78: Bringing his wife and children to Harbin Institute of Technology

Ye Bingwen couldn't help but laugh. He bent down and hugged An'an, explaining gently to her, "Silly girl, this isn't a small river. It's a moat protecting the machines. With it, the precision machines in the factory can operate steadily without any problems."

As dusk settled and the factory gradually quieted down, Ye Bingwen remained in his office, once again taking out the neatly prepared application materials from the Science and Technology Commission. He opened his notebook and began to supplement and refine the subsequent technical implementation plan bit by bit.

On Monday morning, just after the morning meeting at the Hongqi Machinery Factory workshop, Ye Bingwen had finished arranging the day's production work when two young figures, a man and a woman, appeared at the office door, both wearing clean student jackets.

"Hello, Director Ye. We are graduate students sent by Professor Zhou. My name is Sun Cheng, and this is Wu Min. We are here today to officially report for duty," the boy said, taking the initiative to speak to her. He was very respectful and appeared quite composed.

Ye Bingwen nodded gently and said, "Thank you both for making this special trip. I'll be looking forward to having you two take the lead in the factory's phenolic resin toughening and improvement project."

After saying that, he turned to Chen An beside him and decisively assigned the task: "Chen An, take the two of them to the workshop to familiarize themselves with the environment, and explain the entire production process and equipment layout to them in detail."

Chen An immediately replied, "Okay, Director Ye, I'll make sure you two students get familiar with it."

For the rest of the morning, Chen An accompanied Sun Cheng and Wu Min, explaining things to them as they moved between different production areas.

Sun Cheng and Wu Min listened very attentively, occasionally bending down to take notes, and quickly became familiar with the factory's production conditions.

After familiarizing themselves with the site, the three returned to the factory's laboratory.

Sun Cheng immediately opened the file bag he was carrying, took out a neatly formatted experimental plan, and handed it to Chen An.

"Brother Chen, this is the toughening experiment plan that Professor Zhou prepared in advance," Sun Cheng said seriously. "The core idea is to incorporate nano-rubber particles into phenolic resin, with a fixed dosage of three percent. The project goal is very clear: to increase the impact strength of the material by more than thirty percent."

Wu Min added from behind, "This is the optimal basic solution that we have repeatedly deduced in the early stages. Let's use this as the basis for the first round of trial production."

Chen An carefully reviewed the plan and had a general idea of ​​what was going on. He said, "No problem, the parameters are very clear. Let's start now and make the first small-scale trial production."

The three of them immediately determined their respective tasks and threw themselves into the experimental work. After the first batch of prototypes was successfully formed, Chen An sent the samples to Professor Cai's laboratory as soon as possible, waiting for the mechanical properties test results to come out. The three of them were on edge all morning, hoping to meet the standard on the first try.

Chen An had just started work in the afternoon when the test data came back. He stared at the test report on the screen, and his face immediately darkened.

"How could this happen..." he muttered to himself.

Sun Cheng and Wu Min immediately rushed over, and the moment they saw the data, their expectations vanished. The phenolic resin material they had tested only showed a 10% increase in impact strength, falling short of the set 30% target by a full two times. Sun Cheng gripped the experimental record page tightly, his heart filled with frustration. He had done countless experiments with Professor Zhou and had never encountered such a large deviation before. His first time conducting practical work in the factory had resulted in such a failure, and he was inevitably somewhat discouraged. Wu Min gently pursed her lips, her eyes also dimming. She had originally thought the plan was sound, and that the first round of experiments would at least come close to the target. The current result completely exceeded her expectations, and the atmosphere in the laboratory suddenly became somber.

The news quickly reached Ye Bingwen's ears, and he rushed to the laboratory. Looking at the three dejected young men in front of him, Ye Bingwen did not say a word of blame. He knew very well that there was no such thing as a 100% success rate in experiments, especially since this was the first time a new process had been tried.

"Let's not keep quiet," Ye Bingwen said, breaking the silence with a calm tone. "One failure doesn't mean anything. Let's sit down and review everything step by step to find the root cause of the problem."

The group immediately sat down together and began to check the experimental procedures one by one. Chen An was the first to speak, saying with great certainty, "I have rechecked all the formula ratios. The weighing of all the raw materials is accurate. There is no problem with the proportions."

Wu Min then reported the situation: "I checked the temperature curve and the holding time for the entire process. All parameters are within the error range allowed by the plan, and there is no problem with the process temperature."

With both of the most critical basic parameters ruled out, silence fell once again. After a moment, Sun Cheng frowned and stated his judgment: "If the ratio and temperature are not the problem, I suspect that there is a problem with the dispersibility of the nano-rubber particles."

He paused, then continued his analysis: "The particle size of nanoparticles is simply too small. If ordinary stirring equipment is not stable enough, they simply cannot disperse. Once they clump together, the toughening effect will be greatly reduced, resulting in this situation of extremely low improvement rate."

Ye Bingwen's eyes narrowed, and he immediately decided on the direction of the investigation: "That makes sense. Disassemble that old mixer in the factory and check the condition of the equipment."

The workers arrived quickly and disassembled the mixing equipment. Once the internal structure was exposed, the problem became clear at a glance: the mixing blades were severely worn, with uneven edges, and the equipment's rotation speed fluctuated wildly, making it extremely unstable and failing to meet the requirements for dispersing and mixing nanomaterials. The problem was finally identified.

While everyone was still gathered around observing the equipment, a very young voice suddenly rang out. Liu Xiaojun stepped out from the crowd, his eyes firm, and volunteered, saying, "Uncle Ye, I can handle this. Give me two days, and I'll modify a variable-speed mixer for the factory to completely solve the problem of unstable speed."

Ye Bingwen looked at him with a hint of doubt in his eyes, and Liu Xiaojun quickly added a few more words: "I studied the principle of motor speed regulation in technical school, and I have also drawn the modification drawings of the same equipment before, so I am very confident."

Seeing the confident and determined look on his face, Ye Bingwen didn't hesitate any longer and nodded on the spot: "Okay, I'll leave this to you. Just tell me what materials or manpower you need."

At this moment, Sun Cheng suddenly remembered something and immediately said, "Director Ye, we have an unused high-precision dispersion disk in our school's laboratory. It is highly adaptable and can greatly improve the dispersion efficiency of nanoparticles. It will come in handy."

"Then I'll ride my bike back to school to get it now," Wu Min said without another word, turning around to prepare to leave.