision instruments" are produced, there must be industrialists who understand computers to control the place.Correspondingly, almost all "intermediate" technicians work in this factory.

The classification of workers' skills in the time-traveling crowd is not as complicated as that of the later generations, it is a simple three-tier: elementary, intermediate, and advanced.Each of these three levels is divided into two levels, that is to say, the sixth level of work is over.

Even so, there is no one who can be promoted to a senior worker right now.The factory's requirements for senior workers are actually very simple: they can simply program, and then set the parameters of the cutter head feed on the control screen according to the requirements of the drawings.

However, this is the moat.

In the eyes of these illiterate craftsmen, what even a technical secondary school student can easily do in later generations is nothing less than a holy book.

At present, the most senior fourth-level worker in the workshop can only use the two-finger Zen to input the set fixed program on the keyboard-just like what they did in the Ming Dynasty, first memorize a set of data by rote, and then Then make a product.

Knowledge determines the upper limit of a person.These craftsmen who lack basic theoretical knowledge will show their true colors once they encounter Zenith Star technology.

Of course, they can't be blamed for this, the Ming Dynasty was such an environment.Besides, the young people of later generations have been playing with mobile phones since childhood, going to Internet cafes to hack after class, and eating chicken every day; it is not difficult for them to modify some simple data on the keyboard according to the needs of the drawings.

But these craftsmen can't do it.First of all, this generation has never been to junior high school, so most of them cannot understand drawings that require simple geometric knowledge.Secondly, they have never played LOL, so when faced with an industrial control screen as big as an iPad, these guys suddenly felt numb and couldn't understand it.

So the current situation is: once there is a new workpiece, the workers on duty must first set all the parameters, and then hand them over to the workers for execution.

As for senior craftsmen who can handle all the procedures by themselves, there is not a single one now.The so-called mid-level technicians must have a few years to catch up on basic knowledge.

……

The third workshop is the exclusive core workshop of the time-travelers.Several sets of Gitmeyer CNC machining centers imported from later generations are the most valuable property of the industrialists.This 5-axis CNC machining center can handle complex curved surfaces. In theory, it can process propellers and BMW engines. It is a real industrial mother machine.

Of course, the current propellers of a certain dickhead force are all made of pig iron, and they can't make BMW cars, so they can only use machining centers to produce some low-level lathe parts, which is considered overkill.

The seemingly glamorous and enthusiastic production activities, in fact, still have empty connotations underneath.Take the most important steel product as an example. Apart from qualified crude steel, the kiln district steel mill can neither roll the special thin plates required for car shells nor the steel types required for high-end engines.

So high-end stuff like BMWs will always be a legend; clumsy, inefficient old-fashioned gas engines are what the Industrial Party is currently striving for.

Industries are intertwined.

The easiest place is also the most difficult place.Starting from a steel ingot and a screw, if any link is not done properly, the system will eventually magnify the problem and show it.

The kiln area is now such a situation.In addition to relatively strong machining capabilities, other links including raw materials can only be described as weak.In fact, even in the field of machining, it is still a lame field that Mingren can't do without the time traveler.

……

After inspecting the machinery factory, Yao Zhesheng and Zou Guoqing, who were not very satisfied with the status quo, took another electric tricycle to the steel factory next door for a tour.

The development of the steel mill to this day is no longer the shabby situation where there were only two small electric furnaces.In addition to importing two 2-ton electric furnaces in succession in the later stage, the steel mill also built a batch of metallurgical equipment such as iron furnaces and reverberatory furnaces through DIY methods.

……

With the Haidong chain stores stationed in the major wharves along the coast of Fujian, the vast number of Fujianese mine owners suddenly found that life is actually booming.

In the beginning, no matter whether it was raw and wrought iron or ore, as long as it was transported to the dock, it would be purchased by the commercial firm.These new merchants are rich and powerful, backed by the increasingly famous Guerrilla General Mansion, they have slowly raised the price of iron in Fujian since half a year ago.

To the excitement of the masses of local sticks, Haidong Chain Co., Ltd. not only opened up to buy iron materials, but also distributed a lot of money to form a joint venture with others to set up a mine.In places like Youxi County and Jian'an County, where traditional iron smelting is located, Haidong Commercial Bank has sent special personnel to negotiate business.

The conditions for running a mine are extremely generous: all mountain owners, mine owners, native riches, squires, local snakes like local snakes near the mines in various places can come to discuss cooperation with Haidong Commercial Bank empty-handed.

