Development of productivity started in 1981

Chapter 147 Steel and Artillery (Part )
After the cargo airship test was completed, Wang Jiankun immediately used his superpowers to build three cargo versions.

For the time being, these three airships are only used to transport materials from the northern Myanmar base to the offshore platform in the Bay of Bengal and within the northern Myanmar base.

Several bases in South America and Africa are already under construction. After these bases are completed, Wang Jiankun will manufacture more airships to transport higher-value goods.

As for general brown cargo, the consumption in northern Myanmar is not very large at present. My uncle has arranged personnel to form an ocean-going freight fleet. In the future, brown cargo will be purchased from the production area by our own fleet and then transported to the offshore platform.

On November 11, Wang Jiankun and his uncle Cen Yong came to the large copper mine in Xinbeiting.

"Jiankun, look, we're going to start blasting soon. The gravel and soil covering the ore will be blown away, and then we can start excavating the copper mine." My uncle said, pointing to the copper mine in the distance where explosives had been buried.

"Great! Now that the copper mine has been mined, our base will have a source of copper materials, and we can even export some of it."

"Yes, the few small copper mines in the old base cannot compare with this one. Moreover, the large-scale smelting equipment you provided here is very good, and the smelting efficiency is very strong!"

"That's right. I referred to the equipment imported from the United States by Dexing Copper Mine, and then asked Zhizi to help optimize it. Considering the lack of talent here, the operation of many equipments has been simplified."

It turned out that after Wang Jiankun found this large copper mine in August, he thought of building a large copper smelter nearby.

He thought of the Dexing Copper Mine in China as the prototype source of the smelting equipment. In the past two years, the mine has purchased a lot of equipment from the United States to improve its mining and smelting capabilities.

This copper mine is a very high-grade sulfide ore, so Wang Jiankun provided pyrometallurgical copper smelting equipment.

Pyrometallurgical copper smelting mainly goes through smelting, blowing, pyrometallurgical refining, electrolytic refining and other steps to obtain electrolytic copper.

The advantages of this type of copper smelting are mainly high production efficiency, low energy consumption, better quality of electrolytic copper, and better recovery of valuable metals in copper ore.

Originally, Wang Jiankun was thinking of using his superpowers to refine high-value metals such as gold and silver in this copper mine. However, after learning about the copper smelting process, he decisively chose the pyrometallurgical copper smelting process.

After learning the craft at the copper mine base in Dexing, Wang Jiankun manufactured a small set of equipment and tested it. He found the effect was excellent. At the end of last month, he manufactured the complete equipment at the base. These days, it has been installed by the people arranged by his uncle and trial production has been carried out using samples.

"Uncle, these electric construction machines are useful, right?"

“It is easy to use and does not consume fuel, which saves us a lot of money and reduces a lot of transportation pressure.

Moreover, these electric construction machines are easier to operate than diesel engines. After ten days of training, most of my people are now able to operate these machines independently.”

After completing the construction of the nuclear reactor at the base, Wang Jiankun began to build electric heavy trucks, electric excavators, electric bulldozers and electric drilling machines, and built a total of 75 units.

Among them, there are 40 electric heavy trucks, each of which can load and unload 80 tons. The truck bed can be lifted up by a hydraulic device, allowing the ore to fall automatically into the yard.

There are 20 electric excavators, each of which has a bucket that can dig up 10 tons of ore.

There are 10 electric bulldozers, which can be used for both bulldozing and loading and unloading ore. Their buckets can load 20 tons of ore at a time. Only 4 buckets are needed to fill the electric heavy truck.

There are 5 electric drilling machines, which are mainly used for drilling holes in mines and also for some sampling work.

Since these electric engineering machines use a lot of high-tech, such as super graphene batteries and superconducting materials with a superconducting critical temperature of up to 318K, Wang Jiankun has also prepared corresponding preventive measures.

The first is that you need to obtain the password from the device management office every time you start the device, otherwise the device will not start.

Then he limited the range of movement of these devices, allowing them to operate only in this mine and a nearby smelter. Beyond this range, the equipment would automatically lock and not move. If violence was used, the equipment would directly cut off power.

The replacement of graphene batteries can only be carried out by personnel designated by my uncle, and these drivers are not allowed to replace the batteries.

