The rise of a great power: starting with military industry

Chapter 140: Planning of the Tank Manufacturing Plant

In the blink of an eye, nearly another month had passed.

The weather is getting hotter and hotter, and we have entered the hottest summer!

At Panshan Machinery Factory, you can feel the heat around 8:30 or 9:00 during the day, and the heat will not dissipate until the evening.

It rains every now and then, and sometimes it rains heavily.

In the production workshop, a tank stopped in front of Liu Tao. The tank looked very majestic.

It is very similar to the previous Type 80 tank, but there are actually some differences.

This is exactly the self-use version of the Type 80 tank.

The tanks are similar in appearance and size, and from the outside, there is almost no difference.

There are three main differences between the two. The first is the main gun. The export version uses a 120mm caliber tank gun, while the caliber of the domestic version reaches 125mm.

The second is the armor protection capability. The armor protection capability of the self-use version has been greatly enhanced, exceeding 1000 mm! It is no exaggeration to say that it is the tank with the strongest armor protection capability in the world today.

Finally, in terms of engine power, the peak can reach 1800 horsepower.

In addition, aspects such as computer performance are obviously much stronger than the foreign trade version.

"System, analysis!" Liu Tao muttered to himself.

Suddenly, design drawings appeared on the virtual panel.

The analysis was completed in almost an instant.

As Liu Tao left the production workshop, his secretary came over and said, "Director, the design team of Factory 256 has arrived at the conference room."

The design team arrived at Panshan Machinery Factory yesterday afternoon.

Liu Tao did not discuss the matter with them immediately, but let them rest first.

After all, they took a train from the mountain city to Kun City, and then took a bus from Kun City to Panshan Machinery Factory. They were exhausted and tired from the journey.

"Okay, then let's go to the meeting room." Liu Tao nodded, then got on the jeep and headed towards the office building.

The office building is now in use and is seven stories high.

The jeep stopped on the first floor near the conference room. Liu Tao got out and walked towards the conference room.

In addition to the design team, there were also people from Factory 256 in the conference room.

Although Factory 256 has been incorporated into Panshan Machinery Factory, there has been no overall change.

No longer producing tanks, but instead producing some vehicles to supply Panshan Machinery Factory, as well as some spare parts that can be produced.

In addition, we are coordinating with the mountain city to handle the relevant procedures for the new factory, including preparing for the construction of the factory in the near future.

On the table, an A0 paper has been placed with the main elevation points, range lines, topographic lines, and the layout of geological drilling holes.

This is the work that the design team completed in nearly a month, including a rough plan.

The person in charge of design is a sixty-year-old designer with rich design experience. He has participated in the planning, design, and construction of many large military factories such as the First Machine Factory!

Liu Tao was relieved when he heard that according to the preliminary geological drilling, there were no adverse geological conditions within the factory area. This meant that the site initially selected was suitable for the construction of a large tank manufacturing plant.

If the geological conditions there do not allow construction, then nothing can be said.

"I have considered the tank manufacturing plant. After all, this plant is different from other tank factories!" Liu Tao said slowly. He took out the drawings from the bag he brought, which contained six drawings.

The first thing taken out was the master plan, in which the office area, residential area and production area were arranged in an orderly manner. The office area and residential area only occupied one-fifth of the area, and the other four-fifths were production areas.

The production area is divided into production workshops, which either produce individual parts or are testing workshops.

There are two huge workshops, which are the assembly workshops.

Although the master plan is a bit rough, Liu Tao's basic ideas are reflected in the master plan.

The person in charge of the design project was very surprised because Liu Tao's planning ideas were very different from theirs.

Following this is the general layout of the two final assembly workshops. The final assembly workshop is very large, with a length of several hundred meters and a width of several dozen meters. The tank parts are transported to the final assembly workshop for final assembly of the tanks.

Normally, when assembling a tank at the final assembly plant, the first thing to do is to assemble the tracked chassis. Next, after the engine system is fully equipped, a crane will lift the engine into place and install it. Next, the main gun is installed into the turret, followed by the fire control system, which requires more than ten kilometers of wires to be precisely connected into place. Next, the turret is connected to the chassis, and the tank is basically installed.

The final step is to test the entire tank to ensure that all systems are installed properly.

After the vehicle test is completed, the tracks are installed and the entire tank is assembled and ready to go.

It can be said that in the final assembly workshop, direct assembly line operation is carried out.

One of the most important ones here is the crane, which is the most important equipment for lifting the tank body, engine, turret and tracks.

If we talk about the process, after the raw materials are delivered to the factory, the first process is undertaken by the cutting workshop, which uses different types of cutting machines to jointly complete the cutting of the raw materials. After all the panels are cut and stamped according to the standards, the relevant components will be sent to the welding workshop, where the welding work will be completed by welders. After welding, the tank frame will be sprayed with coating and then sent to the final assembly workshop.

Similarly, the turret, main gun, engine, etc. are also completed in their respective production workshops and finally sent to the final assembly workshop.

These two assembly workshops, one is dedicated to the assembly of self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, and the other is dedicated to the assembly of tanks.

In addition to the two final assembly workshops, the other production workshops are distributed in an orderly manner, each with its own function.

For example, there are workshops that specialize in producing gears, workshops that specialize in producing tank armor, and workshops that specialize in producing tank guns.
For example, the production of tank guns is definitely a technically difficult job.

There are many types of artillery now, including howitzers, mortars, rocket launchers, etc., but when it comes to the most powerful artillery, it is definitely the tank main gun.

Because the armor-piercing projectile needs to be accelerated to a speed of 1800 meters per second in order to achieve the powerful kinetic energy to penetrate armor more than half a meter thick, the gun barrel must withstand a pressure of 600MPa and a temperature of over 3000 degrees at the moment of firing. Therefore, tank gun steel is also called the king of steel.

The main gun of the Type 80 main battle tank is made of alloy steel with rare earth elements added to greatly improve the strength, rigidity and toughness of the alloy steel.

To make a tank gun, the first step is to pour the molten alloy steel into the mold. This process must be done very carefully. If you are not careful, cavitation will occur and the gun will be scrapped directly. After the steel is cast, the next step is forging. It is forged repeatedly at multiple angles by a high-pressure forging machine. The gun steel at high temperature is forged under ultra-high pressure like kneading dough. This process is to remove holes in the gun steel and increase its density. After the barrel is forged, the next step is to tighten the barrel. In layman's terms, a spherical cutter slightly larger than the caliber of the barrel is used to travel inside the barrel using ultra-high external force. Under this action, the inner wall of the barrel is compressed and the strength is greatly improved.

The next step is to bore the barrel and accurately turn out the outer contour and inner bore of the gun. The reason why it is called a smoothbore gun is because the bore after turning must be as smooth as a mirror. The error of the inner wall of the barrel directly affects the shooting accuracy, which makes the maximum error no more than 0.05mm, equivalent to a hair.

The next step is to drill a hole in the gun barrel. This is because a large amount of exhaust gas will be generated when the tank fires. If it enters the internal space of the tank, it will affect the tank crew. For this reason, an inclined hole is drilled in the gun barrel to discharge the exhaust gas.

At this step, a tank gun is considered completed.

　The monthly ticket doubling event has started, and there are less than 200 monthly tickets left. I beg for the monthly tickets!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)