Powerful local snakes can get a large amount of money from the firm for nothing.These people often recruited a large number of miners under the organization of commercial banks, and several partnerships recruited a large number of miners to expand the original mines and furnaces to increase the output of iron materials.

The benefits provided by Haidong Commercial Bank are far more than these: mining tools and transport carts made of fine steel, rails, experts with "secret maps" to explore ore belts, rechargeable thermometers, and people who can build new iron-making furnaces "Great craftsman"... These soft conditions for improving the efficiency of ironmaking can all be obtained from Haidong Commercial Bank.

What the local snakes have to do is to keep transporting iron materials and excess ore to the dock, and then exchange them for high-quality private salt, grain and tools from the warehouse of the business.As for silver... this is the last option, private salt and grain are always more useful than silver in the mountains.

With the passage of time, the entire metallurgical industry in Fujian is undergoing profound changes under the control of the invisible hand of the time-traveling forces.

The most important change is: the rapid growth of pig iron production.

Capital is profit-seeking.When the shareholders of the iron yard found that the purchase price of pig iron from Haidong Commercial Bank had increased significantly, they would naturally ask the stove to smelt more pig iron and produce less wrought iron.

There are many traditional steelmaking methods in ancient times, such as block smelting method carburizing and forging (steelmaking), steel pouring method, Suzhou steel method, steel frying method, low temperature crucible method (Damascus steel) and so on.

These methods remain the same, and are essentially low-temperature ironmaking.The so-called "steel" mentioned above are all iron products with unqualified impurity content.You must know that the melting point of pure iron is 1538 degrees. Before the appearance of Huntsman crucible steel in 1740, humans could not melt iron into liquid, let alone control the phosphorus and sulfur content in it.

And the steel factories far away in the kiln area naturally don't need the so-called wrought iron that the furnace workers in the middle ages painstakingly smelted.Because in the eyes of the Industrial Party, any product refined by Ming people is a waste product that has failed quality control.

Then, according to this principle, the pig iron that takes less time, consumes less material, and saves the process immediately became a favorite: the cross-travel crowd deliberately increased the purchase price of pig iron.

Naturally, mine owners in the Ming Dynasty would not reject this change: an earthen furnace that could produce 800 jin of wrought iron a day can now produce more than 2000 jin of pig iron, so why not do it?

However, this was not the end, and the mine owners soon felt the stronger appetite of the industrial society.It didn't take long for the "master craftsmen" sent to various places to guide production to put forward more "lenient" requirements for Ming people's products: we want low-quality pig iron.

This kind of so-called "pig iron" that has only been smelted hastily, which saves time, manpower and fuel to the greatest extent, is actually no different from the strip steel of later generations. It is garbage that can be thrown on the ground and broken.

However, this kind of rubbish was bought by Haidong Commercial Bank at the promised price.

It has been out of control ever since.After hearing the news, mine owners in the Ming Dynasty began to switch to this kind of iron ore that is not like iron ore; and the kiln district steel mills happily began to take over this "high-grade ore" in large quantities.

Yes, in the eyes of the Industrial Party, these iron materials are equivalent to high-grade ore.In essence, they are high-grade ores jigged out by Ming people; it's just that the tools for jigging are not machines, but flames and earthen furnaces.

…Now the integrated Fujian iron smelting industry has become more and more in line with the appetite of the traveling forces. Just like the early colonies, the left hand exports population and raw materials, and the right hand obtains industrial products.

In the process of tireless siege by the commercial system, the number of liner ships from the other side of the sea to Dayuan is increasing day by day.Now every 15 days or so, there will be cross-sea fleets departing from the ports of Fuzhou, Quanzhou, and Zhangzhou.

There are not only iron and coal ships in the fleet, but also passenger ships full of people and merchant ships loaded with sugar, indigo, and porcelain.Under the guidance of the pilot ship emitting a white beam of light, these bright ships traveled all night, and within a day or two they were able to cross the strait and arrive at Dayuan.

With the increase in the throughput of "high-grade ore" and the successful operation of the Taipei Iron Sand Mine, Yaoqu Steel Works finally dared to set the target of steel production in 1628 at the unit of "thousand tons".

Of course, the "steel output" here refers to the total amount of all metallurgical products including refined iron... In fact, the current steel output in the kiln area is not high.For a power in the 17th century, in fact, all kinds of cast iron are the metallurgical products that society needs most, not steel.

Among the daily products of the kiln district steel factory, the largest shipment volume is round steel bars, followed by some rough steel ingots for machining.In fact, these two products have always maintained a share of less than 30% of the total products of the steel mill, and the rest are all kinds of cast iron products.

