Lin Gao Qiming

Chapter 2542 Trial Production

While the construction of the canals and water turbines was in progress, the brick-and-timber factory buildings were also under intensive construction.The factory building is a very mature wooden structure truss house in Lingao. The overall frame of the house is a prefabricated part processed by the sawmill according to the design drawings, and sent to the construction site for splicing and installation. A skilled and adequate installation team The frame of the house can be erected in less than a week.Then the masons used red bricks to build the walls. If it was not for the fire resistance of the factory building, it is entirely possible to use wooden keel walls to build the station.The cost can be lower.

The biggest advantage of the house with truss structure is that it can build a large-span barrier-free workshop without too many beams and columns for support, which is crucial for workshops that need to arrange machines.After the factory building was completed, another group of workers were replaced to assemble the equipment.

The machines were shipped to Nansha in boxes, carefully unloaded, and sent to the factory for unpacking and assembly.The villagers looked at these workers curiously—they were different from the construction workers who still spoke Cantonese vernacular, almost all of them spoke "Australian Mandarin".Although they also wear similar work clothes and have "kuntou", these people are stronger and exude a "different" temperament. Some people say that these machines are all "Chen Kun" , Older than the "Xin Kun" who dug ditches and built houses.

"Chen Kun" assembled the machinery and equipment faster, and by the end of June, all the machinery and equipment had been installed.On this day, Zou Feng conducted the first water turbine test.After opening the gate, the river water flows into the diversion channel and starts to drive the water wheel to rotate.Gradually, the water wheel reached the operating speed, the power transmission system began to operate normally, the sky axis rotated rapidly, and the whole factory building began to tremble slightly.Some people rushed out of the house, but the practice group remained motionless in the workshop, carefully observing the rotation of the sky axis.

Under the gesture of Zou Feng, the workers pulled the connecting rods one by one.Connect the transmission belt to the equipment, and the equipment starts to idle, making a deafening sound.The girls carefully watched the operation of the equipment and recorded it in their notebooks at any time.

Chen Lin couldn't understand this, but from the expressions of Zou Feng and the girls, it could be seen that the operation was going well, and he was slightly relieved.From the start of work to the present, tens of thousands of taels of silver have been spent.Although most of it was Uncle Wu's money, after all, my own family was also involved, and it really messed up the Chen family's face.

The status of the test is generally satisfactory, and the next step is the stage of trial production.Chen Ding bought a lot of cotton from the four townships and shipped them to the factory.

In the old time and space, before the cotton was transported to the textile factory, the cotton ginning process was basically carried out in the production area, and the cotton seeds were cleaned out. However, in this time and space, only the Senate has the cotton gin.In order to improve efficiency, this process is moved to the factory.

After the cotton gin removes the cotton seeds, the cotton is sent to the "blowroom".The flower cleaning workshop is not indoors, because the work is dusty, so the flower cleaning is carried out in a large reed mat shed built on the open space.Since the power of the water turbine is not enough to drive the flower cleaning machine, this process is purely manual.The cotton is placed on a wooden frame, and workers beat it with bamboo sticks to remove impurities such as branches, leaves, insects and soil mixed in the cotton.The cleaning process does not require technology and does not require too much physical strength. During the British Industrial Revolution, women were mostly engaged in it.Here, An Jiu also asked to hire more women to do this work.

"Spinning and weaving should only be done by women. This is physical work." Chen Lin found it inconceivable.

"Who said women can't do strenuous work." An Jiu said, "Besides, this work is not too strenuous."

Chen Lin thought in his heart that this was nothing more than effort, but he didn't dare to argue with the "student of the chief" and was just obedient.

The cleaned cotton is mixed together and the first process begins: carding.

No matter what process or equipment is used.The basic process of cotton spinning is four steps: carding, drawing, roughing and worsted spinning.

"Start feeding!" Li Tang shouted, and began to operate the smoothing machine.The first batch of workers recruited surrounded her and watched her operate.

She sends the combed cotton into the carding machine, and the cotton passes through layers of staggered metal rake teeth on the machine to untangle the entangled cotton fibers and comb them side by side.

"You see, the fibers of the combed cotton are roughly parallel." She pointed to the products coming out of the machine. These cottons have become loose strips, which are called "comb strips" in jargon. ".

Li Tang skillfully picked up the combs and combed the slivers, several groups were loaded into the draw frame, and the rollers pressed and joined together.This is the so-called drawing process.The purpose of the drawing process is to enhance the strength of the sliver. This process will be repeated several times. The specific times and the amount of drawing are determined according to the raw materials and production process.

