Industrial Revolution of the Mage Lords

Chapter 438 Cracking Furnace
After successfully getting the nine-ring spell model and analytical structure of Shadow Disintegration for free from the head of the Federation, Harvey asked the two heads of the alchemy laboratory to put down their work on developing submarines and concentrate on cooperating with him to build the envisioned magic steelmaking furnace.

Compared with the previous kilns for smelting pig iron and blast furnaces for making steel, the new furnace completely abandoned the traditional construction structure. Its volume alone has increased several times. It is built with refractory bricks made of clay and reinforced cement. It is more than 30 meters long, more than 10 meters wide, and less than 3 meters high. From the outside, it looks like a rectangular pool with a stone brick cover.

The smelting system is essentially no different from the previous steel-making blast furnace. It is still heated with coal and charcoal, and then uses alchemical beasts installed in the ventilation holes to continuously blow air into the furnace to increase the temperature in the furnace and the combustion efficiency. However, this time, Chris and Benoit took a different approach and cleverly added dragon flame powder, an alchemical creation that is highly efficient in combustion. Combined with the fire amplification array engraved in the furnace, this allows the new steel-making furnace to achieve the effect of rapid heating and efficient smelting.

If such a large steelmaking furnace is used to smelt steel in the previous conventional way, removing impurities and slag alone will be a big problem. The quality of the produced steel naturally cannot be guaranteed to be stable, and the carbon content varies greatly, requiring manual selection and allocation.

But with the nine-ring magic circle constructed by Shadow Disintegration, there is no need for previous concerns. All you need to do is put in pig iron to melt it, and then activate the magic circle to decompose the entire batch of steel at once, select out useless and harmful impurities, and then return it to the furnace for a second time.

There is still a lot of vacant land in the industrial park built in the eastern suburbs of Xinghuo City. Harvey plans to build a batch of such "cracking furnaces" here, which together with the existing cast iron kilns and steel blast furnaces will form a new steel smelting cluster factory.

Once the construction of the "cracking furnace" is completed and put into large-scale production, it will not only bring a large number of stable jobs to Spark City again, but the territory's steel production and quality will also increase by more than ten times.

On this basis, Harvey's new round of production expansion and development plans has a more solid industrial guarantee.

……

In addition, Harvey also had new ideas about the research and development of new weapons at the Magic Military Factory.

The original primitive version of the magic energy gun used a direct charging mode and could only fire five times in a row before it needed to be recharged again. It had serious flaws in both usage and supply, and was soon ruthlessly eliminated.

The subsequent development of the magic gun type 1 used the epoch-making beetle bullet, which could be loaded with ten bullets at a time for continuous attack, increasing the damage efficiency by several times and quickly became the standard weapon of the Northern Army.

As the army's combat operations evolved from defending frontier territories to "keeping the enemy out", a large number of soldiers needed to leave the base camp frequently and go out to implement combat plans over long distances. Harvey, who already had an alchemy laboratory and the assistance of alchemists such as Chris, took advantage of the situation to improve and develop the magic gun magazine device. After a round of shooting, the previous method of reloading bullets one by one was changed to a magazine-style loading and storage. The gun's ammunition capacity was also upgraded to as many as twenty rounds.

Subsequently, the shooting range and aiming components of the Magic Energy Gun Type I were further improved. After the upgraded version, named the Magic Energy Gun Type II, was put into mass production, the army also launched a wave of upgrading its main battle weapons.

As the performance and structure of the magic gun became more and more perfect, Harvey turned to the research and development of portable light weapons. The magic revolver came into being. It was not only distributed to the army as an auxiliary weapon, but also installed in violent agencies such as the police department and defense force in the territory.

Needless to say, the subsequent development of magic machine guns, magic-powered cannons and magic naval guns will also be carried out.

The military factory has always had a rather stubborn problem with the manufacture of all weapons: the defect and scrap rates remain consistently high. However, the loading of magical ammunition is entirely done on a filling line staffed by alchemical beasts, with ordinary workers only responsible for casting the metal shells. The process is highly efficient and mature, and there are no major issues.

However, the manufacturing of firearms is quite troublesome. The core components of all magic weapons are nothing more than using alchemy beasts to engrave charging inscriptions on the barrels cast from enchanted metal in advance, and then the weapon technicians complete the assembly of the barrel, buttstock, magazine and trigger sights. Finally, the quality inspection team tests it several times, and it can be shipped off the production line as qualified if there are no problems.

But the problem always lies in the first and most important step of the barrel casting process - the alchemy laboratory led by Chris, and the cutting machine manufactured according to Harvey's requirements, cannot stably produce qualified enchanted barrels, whether operated by humans or alchemy beasts. At first glance, there is nothing wrong, but after the assembly is completed, the magic energy guide will be blocked during the test firing, the magic stone will fail to fire, and occasionally there will be a big mess of direct explosion of the barrel.

Harvey and Chris naturally knew that all these problems were caused by the uneven quality of the raw material of the gun barrel - steel.

With the advent of the cracking furnace, all difficult problems in weapons manufacturing are naturally solved.

At least the magic machine gun that has never been mass-produced can finally be put into mass production. In addition, Harvey also plans to mass-produce a simplified version of the "Magic Barrett" sniper rifle that was originally used to assassinate Archduke Ralph.

In this way, in a large-scale frontal engagement, magic-powered cannons and naval guns are responsible for suppressing enemies a thousand meters away, while magic-powered sniper rifles are responsible for targeting key hostile arms within 800 meters. After entering the 500-meter range, machine guns and rifles take turns to harvest. If there is a really powerful extraordinary enemy who can rush into the 200-meter front line, the soldiers who have used up their rifle bullets can draw out their revolvers to cover their retreat. In theory, full coverage of each firefighting point can be guaranteed, and there will be no gaps in the attack for the enemy to exploit.

Harvey's somewhat anxious mood immediately turned into confidence when he thought about the summer offensive that had to be postponed because the exploration team encountered an alien advance team on the frozen land.

How effective this configuration is against unknown alien races remains to be seen, but it is more than enough to deal with the churches and nobles in the southern border.

Therefore, Harvey decided to speed up the process of achieving the strategic goal of "resisting foreign aggression and maintaining domestic stability" and stabilize the situation around Spark City as soon as possible. He would no longer adopt a mild defensive counterattack strategy, but would directly join forces with the Federation to attack Grand Duke Saint Valen and the church coalition from both sides.

Completely wipe out the church's influence in the central part of the southern continent, and if necessary, oust Grand Duke Saint Valen from power and take over himself.

As long as he can stabilize the situation in the south as quickly as possible and absorb more territorial resources and new population labor force, Harvey does not mind public opinion and secular reputation.

He just wanted to do his utmost to unite all the forces and ethnic groups in the southern border to resist this fierce "war of genocide" before the powerful foreign enemy completely attacked.

(End of this chapter)