This number allocation scheme is very reasonable.You know, in this plane, wood gas engines made of cast iron plates and ductile iron are already Zenith star technology.And the crossing force does not need higher technology to wipe out enemies with bows and matchlock guns-with the resources to develop five pairs of wheels, wood gas trucks + [-] big covers have already wiped out all enemies.

Therefore, all kinds of cast iron products are the mainstream of steel mills today.

Chapter 254 An army thorn

Kiln District Steelworks now produces two types of cast iron.

The first is ordinary cast iron refined in a reverberatory furnace.This kind of cast iron has a wide range of uses and can be seen in later generations: all kinds of cast iron water pipes, railings, bases, manhole covers, gates... In short, it is right to use it for any clumsy and cheap objects.

For a long time, ordinary cast iron has been the most important project of steel mills, and once accounted for more than 80% of the total products.

Now, with the success of the more advanced ductile iron, the output of ordinary cast iron has slowly retreated to 60%, and the rest of the share has been given to steel and ductile iron.

Ductile iron is a high strength cast iron material.Different from ordinary gray and white cast irons, when smelting nodular cast iron, it is necessary to obtain spherical graphite through spheroidization and inoculation processes before making this product.

The ductile cast iron, whose comprehensive performance is close to that of steel, can be used to cast some parts with complex stress, high strength, toughness and wear resistance based on its excellent performance.The so-called "substituting iron for steel" mainly refers to ductile iron.

In fact, ductile iron is far more useful than steel when it comes to casting and machining.You must know that the fluidity of steel is very poor, and casting is very difficult; and ductile iron is the real star because of its excellent plasticity and toughness, at least in the plane of crossing the public.

For example, in a wood gas engine system, in addition to the thin iron plate for the casing, the interior includes various mechanical crankshafts, camshafts, connecting shafts, connecting rods, gears, clutch plates, cylinder blocks, etc. The key parts are actually made of ductile iron.

Even in later generations of engines, there are still many parts made of ductile iron.The material can be cast, forged, and cut.Now occupying the top of the food chain in the field of machining and casting is this new type of material that has sprung up suddenly.

The steel mills were unable to produce ductile iron before, not because of the difficulty of smelting this material...at least it is easier than steelmaking.The crux of the problem is that the nodulizer is not in place.

When nodular cast iron is inoculated in the furnace, nodularizers need to be added.The main material in the nodulizer is magnesium, or pure magnesium can also be used directly.

Therefore, industries are closely linked.

A prerequisite for nodulizers is a chemical plant.With a chemical plant and stable hydrochloric acid, it is possible to cooperate with the electrolysis process and seawater magnesium extraction process to produce enough metal magnesium to be used as a nodulizer.

This is the reason why ductile iron can only strike late: the preconditions cannot be put in place for a long time.Once all conditions are met, the output of ductile iron will grow quite fast.After all, this is just a kind of cast iron, and the difficulty of smelting it will definitely not exceed that of steelmaking.

……

When the steel mills were able to mass-produce this kind of cast iron with a wide range of uses, the demand for steel in the crossing country suddenly decreased a lot, which also relieved a lot of pressure on the steel mills.After all, no matter from which aspect, the cost of steelmaking is the highest.

In this way, the product line is well adjusted.A series of steel processing projects that were originally planned to bite the bullet can now be suspended, and the steel mills only need to further improve the steel bar and steel wire production lines: this is the only type that cannot be replaced by other materials.

As for the future, the Industrial Party still has no ambitions when it comes to steel: tinplate and galvanized iron are the highest tech trees to climb in the next three years.

Tinplate can be used for cans, and galvanized iron sheet is also called white iron sheet, which is an excellent material for containers, such as tin buckets and chimneys.

Both materials require the same base material, which is a low-carbon thin steel plate.To produce thin steel plates with a thickness of only about 0.2mm, the current steel mills are beyond their capabilities.This will take a while to accumulate—the cold-rolled steel production line is huge in size and high in technology, and the kiln area cannot produce it by itself.

Fortunately, a certain force's demand for tinplate will not be urgent for a while.

Canned food is mainly used for offense: when soldiers are in the field without logistics, canned food is a big killer.

However, if you look at the overall situation, you will find that all the battles of the current crossing forces are taking place in the coastal zone.Whether it is a sea battle or a land battle, the soldiers under the command of the "Guerrilla General" who have entered the Ming system can get sufficient logistics supplies on the battlefield, and there will be no such bridges as lone troops running deep into thousands of miles, so canned food can be a luxury first. Say it slowly.