Finally, there is a safety measure, which is the alarm system. When someone fails to operate according to the specifications or moves parts that should not be moved, in addition to the equipment automatically locking, an alarm will be triggered, and a team responsible for mine protection not far away will quickly come over to control the relevant personnel and equipment.

After the copper mine is blasted, the first thing to do is to clean up the useless gravel and dust on the surface. This work will probably last for two or three days before copper ore mining and transportation can begin.

"Uncle, let's go, take me to the steel plant."

"Okay, let's get out of the mine first and then take a speedboat. The steel plant is on the riverside, and it's faster to take a speedboat than a car."

"Okay, you lead the way."

After leaving the mine, Wang Jiankun followed his uncle on a speedboat to a steel plant near Magao.

"Jiankun, this steel plant was built by Chen's army. It has been in operation for just over a year, and many of its equipment still look relatively new. It can now produce 1 tons of pig iron, 1 tons of crude steel, and 5 tons of refined steel every day."

Wang Jiankun followed his uncle to visit the small steel plant.

He had seen iron-making equipment in Guangfeng Town, Raozhou before. The equipment of that township enterprise was not as good as this steel plant. At that time, they could only use a small blast furnace to smelt iron, and then use a small open-hearth furnace to smelt simple carbon steels such as rebar and angle steel.

However, the production capacity of this steel plant is still too low for the upcoming artillery production and needs to be expanded.

After the visit, Wang Jiankun put forward his requirements for the steel industry to his uncle.

"Uncle, the production capacity of this steel plant is still too low. We have to start building a steel plant that can produce 5 tons of pig iron, 1 tons of crude steel, and 5 tons of refined steel per day."

"Build something this big? It's almost five times the size of this factory. Although there are large iron mines in the northern mountainous area, it would take a lot of equipment to build such a large steel plant, right?"

"Let's do it step by step. I plan to increase the production capacity of crude and refined steel first, and then the production capacity of pig iron."

"Can you explain it in detail? Why should we increase the production capacity of steel first? Shouldn't we increase the production capacity of pig iron first?"

"In the early stage, if there is not enough pig iron, we can purchase some from abroad. We can buy relatively cheap pig iron from India and South Africa, and even crude steel can be purchased from these two countries first. The pig iron purchased can be refined into the steel we want in an electrolytic refining furnace, which can save a lot of time.

Because the electrolytic refining process requires relatively simple equipment and fewer operators, it is very suitable for our situation.

After refined steel is put on track for production, we will gradually purchase or manufacture the related equipment, factory buildings, transportation tools, etc. required for the smelting of pig iron and crude steel.

By then, we will be able to smelt pig iron and crude steel, forming a complete steel production line.”

"Pah, look at my brain, I just can't wrap my head around it. It's indeed possible, so let's follow your plan."

After deciding with his uncle on the development of the steel industry, Wang Jiankun began to invest in the construction and experimentation of related equipment.

On November 11, he had people build a simple iron factory building on a wasteland in the base as a steelmaking laboratory, and then pulled out a superconducting cable from the underground nuclear power plant.

Then he called up the 50-ton refining furnace that Chieko had helped design in his mind.

The volume of the internal chamber of this refining furnace is 10 cubic meters. According to the density of fine steel, if it is full, it should be able to accommodate more than 70 tons. However, some margin should be left during smelting. After all, the molten steel will also boil, and then some flux and slag-forming materials should be added, so the output of fine steel smelted each time should be more than 50 tons.

After thinking about how to build it in his mind, he began to mobilize the prepared materials, building the outer shell from the bottom up, and then completing the electrolytic refining furnace from the outside to the inside.

After the construction was completed, he operated the machine to start filling pig iron, flux and slag-forming agent. After filling in a certain way, he closed the furnace door and started the equipment.

Hundreds of amperes of current travel from the underground nuclear power plant through the CD318 wire to the two 500 mm thick graphite electrodes of this device.

The moment the power was turned on, Wang Jiankun saw from the observation window that the arc was jumping between the two electrodes. The pig iron was crackling due to the arc, and the electrodes quickly turned from black to red.

The red graphite conducts high temperature to the nearby pig iron and other additives, causing the pig iron to melt quickly. This process is the melting period of electric furnace steelmaking.

The entire melting process lasted about one and a half hours, and a total of 1 tons of pig iron and corresponding additives were completely melted.

After observing that the melting in the furnace has been completed, Wang Jiankun operated the equipment to first remove the slag on the surface, and then introduced pure oxygen into it to allow the carbon and phosphorus in the furnace to undergo oxidation reaction and turn into gas.

