Daming: If I find a great-grandson, I will teach an emperor through the ages

Chapter 176 Now that glass is made, can the light bulb be far behind?
"Very good. To be praised by His Majesty means that you have done a good job. It seems that the manufacturing bureau will not need my hand-waving in the future," Cao Wei said with a smile.

"Your Majesty, you have a lot of things to do every day. The two of us are just riding for you, and we can't be separated from you," Song Ping said.

Zhao Heng nodded, "Without you, sir, there would be no manufacturing bureau today, and there would be no us today. How could we dare to take credit for it?"

It can be seen that even now that Song Ping and Zhao Heng are serving in the court, they are still devoted to Cao Wei and very respectful.

Cao Wei smiled helplessly, "There is no need to say these words. I see them all. It is enough that you can do your best for the court and do things for the Ming Dynasty."

Song Ping cupped his hand again,

"We have always regarded you as a role model. However, we know that even if we spend our whole lives, we will not be as good as [-]/[-] of you, we only want to hear more of your teachings."

Since the artillery manufacturing plant was completed and started, the operation of the manufacturing bureau has returned to stability. Song Ping and Zhao Heng also followed Cao Wei's example and improved military equipment.

They took a repeating musket and wanted to improve it into a firearm that could fire more times, but after months of thinking, they had no idea.

Will the magazine capacity of the repeating musket be increased?
The gun body will be bloated and the design will be much more complicated.

Reducing the size of the bullets in the chamber...the power will be greatly reduced...

Only then did they understand what kind of wisdom it took for Cao Wei to change the Ming Dynasty's original firecrackers into today's repeating muskets.

As a result, the two people's admiration and admiration for Cao Wei reached a higher level, almost to the point of obsessive worship.

Cao Wei also noticed the change in their attitudes, but he didn't think much about it.

After roughly understanding the current situation of the manufacturing bureau, Cao Wei was ready to start manufacturing light bulbs.

Now that tungsten ore is available, the main raw material for making light bulbs is glass.

At this time, the Ming Dynasty was unable to produce glass independently. All the colored glaze utensils produced in the Ming Dynasty mainly relied on trade with the Western Regions.

It wasn't until Zhu Di became emperor, Ma He became Zheng He and was ordered to go to the West. "Zheng He, the eunuch of the Three Guarantees, once brought Western glass-sakers to come" did the Ming Dynasty begin to make glass independently on a large scale.

It's a pity that Cao Wei didn't pay attention to this when he asked Ma He to go to sea before and only asked him to look for various crops.

However, for Cao Wei, a time traveler, it is not too difficult to develop a method of making glass. It is nothing more than finely sifting the sand, heating and then cooling to obtain glass.

There is also natural glass in nature. Obsidian and glass after the sudden cooling of lava are actually the same thing, but the transparency is very different.

After recalling the process of making glass in his mind, Cao Wei asked Song Ping to find some sand.

Song Ping naturally obeyed Cao Wei's request unconditionally. Not long after leaving, he led someone to push a small cart of sand.

"Sir, are these sands enough?" Song Ping asked.

Cao Wei nodded, "That should be enough."

Immediately, Cao Wei asked someone to find a sieve and sift out the sand.

However, to make glass, soda ash, calcium carbonate, nitrate and other substances are needed to be mixed in.

In this regard, Cao Wei remembered that a kind of salt malt growing in swamps or next to rocks can extract soda ash.

As an agricultural society, the Ming Dynasty had a large area of ​​cultivated land. There was an extremely large amount of this kind of salt malt. As for the minerals, it could be replaced by limestone...

After giving instructions to Song Ping and Zhao Heng, the latter two took people to look for salt malt and limestone.

While Cao Wei was watching the craftsmen sifting out all the sand in batches, Song Ping and Zhao Heng happened to come back with salt malt and limestone.

Then according to Cao Wei's instructions, the salted malt was burned into ashes, sieved to remove impurities and then heated and boiled. Finally, the bottom of the pot became a layer of white alkali.

Afterwards, impurities are removed from the limestone and mixed with alkali into the screened fine sand.

Cao Wei didn't know the exact ratio, so he could only go by his feelings. Even if it didn't work, there would be another time.

After getting everything ready, Cao Wei and the others took everything to the steelmaking plant next door, set up a furnace, put fine sand, alkali, and limestone in containers and started firing.

For the furnaces used to make steel, firing fine sand to make glass is a piece of cake.

It didn't take long to bake. In less than a quarter of an hour, Cao Wei asked someone to stop and took out the utensils placed inside.

I saw a pool of translucent clear liquid inside the vessel.

"Sir, is this the glass you are talking about?"

