At night, oil lamps were still lit in the sheds of the wood processing plant.
Seven or eight old carpenters and young apprentices were working overtime around several woodworking lathes. They accepted a task from Zhao Ze, the Minister of Engineering, to imitate bearings of different specifications with hardwood.
With the help of Xu Hongru, Zhao Ze could also independently control his industrial weapon, the CNC machining center. He had used some of the raw materials stored in the space-time isolated island to build a lot of industrial machinery, but he soon faced a tricky problem — many key parts were missing, especially bearings.
Due to the technical difficulty of crucible steelmaking, Shi Dong from the Ministry of Mines shook his head and said that he could not make qualified alloy steel in a short time. Zhao Ze could only find a way to solve the problem of key parts by himself. The first thing he had to solve was the various types of bearings. Without bearings, it was impossible to talk about slightly high-end industrial equipment.
Making bearings was a precise job. The only good news was that the various machinery used by the Revolutionary Army did not have high performance requirements for bearings. As for lifespan and load, it was fine as long as it could be used. This work became a difficult problem for the carpenters to overcome. They were currently changing their profession to fitters and would face this problem sooner or later.
Zhao Ze personally served as the project team's director. But he had too much work to do. After giving the information and arranging the research direction, it was still the craftsmen who did the work. Since most of the old carpenters in the Ministry of Engineering were illiterate, they often had an apprentice with an intermediate diploma working with them.
"Wang Zhen, give me that vernier caliper."
The flame of the oil lamp was yellow, but it was quite bright. Sang Youshen used his hand to pick up a wooden bead and called out to the apprentice assistant beside him. The apprentice named Wang Zhen was the young man who had taught him a few days ago. He was also the son of a carpenter. He was smart and worked fast, but lacked experience.
Sang Youshen passed the vernier caliper over and skillfully measured the diameter of the freshly processed wooden bead. Bearings required high processing precision, and the processing precision depended on the measurement precision.
Zhao Ze found a way to provide a batch of new measuring tools for the Ministry of Engineering. High-end goods like the screw micrometer were more troublesome, but even if the vernier caliper was widely used, the lowest precision could be 0.1 millimeter. This was a great improvement for the ancient times when different carpenters could not unify measurements. It greatly improved the efficiency of collaboration.
Sang Youshen made the ball bearings out of the sturdy rowan wood, which could guarantee that they would not break under light loads. It was not difficult to process wooden beads on a woodworking lathe. The difficult part was to ensure the same tolerance for each batch of wooden beads. The number of this batch was not just ten or a hundred, but thousands of them. For example, the four-wheeled carriages used by the Revolutionary Army for land transportation required a large number of bearings.
Zhao Ze provided the drawings of the bearings and also designed the manufacturing process, but solving the technical problems of mass production was a headache for the carpenters. They had to find a whole set of efficient and fast ways to carry out production, otherwise they would be a burden.
After the measurement, Sang Youshen was very satisfied with the wooden beads in his hand, but when he saw the other beads on the carpenter's workbench, he shook his head. He asked Wang Zhen, who was next to him, "Read the minister's book to me again. I want to hear it."
Zhao Ze only had information on metal bearings, the production process was not complete. The ball in the metal bearing is punched into a ball embryo by a stamping machine, and then polished by a grinding machine. He knew that he needed a grinder to grind balls, but building a grinder to grind wood materials was a big problem.
It was too low to rely on the carpenters to make wooden balls by hand. Sang Youshen was now relying on the few words provided by Zhao Ze to figure out how to build a manual grinder. A real industrial grinder could grind hundreds of balls at one time, but Zhao Ze did not have that requirement. He just needed to grind one ball at a time. At worst, he could build a few more.
The grinder was essentially two high hardness metal grooves, one static and the other moving. The rough ball embryo was ground in the grooves. But there were a lot of problems to turn the design into a real object. Sang Youshen had already made a prototype of a hydraulic grinder, but the balls were always big and small, so he could not figure out what was wrong.
Wang Zhen slowly read some of the information given by Zhao Ze. There were some parts that he did not understand, so he had to look up the dictionary at hand. The master and apprentice pondered for a whole night, and felt that it was because of the vibration of the machine. The problem with hydraulic machines was that the power was sometimes big and sometimes small. There was no difference in processing ordinary objects, but it was different when it came to grinding balls.
"Get on the flywheel." Sang Youshen remembered the hydraulic sawmill he saw a few days ago. With the flywheel as an inert energy storage device, the stability of the whole machine was greatly improved, and the efficiency of sawing wood was also improved. "Also, the lubricant has to be changed. Since the minister said that the heat during grinding would affect the precision, then we have to lower the temperature."
Improving the grinder required time. Whether it was the flywheel or the lubricant, Sang Youshen had no experience. He could only give some of the wooden balls that he had already ground to the other craftsmen in the group to use first. The other craftsmen were responsible for making the inner and outer rings of the bearings. They also used hardwood as raw materials for processing, so it was not easy. At present, they could only make some by hand in small batches.
This was the development of technology. A small problem in the details would delay the progress of the entire system. The current industrial system of the Revolutionary Army was too crude. It was not a problem in one detail, but all the details were problems.