When oxygen is introduced, the originally calm molten steel begins to boil. This is because the oxidation reaction releases a large amount of heat to boil the molten steel. The boiling process also allows the molten steel to be heated evenly and also better removes the carbon and phosphorus inside.

When the boiling molten steel in the furnace began to gradually calm down, Wang Jiankun knew that the decarburization and dephosphorization process was completed and the next reduction operation could be carried out.

Based on the data obtained from several laboratories of BJ and the steel ratio obtained from the analysis of US ship-borne artillery, Wang Jiankun added metals such as chromium, manganese, and nickel before the steel was fired according to the ratio analyzed by Zhizi.

After adding them, he used his super powers to observe the melting and distribution of the added elements and found that the distribution was very uniform and most of them were completely melted.

So after a few minutes, Wang Jiankun cut off the power, opened the door of the electric furnace, and operated the equipment to pour the alloyed refined steel into the prepared cylindrical molds.

Wang Jian used a camera to record the key steps of the entire production process, preparing to play it for the workers who would participate in the electric furnace steelmaking production.

While waiting for the cooling process, he started manufacturing electroslag remelting equipment and forging equipment for gun barrel steel.

The electric slag remelting furnace was manufactured very quickly. Wang Jiankun had never found a real furnace of this type. It was all deduced by Zhizi based on the data. Wang Jiankun would have to use it to know whether it was easy to use and whether the effect was good.

Because it was built too fast, the steel rods smelted in the electric furnace had not yet finished cooling down, so Wang Jiankun then proceeded to manufacture the 10,000-ton forging machine and the rotary precision forging machine.

However, Wang Jiankun obviously had no idea about the 10,000-ton forging machine. He simply handed the development task to Zhizi. He roughly looked at the structural diagram and did not consider the difficulty of construction and use.

The 2-ton forging hydraulic press is extremely large. If Wang Jiankun used superpowers to manufacture it, he would not be able to complete it in one day, because its volume is about cubic meters, which exceeds the limit of the elemental capacity that Wang Jiankun can mobilize in a single day.

The main structure of the 10,000-ton forging hydraulic press includes the main machine, high-pressure water pump, high-pressure container, high- and low-pressure valves, etc.

The main engine weighs more than 2200 tons, is 23.6 meters high, has a foundation 40 meters underground, and has a total of more than 4 parts.

There are 13 large parts, 6 main cylinders, 4 large pillars and 3 large beams.

Each of the four large columns of the hydraulic press is about 4 meters high, 18 meter thick, and weighs 1 tons.

Each column has several large nuts, and one large nut weighs 5-6 tons. The three large beams (upper beam, lower beam, and movable beam) each weighs several hundred tons.

Its working mode is generally used for forging, stamping, extrusion, stretching, lifting, packaging and other work that requires greater pressure.

It is controlled through the linkage of 12 high-pressure water pumps, 16 high-pressure vessels and more than 100 high and low-pressure valves. The high-pressure water of 3500 Newtons/cm provides huge pressure. The relevant parts must have a high degree of precision, sealing, accuracy and flexibility to realize the processing of large forgings.

The entire processing process requires more than 10 people to operate the relevant equipment and cooperate with each other, and this is the number of people after Zhizi has extremely streamlined it.

Moreover, the requirements for the site are also very high. Because the weight of the machine itself is more than 2 tons, it will exert a great impact force on the ground during work, so the foundation must be absolutely solid.

After Wang Jiankun understood the detailed structure and working mode of the entire 2-ton forging press, he notified his uncle to urgently mobilize tons of pig iron to the base, while starting the foundation renovation work.

He used his superpowers to observe the underground and found that the ground below 30 meters was all extremely solid granite, so he only needed to transform the foundation within 30 meters into solid rock.

The entire foundation transformation took him two days, transforming 1 square meters of underground into a solid rock structure.

During this period, pig iron transported by ships also arrived at the base one after another, a total of 3 tons. Obviously, most of the pig iron produced by the Magao Steel Plant during this period was transported here.

On November 11, Wang Jiankun came out of the base lounge in high spirits and began to build a 25-ton hydraulic press. The construction of this equipment will be completed in two days. Once completed, it will greatly enhance the high-end productivity of the Southern Liberation Army.

(End of this chapter)