... The product structure of the steel mill is like this.For a long period of time in the future, the production share of cast iron, ductile iron and steel will be fixed at 50:30:20. Even if the steel plant expands in the future, this ratio will be difficult to change.

Yao Zhesheng and Zou Guoqing parted ways after inspecting the most core steel mills and machinery factories in the entire kiln area.Yao Zhesheng continued to work as an inspector in the power plant, while Zou Guoqing went back home to work—he had a place in the office of the boss on the second floor of the imperial city.

……

With a "crash", Yu Sibao got his head out of the clear and transparent sea water.Let the sea water flow on his face, the young man didn't bother to wipe it, but shouted and waved his hands on the sea, and swam to a fishing boat not far away.

Coming to the side of the fishing boat, Yu Sibao first threw the things in his hands onto the boat, and then jumped onto the side of the boat like a civet cat along a dangling hemp rope.

Several fishermen on the boat were meeting head to head to study the things thrown by the young people.And a tall, red-faced man in his 40s was holding a coarse cloth robe, and once the young man jumped on board, he hurriedly wrapped the robe around his son's naked body: "Be careful, don't catch a cold. "

This man is Yu Sibao's biological father, named Yu Chengde.

The Yu family is an ordinary fisherman family along the coast of Putian, and Yu Chengde is the owner of the broken fishing boat under his feet.This fishing boat named Herring has 200 fish, and the fishermen on board are all from the same fishing village.

The location where the Herring is moored at this moment is the shore of Cormorant Island where the task force and Zheng Zhilong's fleet fought that day.

The one thrown onto the boat by Yu Sibao was a military stab produced by the Yao District Machinery Factory.This military thorn is the earliest crude steel military thorn produced by the machinery factory. The style is a copy of the US military M9 military thorn, but the blade is lengthened on the original basis, and the back teeth are cancelled.

And it was Yu Sibao's cousin Yu Chushui who was testing the knife on a salted fish with a rusty military thorn.After seeing Sibao get on the boat, Yu Chushui shouted to him excitedly: "Sibao, this is a precious sword!"

While speaking, Yu Chushui slashed at the salted fish hanging on the rope, and the salted fish with thick calves snapped off.

"Father, the boat below must be a cargo ship of a maritime merchant, and there are rich and noble people on board!" Yu Sibao ignored his cousin at this moment, and saw him stretch out a hand from the coarse cloth robe excitedly, palm Inside is a silver ingot weighing about 5 taels, which has long been oxidized into black by seawater.

Chapter 255 Primal Salvage

Yu Sibao is the youngest one on board, only 17 years old, 6 years younger than his cousin Yu Chushui.

Yu Sibao, who went fishing with his father at the age of 15, is exceptionally gifted and unmatched in diving. He can fish for crabs in the sea with just one breath.

Today everyone is sailing out to sea as usual.The small fishing village where Yu’s family lives is on the coast of Putian, about 20 kilometers away from Cormorant Island by sea.The Herring cast nets all the way to catch fish, and arrived near Cormorant Island without knowing it.Seeing that it was getting late, Yu Chengde ordered to go to the old place to take shelter from the wind, and planned to return early tomorrow morning.

After the boat stopped at a small bay where everyone often sheltered from the wind, the fishermen continued their hard work: after the fresh fish were caught on the boat, the fishermen had to deal with the harvest anytime and anywhere.Otherwise, under the high temperature of more than 20 degrees in the south on average, the raw fish will spoil very quickly.

Here's the problem: fishermen who go to sea don't have refrigerated trucks and downwind express delivery, and they don't have the ability to deliver fresh fish to the tables of the gentlemen.The fish must be preserved after primary processing, such as drying and salting.

……

Different environments create different races.

During the same time frame, British, French, Dutch and German fishermen were operating in the icy North Sea, the Norwegian Sea and around Iceland.Fatty Atlantic salmon and Atlantic herring are produced in the cold sea, and the North Sea area, which does not see the sun for half a year, is naturally a big refrigerator-this is why the Nordic people can eat chilled salmon at home.

This natural chilled method cannot be done in temperate regions.Therefore, the Han nationality living in East Asia, even the wealthy and gentry class in coastal cities, was eventually forced to develop the habit of eating freshwater fish.The order of people's choices is: they would rather eat spiny freshwater fish than salted fish.

This embarrassing situation continued into later generations.Even after humans invented the refrigerator, the contradiction still exists, but it has shifted—the reason for not eating sea fish has become the price.