The sliver after drawing is put into a rotating container called "twisting tank" for "weak twisting". Tens of times or even hundreds of times, this is the roving.

After the bobbin wrapped with roving has accumulated to a certain amount, it is carried by the workers to the spinning machine.The worsted spinning machine is actually almost the same as the drawing frame process, but more refined.

The roving is wound onto bobbins, which are placed on spindles.Each spinning frame drives 72 spindles.There are ten such worsted spinning machines in the whole textile factory.

The roving is turned into spun yarn by rollers, and finally it is wound on the spindle by the yarn guide hook, and the twisting and winding are completed by the rotation of the spindle itself.The last twisting is the key step to make the yarn strong, and only when the spindle reaches a certain speed can the yarn be strong enough.

"Come out! Come out!" The crowd shouted, and it was the first time they had seen such a magical and efficient weaving method.

Soon a bobbin of yarn was ready, and Chen Lin took the sample given by the Australian to compare with his own.If you take a closer look, there are still some differences. If you are a layman, you will not be able to see the difference, but if you look at it, you will know that the Australians are obviously better.

This made him a little puzzled. Could it be that there was something wrong with the machine the Australians gave him?Obviously they are all of the same model. Could it be said that Australians weaving by water and fire will be better than water?
But this is good enough. There is probably no such yarn in the whole of China, let alone Guangdong.

With such yarn, why not weave good cloth!

Unfortunately, the first phase of the Nansha Demonstration Factory did not include a weaving workshop.Cotton yarn is their final product.

To whom are these cotton yarns sold?There is no need for old homes—they have a full set of cotton textile enterprises.Fortunately, this is not a problem for Chen Lin. Fengsheng and the looms are not working at full capacity. Except for a few large Hualou looms, the accompanying waist looms can be used for weaving. The weavers on the looms can Weaving silk and satin can also weave cotton cloth.

Another place to go is to sell the yarn to farmers in the four townships.Although it is not common, most farmers have looms in their homes.Or weaving cloth, or weaving silk, can also be regarded as a sideline.In the past, except for a small amount of high-end fabrics, Fengshenghe adopted a package purchase system for most ordinary products, and sent the silk to each family for weaving.Now with cotton yarn, the same can be done.This network is readily available and it is easy to use.

Local cotton is slightly cheaper than Songjiang, while cotton cloth is more expensive.Therefore, it is still profitable for Chen Lin to make yarn by machine, and of course the profit is very meager.However, if labor productivity can be greatly improved, the accumulation of meager profits will be very considerable.

Traditionally speaking, the spinning process of a piece of cotton cloth takes four times as long as the weaving process. Songjiang weaves a piece of cloth on average for seven days, and women produce an average of seven kilograms of yarn a month.It takes 21 hours to clean the cotton from a piece of cloth, 49 hours to spin it, and 11 hours to weave it.But now the spinning time has been greatly shortened, and the speed of cloth production doubled immediately after the original women got the machine yarn.

After simple calculation, Chen Lin came to the conclusion that if the supply of cotton is guaranteed and the price is maintained at the current level, with the current production capacity, it only takes five years to recover the full investment.Coupled with the production capacity after the launch of the second phase... This is not a meager profit, it is simply a huge profit.

However, Chen Lin immediately faced a serious problem: the spinning speed was too fast, and it was far from enough in terms of local cotton production.Even if he immediately called on the villagers to plant cotton on a large scale, they would have to wait until autumn to harvest it.

Also, who will sell such a huge amount of cotton cloth to?Both Fengsheng and the silks and satins produced have a place to go-three generations of management have long formed a fixed sales network.But they have never handled the business of cotton cloth.

As for the cotton, the problem is even bigger. The cotton used in the trial production was shipped directly from Guangzhou with the help of Chen Xiaobing.To be honest, Chen Lin didn't even know where it came from.As for the local cotton in Xiangshan, some have been purchased one after another, and once the official start of work may not even be enough for a month.

In the evening, he told Li Guo about it.Li Guo is older and has a more stable personality.Currently undertaking the administrative work of the textile factory.Of course I discussed it with her.
"It's okay to sell cloth. It's just that the source of this cotton has become a big problem."

"How do you plan to solve it, sir?" Li Guo asked.

"After thinking about it, there are several ways: one is to send people to set up warehouses in nearby towns to collect cotton, and the local cotton is harvested in August—but..."

"But what?"

"The local cotton has never been purchased in the past. It is all spun and woven by the farmers. I don't know if they can be received smoothly."

"As long as the price is right, someone will sell it. After all, spinning is time-consuming. If we can sell flowers directly, wouldn't it save manpower to do other things?"

(End of this chapter)