The wooden bearings produced would immediately be used to produce other tools and machinery. As the number of hydraulic machines in the processing plant increased, the apprentices who practiced making furniture and kitchen utensils began to make other more complex products. In addition to the four-wheeled carriage that was urgently needed for road transportation, there was the Jenny Spinning Machine.
What was the beginning of the British industrial revolution? Steam engine? No …. The history textbook would clearly write that it was the Jenny Spinning Machine.
Humans needed to eat and wear. Cloth was a commodity that could be directly used as hard currency in ancient times. But the efficiency of spinning and weaving determined the price of cloth. The earliest Jenny Spinning Machine increased the spinning efficiency by eight times in one go, and it was not too difficult in technology. It was a huge change in creativity – changing the flat spindle to vertical.
The later improved version used hydraulic drive. Not only did it improve the quality of the yarn, but it also increased the spinning efficiency by a hundred times. The emergence of cheap textiles earned a huge amount of wealth for the United Kingdom and greatly promoted the progress of the industrial revolution. A large number of people began to break their heads to figure out more efficient equipment, and human wisdom was strongly stimulated.
Zhao Ze did not focus on the bearings because he was working on the real revolutionary product of the hydraulic spinning machine. He abandoned the early immature 'Jenny Spinning Frame' and directly installed the improved 100 spindle Hydraulic Reel Spinning Frame at the later stage.
Most of the whole equipment was made of wood, with only a few metal parts. When this equipment was ready to start the verification, Zhou Qingfeng and others all ran to see.
"The Jenny Spinning Machine is actually a spindle of the old spinning machine into N spindles. But it has a drawback, it can only spin coarse yarn into fine yarn. So we are only improving a part of the cotton spinning industry chain. Of course, this is a very key bottleneck. "
Following Zhao Ze's signal, the workers opened the gate to stop the water. The water of the river drove the waterwheel, providing power to a strange machine on the riverbank. Zhou Qingfeng knew nothing about machinery. He only saw the 100 spindles began to rotate with the operation of a few female workers, and the yarn was pulled and pulled.
"Is this a success?" Zhou Qingfeng asked dumbly. He had never seen the low efficiency of the old spinning machine, and he did not feel that the machine in front of him was a revolutionary improvement. Anyway, no matter how he looked at it, the things in front of him looked like antiques reproduced in a museum.
Zhao Ze was deeply satisfied with the smooth operation of the spinning machine, but looking at the silly look on Zhou Qingfeng's face, he waved his hand and said: "Forget it, I shouldn't have asked you to see. I know you don't understand the beauty of industrial progress, you should go play with your army. "
"Don't! I came with a lot of sincerity. " Zhou Qingfeng walked half a circle around the spinning machine and shouted to the person next to him: "Cai Zhiwei, come and draw a picture of minister Zhao with this spinning machine. Such a great moment must be remembered. "
The royal painter Cai Zhiwei ran out and expressed extreme surprise at the scene in front of him: "minister Zhao is really talented, really talented. My mother also used to spin and weave, spinning the wheel all night can only spin three or four taels of cotton yarn. Day and night tiredness, back pain, dizziness. But one day of this machine is equivalent to three or four months of hard work for the woman. Amazing, really amazing! "
Finally, someone who knew what was good and was good at flattery.
Zhao Ze listened and laughed. He stood still next to the spinning machine and quickly called Cai Zhiwei to draw a picture of him. Who wouldn't love this great cause of leaving his name in history and benefiting the common people?
The insensible Zhou Qingfeng pulled a few craftsmen who made the spinning machine and asked about the production and details of the machine. It turned out that his decision to establish the wood processing plant was right.
Not only did it produce a large number of ordinary daily necessities, but it also quickly became an important equipment production site for the 'revolutionary army' like the machinery factory, even more important than the machinery factory that often lacked raw materials. After all, Liaodong had an adequate supply of wood. Wood would be an important industrial raw material for hundreds of years to come.
Xu Bing approached Zhou Qingfeng and said in a low voice: "I just discussed with Zhao Ze, before the steel production capacity can't be increased, let's increase the production of wooden machinery. I plan to make a wave of ruthlessness, spend five hundred thousand taels of silver from the White Lotus Society, recruit more people to expand the production capacity, and establish the entire industrial chain of the entire cotton spinning industry. "
The success of the wood processing plant gave the 'revolutionary army' a lot of confidence. It made them realize that industrial development was not just a matter of coal and iron, water power and wood also played a huge role.
The cotton spinning industry could absorb a lot of labor. Daming's Shandong, Henan, and Jiangnan were all cotton producing areas, so the supply of raw materials was not a problem. Now one mu of cotton field produced about 60 catties of seed cotton, and after rolling, it produced 20 catties of lint cotton. There were still seven or eight processes in the process of spinning lint cotton, and after spinning, it had to be woven into cloth before it could become a commodity that could be sold.
This industrial chain was complicated, but the technical content was not high. Once it was done, a large number of originally inefficient women on the peninsula could exert a strong production capacity. It was of great benefit to social stability and development. At that time, it would be like playing with the current population of hundreds of thousands, and the 'revolutionary army' would even feel that the population was not enough.
"Cotton is harvested in autumn. Although it's winter now, there are still a lot of cotton waiting to be processed in the production area. I've already sent people to purchase, and the main purchase is in Shandong, where the White Lotus Society is becoming our vassal. After cleaning up and transformation, it will be a very good trade network, "Xu Bing said.
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