Lu Ming

Chapter 254 An army thorn

Kiln District Steelworks now produces two types of cast iron.

The first is ordinary cast iron refined in a reverberatory furnace.This kind of cast iron has a wide range of uses and can be seen in later generations: all kinds of cast iron water pipes, railings, bases, manhole covers, gates, in short, it is right to use it for any bulky and cheap objects.

For a long time, ordinary cast iron has been the most important project of steel mills, and once accounted for more than 80% of the total products.

Now, with the success of the more advanced ductile iron, the output of ordinary cast iron has slowly retreated to 60%, and the rest of the share has been given to steel and ductile iron.

Ductile iron is a high strength cast iron material.Different from ordinary gray and white cast irons, when smelting ductile iron, nodular graphite needs to be obtained through spheroidization and inoculation processes before this product can be made.

The ductile cast iron, whose comprehensive performance is close to that of steel, can be used to cast some parts with complex stress, high strength, toughness and wear resistance based on its excellent performance.The so-called "substituting iron for steel" mainly refers to ductile iron.

In fact, ductile iron is far more useful than steel when it comes to casting and machining.You must know that the fluidity of steel is very poor, and casting is very difficult; and ductile iron is the real star because of its excellent plasticity and toughness, at least in the plane of crossing the public.

For example, in a wood gas engine system, in addition to the thin iron plate for the casing, the interior includes various mechanical crankshafts, camshafts, connecting shafts, connecting rods, gears, clutch plates, cylinder blocks, etc. The key parts are actually made of ductile iron.

Even in later generations of engines, there are still many parts made of ductile iron.The material can be cast, forged, and cut.Now occupying the top of the food chain in the field of machining and casting is this new type of material that has sprung up suddenly.

In the past, steel mills could not produce ductile iron, not because of the difficulty of smelting this material. At least it is easier than steelmaking.The crux of the problem is that the nodulizer is not in place.

When nodular cast iron is inoculated in the furnace, nodularizers need to be added.The main material in the nodulizer is magnesium, or pure magnesium can also be used directly.

Therefore, industries are closely linked.

A prerequisite for nodulizers is a chemical plant.With a chemical plant and stable hydrochloric acid, it is possible to cooperate with the electrolysis process and seawater magnesium extraction process to produce enough metal magnesium to be used as a nodulizer.

This is the reason why ductile iron can only strike late: the preconditions cannot be put in place for a long time.Once all conditions are met, the output of ductile iron will grow quite fast.After all, this is just a kind of cast iron, and the difficulty of smelting it will definitely not exceed that of steelmaking.

When the steel mills were able to mass-produce this kind of cast iron with a wide range of uses, the demand for steel in the crossing country suddenly decreased a lot, which also relieved a lot of pressure on the steel mills.After all, no matter from which aspect, the cost of steelmaking is the highest.

In this way, the product line is well adjusted.A series of steel processing projects that were originally planned to bite the bullet can now be suspended, and the steel mills only need to further improve the steel bar and steel wire production lines: this is the only type that cannot be replaced by other materials.

As for the future, the Industrial Party still has no ambitions when it comes to steel: tinplate and galvanized iron are the highest tech trees to climb in the next three years.

Tinplate can be used for cans, and galvanized iron sheet is also called white iron sheet, which is an excellent material for containers, such as tin buckets and chimneys.

Both materials require the same base material, which is a low-carbon thin steel plate.To produce thin steel plates with a thickness of only about 0.2mm, the current steel mills are beyond their capabilities.This will take a while to accumulate—the cold-rolled steel production line is huge in size and high in technology, and the kiln area cannot produce it by itself.

Fortunately, a certain force's demand for tinplate will not be urgent for a while.

Canned food is mainly used for offense: when soldiers are in the field without logistics, canned food is a big killer.

However, if you look at the overall situation, you will find that all the battles of the current crossing forces are taking place in the coastal zone.Whether it is a sea battle or a land battle, the soldiers under the command of the "Guerrilla General" who have entered the Ming system can get sufficient logistics supplies on the battlefield, and there will be no such bridges as lone troops running deep into thousands of miles, so canned food can be a luxury first. Say it slowly.

The product structure of steel mills is like this.For a long period of time in the future, the production share of cast iron, ductile iron and steel will be fixed at 50:30:20. Even if the steel plant expands in the future, this ratio will be difficult to change.

Yao Zhesheng and Zou Guoqing parted ways after inspecting the most core steel mills and machinery factories in the entire kiln area.Yao Zhesheng continued to work as an inspector in the power plant, while Zou Guoqing went back home to work—he had a place in the office of the boss on the second floor of the imperial city.

With a "crash", Yu Sibao got his head out of the clear and transparent sea water.Let the sea water flow on his face, the young man didn't bother to wipe it, but shouted and waved his hands on the sea, and swam to a fishing boat not far away.

Coming to the side of the fishing boat, Yu Sibao first threw the things in his hands onto the boat, and then jumped onto the side of the boat like a civet cat along a dangling hemp rope.

Several fishermen on the boat were meeting head to head to study the things thrown by the young people.And a tall, red-faced man in his 40s was holding a coarse cloth robe, and once the young man jumped on board, he hurriedly wrapped the robe around his son's naked body: "Be careful, don't catch a cold. "

This man is Yu Sibao's biological father, named Yu Chengde.

The Yu family is an ordinary fisherman family along the coast of Putian, and Yu Chengde is the owner of the broken fishing boat under his feet.This fishing boat named Herring has 200 fish, and the fishermen on board are all from the same fishing village.

The location where the Herring is moored at this moment is the shore of Cormorant Island where the task force and Zheng Zhilong's fleet fought that day.

The one thrown onto the boat by Yu Sibao was a military stab produced by the Yao District Machinery Factory.This military thorn is the earliest crude steel military thorn produced by the machinery factory. The style is a copy of the US military M9 military thorn, but the blade is lengthened on the original basis, and the back teeth are cancelled.

And it was Yu Sibao's cousin Yu Chushui who was testing the knife on a salted fish with a rusty military thorn.After seeing Sibao get on the boat, Yu Chushui shouted to him excitedly: "Sibao, this is a precious sword!"

While speaking, Yu Chushui slashed at the salted fish hanging on the rope, and the salted fish with thick calves snapped off.

"Father, the boat below must be a cargo ship of a maritime merchant, and there are rich and noble people on board!" Yu Sibao ignored his cousin at this moment, and saw him stretch out a hand from the coarse cloth robe excitedly, palm Inside is a silver ingot weighing about 5 taels, which has long been oxidized into black by seawater.

(End of this chapter)