Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 447

A harsh sound came from the workshop next door with the open door. It was that the machining workshop was processing some new metal parts.

Peng Zhicheng turned his head and looked from the corridor between the two workshops, where he saw a group of workers gathered around a machine tool to observe.The man who operated the machine tool was a Spanish man with a beard. His name was Menendez, and he was a locksmith. He was the oldest and most skilled craftsman in the South Vehicle Factory.He has operated all machine tools in the country, including hand-cranked, pedal-operated, water-powered and steam-driven, and he has played with them. The technology is quite superb, and he was rated as a sixth-level craftsman by his superiors.

When the Southern Vehicle Factory was established, a batch of thread lathes were supported by the First Machine Factory. However, the factory director Qi Yongjie still took this master-level skilled machine tool worker from the First Machine Factory softly. The top brand of the machining workshop of the car factory.After Menendez came to South Depot, he has brought a large group of apprentices. At present, some daily unimportant tasks are generally completed by apprentices, while he himself is responsible for operating some high-precision machine tools that have been manually modified in the workshop. These machine tools None of them use steam power, but are manually fed by the operator, which is mainly to improve the machining accuracy.

Now Menendez is operating a grinding machine—a grinder equipped with a natural grinding wheel. Menendez carefully shakes the wheel with his hands while carefully staring at the surface of the part, pausing from time to time to take a closer look. .These parts have been processed on those steam machine tools, but the precision still cannot meet the "rigorous" requirements of the assembly workshop. The other party's workshop director from the East resolutely rejected these "extremely rough" parts, making The machine shop had to go back and do some finishing work on the parts.

The other party's workshop director has made it very clear that they will turn a blind eye to the poor precision of general parts, but they can't bear the core parts such as the inner wall of the cylinder, bearings, and metal wheels.Because if the locomotive being assembled has various situations or even accidents due to the use of these parts with substandard precision, they will be the first to be unlucky. Therefore, the processing accuracy of these core parts must be guaranteed, and they cannot be sloppy.

The machining workshop tested the rejected parts and found that in addition to the slight lack of workers' operating skills, the low precision of the machine tools was also an important reason.However, there is no way around this. The conditions at this stage are like this. A machine factory with higher precision is researching, but there will not be a breakthrough in a while. Therefore, it is still necessary to base on the current machine tools and try to achieve the best good.Why can some people use these same machine tools to process parts with high precision, but some people can't?After all, he is experienced and familiar with the equipment itself, and has accumulated a lot of small skills in using machine tools, so the work he does is naturally much more beautiful than those of novices.

"In the final analysis, there is still a shortage of talents." Qi Yongjie, who was with Peng Zhicheng, glanced at the workshop next door, then touched his bald head, and said with a sigh: "Cultivating skilled industrial workers really can't be done overnight, it takes time. They are also the most valuable wealth of our enterprise. At present, we take turns to teach apprentices, hold experience summary meetings, and teach senior craftsmen in vocational education, but there is still a serious shortage of talents, which greatly restricts our development. Development."

"This is a common situation, and there is no solution in a short time." Peng Zhicheng turned his head and said, "The first machine factory and the second machine factory are still complaining, saying that they don't have many old masters, and you are still digging around. , so that the average quality of their technical team has dropped. Li Hongxing from the Second Machine Factory told me yesterday that you always go to the Ministry of Industry and Commerce for activities, let their factory support two today, and let another factory support three tomorrow. It's not easy for everyone to cultivate talents, so don't worry too much. Our machining industry has only developed for a few years. Take your time, we can afford to wait."

"Hey, am I in a hurry." Qi Yongjie smiled embarrassedly and said, "You have also seen that more than two-thirds of the workers in the machining workshop have just come out of the vocational school run by our factory. It’s a month-long stunned youth, and his level is terrible. It’s annoying to say that these new workers who are in a mess are still doing better in vocational schools. I didn’t dare to let them go to the machine tool. I went to play woodworking machine tools for a wood processing factory, and the requirements for that thing are low. With such a group of parallel importers, I really don’t have the confidence to fix this locomotive.”

"I'm not in a hurry as the supervisor of the National Railways. You are in a hurry!" Peng Zhicheng scolded him with a smile, and then teased: "How long will it take for the prototype of the locomotive to be produced now? Some people in the Ministry of Industry and Commerce are making sarcastic remarks. They said that you enjoy the state's key care, and it took four years to build a primitive locomotive under the influence of various resources. Well, they also said that your horse-drawn railcars are well-made, and you can pull the goods even more. It's quite a walk."

