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

That afternoon, while Ye Bingwen was busy, his phone suddenly rang. It was Zheng Shuyun calling. He answered the phone, and Zheng Shuyun's clear voice came through the receiver: "Bingwen, good news! I have officially submitted our application materials to the Science and Technology Commission through the publishing house's internal channels."

Ye Bingwen felt a sense of relief; a major matter that had been weighing on his mind for days had finally been resolved, and his tone became lighter: "Thank you for your hard work; this is finally a step forward."

The two chatted briefly on the phone before returning to their busy work. In the evening, the workshop work was temporarily finished, and Ye Bingwen left work early and went home. As soon as he opened the door, An'an ran over quickly, grabbed his big hand with her small hand, and pulled him into the living room.

"Dad, come and see!" An'an's voice was clear and cheerful, full of anticipation.

Ye Bingwen was pulled by his daughter to the wall in the living room. Looking up, he saw a brand-new children's drawing on the wall. On the drawing, three figures stood side by side in front of a huge factory building. The lines were very childish, but it looked warm and cozy. The corners of each person's mouth were turned up high, and they looked exceptionally happy. In the lower right corner of the drawing, there was a line of crooked pencil writing that read "Family Portrait".

Ye Bingwen slowly squatted down and quietly looked at the painting for a long time. At this moment, Zheng Shuyun, wearing an apron, poked her head out of the kitchen and said gently, "There's something else I want to tell you. The leaders from the publishing house have read our factory's materials and are particularly interested in the story of Hongqi Machinery Factory. They want to do a special interview on it."

She paused, then continued, "Firstly, it can promote the development of our factory and the stories of overcoming technical challenges. Secondly, it can also add points to our application to the Science and Technology Commission. It's a win-win situation."

Ye Bingwen thought for a moment, then slowly nodded and said, "I can accept it, but the production schedule for the military orders is very tight right now, and the experiments are also in a critical stage. We'll arrange the interview after this batch of orders is delivered smoothly."

"No problem, I'll go and communicate with them," Zheng Shuyun readily agreed.

The next day, Liu Xiaojun cleared a space in a corner of the warehouse, moved an old workbench over, and placed the motor, speed controller, bearings, and belts—all salvaged from scrapped equipment over the past few days—onto the workbench one by one. He then pulled a crumpled notebook from his jacket pocket, flipped to the middle page, and found a sketch of a modification he had drawn during his technical school days.

He pointed to the objects in the picture with his finger and checked them against the actual objects one by one.

"Master Liu, here's what you wanted." Sun Cheng carried a cardboard box into the warehouse and placed it next to the worktable.

Inside the cardboard box are newly processed dispersion discs made of stainless steel.

Liu Xiaojun picked it up and weighed it in his hand; it felt very sturdy.

He placed the dispersing disc onto the stirring shaft, then took out the gauge for measuring runout from the toolbox, attached the base of the gauge to the shaft, and made the probe press against the outer edge of the disc.

He slowly turned the stirring shaft, his eyes fixed on the pointer on the dial, his brow furrowing slightly.

"wrong."

Sun Cheng also came over to take a look.

The pointer is jumping, but the jumps aren't very large.

Liu Xiaojun loosened the connecting bolts, gently tapped the mounting base of the distribution plate twice with a copper rod, then tightened it again, and turned it once more.

This time the vibration was smaller, but he was still not satisfied, so he took the plate off again.

When he installed it for the third time, the pointer of the meter that measures fluctuations barely moved, so he finally tightened the bolt.

"Alright."

Sun Cheng stood by and watched without saying a word.

Liu Xiaojun connected the wires and the power was turned on.

He turned the speed control knob to the lowest setting and pressed the start button.

The motor started to rotate with a hum, the distributor rotated smoothly, and the bearing made a very clean sound.

Liu Xiaojun slowly turned the knob on the speed controller, and the pointer of the tachometer rose little by little—two hundred, four hundred, six hundred, each gear steadily and smoothly.

He pushed the knob up again.

When the speed reached 800, the machine body suddenly shook violently, and a very sharp metallic sound came from the distributor.

The power switch was slapped away by Liu Xiaojun.

After the machines stopped, the warehouse became unusually quiet.

Wu Min was standing at the door, her face pale and her lips tightly pressed together.

She turned to look at Sun Cheng.

Sun Cheng frowned, stared at the mixer for a few seconds, and said, "Could it be that the dispersion plate isn't installed correctly?"

Liu Xiaojun shook his head, wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, and said, "I've checked the coaxiality repeatedly, three times. The problem isn't there."

He paused, pointed to the speed controller, and said, "It's a problem with the circuitry. It shakes when the speed is high, like the power supply is unstable."

Sun Cheng then remained silent.

Liu Xiaojun found a screwdriver and disassembled the speed controller's casing, exposing the wiring pins, capacitors, and the adjustment components inside.

He took out a test pen and started testing each wire one by one, beginning from the end where the power cord came in.

"Found it." He poked at the terminal with a screwdriver; it was loose. "When the speed is high, the current can't keep up, so it's intermittent, and of course the motor will shake."

He loosened all the terminals, stripped the wire ends, and then tightened them one by one.

Then he squatted down, took out four rubber shock-absorbing pads from an iron box next to his feet, placed them between the motor base and the frame, and tightened the bolts in a diagonal order.

"Try again."

This time, after turning on the power, he placed his hand on the speed control knob and slowly pushed it up.

At 200 RPM, it was very stable; at 500 RPM, it was also very stable; at 800 RPM, Wu Min subconsciously took half a step back, but the machine didn't even shake slightly.

Then it rotated at 1,000 revolutions, then 1,200 revolutions, and the stirring shaft rotated steadily and quietly.

Liu Xiaojun reduced the speed to 600 and let it spin there. He straightened up and clapped his hands.

At some point, Chen An brought in a bucket of resin and placed it next to the mixer.

"Perfect, let's try the real thing."

He bent down, placed the bucket under the dispersing plate, and said, "There are very fine rubber particles mixed in here. Last time I used that old machine to stir it, it came out as lumps."

Liu Xiaojun started the agitator, and the dispersion disc sank into the resin.

Ten minutes later, Chen An used a sampling rod to dab a little bit from the bucket and held it up to the light to look at it.

The light shines through the resin, and the liquid looks very clean, with the tiny rubber particles distributed very evenly.