Zhao Heng looked at this magical scene and couldn't help but asked.

After the sand is mixed with limestone and alkali and fired, it turns into a liquid!

Song Ping on the side couldn't wrap his head around this scene.

"It's not true now. It will be real glass after it cools down and takes shape." Cao Wei said.

So a group of people gathered around the vessel, staring at it without blinking, waiting for it to cool down. Cao Wei was observing the characteristics of the glass liquid in the vessel.

After about half an hour, the glass liquid in the vessel finally solidified.

Cao Wei felt the temperature, then took out the shaped glass plate from the vessel, observed it carefully, and finally determined that the glass met the requirements.

Unexpectedly, it was done in one go, and Cao Wei was delighted.

"It's done, the glass is done!"

Then he turned around and asked Song Ping and Zhao Heng beside him,
"Did you record the proportions of fine sand, alkali, and limestone just now?"

Song Ping and Zhao Heng nodded repeatedly, "Remember, sir." They both took out a small booklet they had with them.

After following Cao Wei for so long, this has almost become their habit.

Cao Wei nodded slightly after looking at it, "Since you already know the process of making glass, you are still responsible for the subsequent production."

"Don't worry, sir," they both held their hands.

"By the way, you guys will try again in the next few days to see if you can change the shape of the glass liquid before it is completely solidified."

Song Ping and Zhao Heng were stunned again.

"Change shape? How does this change?"

Then Cao Wei explained the general method of glass blowing.

"It is to use a long pipe to connect the semi-dry glass liquid to blow out different shapes. However, when blowing the glass, be careful not to inhale the hot air in the pipe into the body..."

After hearing this, Song Ping and Zhao Heng nodded repeatedly while recording what Cao Wei said.

the next day,
Song Ping and Zhao Heng brought some people and started trying to make different shapes of glass.

They first followed Cao Wei's production process yesterday, sifting out the fine sand, using salt malt to precipitate alkali, removing impurities from the limestone, and putting it into a furnace for firing.

Cao Wei was very satisfied as he watched Song Ping and Zhao Heng direct the craftsmen to carry out the process in an orderly manner.

Yesterday, Song Ping and Zhao Heng were really attentive. They remembered all the steps clearly after just reading them once.

Soon everyone successfully fired the molten glass and took it out of the furnace. When it solidified a little, a craftsman brought a long special steel pipe, inserted it into the glass liquid, puffed up his cheeks, and blew hard.

The craftsman kept Song Ping's instructions in mind and was always careful not to inhale the gas in the steel pipe.

In just a few strokes, the craftsman blew the liquid glass into a bubble shape.

The next step is to cool down. The weather in February is very cool now, so it didn't take long for the glass bubble to be completely set.

Song Ping took the glass bubble and turned around and handed it to Cao Wei.

"My lord wants this kind of glass?"

Cao Wei nodded,
"Exactly."

He held the glass bulb in his hand and felt that it was like an incandescent lamp.

It is not easy to see glass bubbles of this shape in Daming.

Now that it is confirmed that blowing glass to make light bulbs is feasible, the next step is to start developing a way to mass-produce light bulbs.

It is possible to blow out a light bulb entirely by manpower like this, but if one person blows it twice, the shape will be completely different.

Therefore, it is necessary to use mechanical devices to assist in shaping.

Generally speaking, it is to open an iron cast mold of suitable size, blow the glass liquid into bubbles, then put it into the mold and press it into a uniform shape.

Cao Wei told Song Ping and Zhao Heng this idea, and they immediately started making molds with their hands.

Nowadays, most craftsmen in the manufacturing bureau have sufficient manufacturing experience, and it is easy for them to open a mold.

It only took two days for the craftsmen to make the mold, and Cao Wei was asked to check it in person.

The craftsmen fired the glass liquid again in front of Cao Wei, waited for it to be semi-dry, and blew it into a bubble shape. Then they placed it in the mold and fixed it in place. When the molds on both sides were pressed toward the middle, the shape of the glass bubble was roughly fixed. , just set aside to cool.

After several sets of processes, the shapes of the glass bubbles produced are almost the same, and the difference is almost invisible.

As long as the steps are broken down, the assembly line of the glass factory will emerge!

Cao Wei reported the news of the successful development of the glass making method to Zhu Yuanzhang, who was overjoyed.

Until now, the Ming Dynasty's colored glaze utensils could only rely on the Western Regions. Now that Cao Wei has developed a method of making glass independently, the price of glass will be greatly reduced, and there will be more places where it can be applied.

Then came the construction of a glass manufacturing factory. Cao Wei, Song Ping and Zhao Heng led the craftsmen to set up a complete assembly line and opened many molds.