"Fucking fart!" Qi Yongjie yelled at the words, his face flushed a little and he said: "I want to hold back a good car to come out. If we just make do with a piece of garbage, we'll have already done it. Wait until today? Steam locomotives are difficult to say, but they are actually not very difficult. If you want to get a locomotive that can pull several carriages and dozens of tons of cargo, no matter how reliable it is Well, it's really not that difficult! With our current technical strength, we can barely make one out. But what's the point of that? It breaks every three days, and I'm lying on the road at any time. Not being sprayed to death? A steam locomotive with low reliability and practicality is a waste and a joke!"

"Well." Peng Zhicheng listened patiently to Qi Yongjie's complaints, and then continued to ask: "What are the technical obstacles to the steam locomotive that is currently being developed?"

"The various technologies involved in steam locomotives are very complicated. In total, there are dozens of items. At the beginning, almost every item was like a hindrance to us." Qi Yongjie rubbed his bare head and smiled wryly. Said: "It's good to let Supervisor Peng know that we have not been empty-handed in the past four years. We have solved most of the technical difficulties, and we have prepared more than one way to realize many technologies. For now, There are several areas of technology that we have not yet fully resolved.”

"One is the bearing. I used to prepare sliding bearings, but now I think about it, it is better to use rolling bearings. Sliding bearings have high friction, and our current steel materials are not very qualified, and the parts will wear out quite quickly. Therefore, it is better to use rolling bearings. Mold casting, and then grinding with a grinding machine, the difficulty here is the precision of the grinding machine and heat treatment. But the problem is not big, the quality is worse, no matter how bad it is, it is better than those sliding bearings. In fact I originally wanted to wait until the executive committee develops manganese ore and smelts manganese steel, but it seems that neither manganese steel nor chromium steel is realistic in a short period of time, and the existing carbon steel should be used for bearings."

"The second is the material of the axle. As I said above, if there is manganese steel, the strength and toughness can reach a new level. It is very suitable for making axles. But if you don't have it, forget it. Let’s just make do with it first, use the existing materials, at worst, pay attention, change and overhaul frequently, and don’t let the axle break suddenly while driving.”

"Then there are pressure springs, lubricants, wheels, etc. There are not big problems here, and most of them have been solved or are close to being solved. For example, the springs are made of brass. Although they lack some rare metals, the quality is not as good as later generations, but In this era, it is absolutely top-notch; the lubricant has whale oil, rubbing, high-end goods, and later generations will not be able to use it; the wheels, this is simple, and it has been solved. As for other braking devices, traction devices, and bogies , Coupler buffer shock absorber, frame, steam engine transmission system (including pistons, connecting rods, valve actuators, etc.) are all almost resolved. After all, we haven’t been eating for nothing in the past few years, have we?”

Listening to Qi Yongjie talking and still not forgetting to complain, Peng Zhicheng laughed and asked, "That's all? Is there anything else? The steam engine is already in order?"

"I don't care about this. If you want to urge you, you have to urge Li Hongxing. This is his task." Qi Yongjie waved his hand immediately when he heard this, and then said with a gritted expression: "I have urged this guy a few times, but He doesn't seem to put the research and development of the Barbarian-5 steam engine dedicated to the locomotive as the first priority. He only sent a few engineers and a bunch of novices to fool us, and train the team by the way, shit! This guy seems to be dedicated to researching steel rolling The Barbarian-5 steam engine in the first place, and at the same time trying to improve the existing marine steam engine, that is, the broken Popeye series. They just decided to use the fire tube boiler in early January, and it is estimated that they have just completed it I have completed the preliminary design. Next, I need to make a prototype, do a test, modify the design, and test again. It’s ridiculous that you can’t even get a prototype of a steam engine over there.”

Peng Zhicheng nodded when he heard the words, and then said to Qi Yongjie: "Well, I will go to Li Hongxing of the second machine factory to remind you, and he should give me a little face with my old face. You should hurry up and tackle the last technical difficulty. , Talent training should not be left behind. The preparations for follow-up matters should be sufficient. As soon as the steam engine arrives, the rest of the design of the running mechanism and the design of the tender will be completed in the shortest possible time. How about trying to manufacture a prototype within this year? It will be five years by then, and it’s time for a prototype.”

"Okay, no problem." Qi Yongjie readily agreed.

(End of this chapter)