Ming Dynasty began to produce glass independently on a large scale.

At this time, the square used to hold the enthronement ceremony was about to be completed. Cao Wei just finished his work at the glass manufacturing factory and turned around to start researching tungsten ore.

Although he knew it was unlikely, Cao Wei still wanted to produce the light bulb before the enthronement ceremony.

That was the world's first electrical device!
Processing tungsten ore is more complicated than making glass.

As the core component of incandescent lamps, the production method of tungsten wire is to use ammonium paratungstate as raw material and bake it in air at about 500°C to generate tungsten trioxide.

Then, a small amount of potassium oxide, silicon oxide and other substances are doped into the tungsten trioxide, and the total amount of the three doped oxides cannot exceed one percent.

The powder is then mixed evenly, and the doped tungsten powder is subjected to a two-step reduction process.

The steps are to first reduce tungsten oxide to tungsten dioxide at about [-] degrees, and then perform a second reduction at [-] degrees to reduce it to metallic tungsten powder.

The reduced doped tungsten powder is then placed in a special mold and pressed into slender square bars.

The square bars are then energized and sintered by heating.

The sintered tungsten strip is swaged into a tungsten rod with a diameter of about 3mm, and then drawn with a wire drawing die to make the diameter thinner, and finally processed into tungsten wires of different thicknesses.

These processes are countless times more complicated than making glass.

Moreover, the production process of ammonium paratungstate, the raw material for producing tungsten wire, is also extremely complicated.

To make ammonium paratungstate, there are generally two methods.

The first is the ion exchange method, which generates sodium tungstate solution through alkali decomposition of black and white tungsten ore, and then dilutes the sodium tungstate with water to a certain extent, and then adsorbs tungsten through ion exchange resin.

Afterwards, ammonium salt is used to analyze to obtain an ammonium tungstate solution. The ammonium tungstate solution is heated with steam to evaporate part of the water and ammonia components, and the final product is ammonium paratungstate.

Another method is extraction.

First, tungsten ore, tungsten miscellaneous ores and tungsten waste are roasted and then decomposed by alkali to generate sodium tungstate solution. After impurity removal and filtration, the impurity-free sodium tungstate solution is extracted and back-extracted to obtain ammonium tungstate solution and tungstate acid. The ammonium solution is then evaporated and crystallized to become ammonium paratungstate.

From making ammonium paratungstate to making tungsten wire, the process is not only complicated, but also some of the chemicals needed are difficult to find, so Cao Wei had to use other things instead.

You can imagine how difficult and complicated it is. After sorting out this set of procedures, Cao Wei's head is getting big.

difficult!
The project of making tungsten wire is the most complex, rigorous and difficult project that Cao Wei has undertaken since his arrival in the Ming Dynasty.

This also made Cao Wei lament that the research and development process of those ubiquitous technological products in previous lives was not as easy as that of the forerunners.

And now that Cao Wei has become a pioneer, he must try to walk this road no matter how difficult it is.

Let’s do it step by step…

The first step is to extract wolframite ore.

The extraction method of wolframite ore is generally gravity separation. Machinery such as crushers and separators must first be produced to grind the wolframite ore into millimeter-sized fine tungsten powder.

Days go by.

At the end of April, the square was finally completed.

At this time, Cao Wei successfully built a crusher and a separation and screening machine to turn tungsten ore into fine tungsten powder.

Since May, envoys from overseas countries have come to Yingtian Mansion in the Ming Dynasty.

When Zhu Yuanzhang first sent invitations to various countries, the messengers took the sea route, which was much faster than the land route.

Envoys from closer countries such as Korea, Java, Persia and some neighboring countries in Europe have already arrived in the Ming Dynasty.

According to this rhythm, in up to two months, all overseas envoys will arrive.

Cao Wei felt the urgency of time, and the progress of developing light bulbs accelerated a lot.

Finally, in early June, Cao Wei, Song Ping and Zhao Heng, together with the efforts of all the craftsmen in the entire manufacturing bureau, finally succeeded in producing ammonium paratungstate.

As time continues to pass, more and more envoys from the Ming Dynasty come to Yingtian Mansion, and the enthronement ceremony of the Ming Dynasty Crown Prince Zhu Xiongying is getting closer and closer...

It is worth mentioning that those foreign envoys were sent to Ming Dynasty to participate in the ceremony. After seeing the prosperous scene of Yingtian Mansion, they were all shocked!
As the capital of the most populous country in the world at this time.

The bustling and bustling scene of the crowded streets of Yingtianfu made these foreign envoys the first to feel the power of the Ming Dynasty!

(End of this chapter)