I started with a ship full of max-level veterans, and I'm just a complete noob.

When Jiang Ming pushed open the side door of Workshop No. 1, Lao Sun was standing next to the vacuum exhaust station, holding a temperature recording pen in his hand. The red ink at the tip of the pen drew a steep zigzag line along the paper.

"Jiang, something's happened."

The observation window of the exhaust furnace was still emitting hot air, and the furnace cover had been manually opened by Lao Sun to release the pressure.

Jiang Ming took three steps at a time to walk to the furnace and first glanced at the vacuum gauge hanging on the furnace wall.

The pointer rests on the right end of the dial, near ten to the power of negative two, which is three orders of magnitude different from atmospheric pressure.

Fang Xudong followed him in and, upon seeing the reading on the vacuum gauge, his expression immediately changed.

"When did it fall off?"

"Just now."

Old Sun tore off a section of the temperature recording paper and spread it out on the iron stand next to him.

"When the furnace temperature was raised to 400 degrees according to the process curve, everything was normal, and the vacuum was stable at 10 to the power of negative 5."

He pointed to a bend in the paper strip with his finger.

"At 580 degrees, the needle of the vacuum gauge trembled first, and then within two seconds, it dropped directly to the power of 10 to the power of negative two."

"At the same time, a puff of white smoke came out of the exhaust pipe."

Old Sun placed the thermometer on the table and turned to look at the cooled-down copper piece in the furnace.

"I quickly turned off the power, shut off the heating, and manually released the pressure to open the lid."

Jiang Ming peered into the furnace.

The anode blank lay on the graphite tray. Its shape was still the eight-cavity structure that Lao Sun had refined that morning, but the surface color was no longer right.

The original uniform rose-red color turned into dark gray, and it wasn't dark all over, but rather patchy, as if something was seeping out from the inside.

"tweezers."

Old Sun handed over a pair of long-handled stainless steel tweezers. Jiang Ming gripped the edge of the anode blank, slowly lifted it out, and placed it on the white paper on the worktable.

Fang Xudong came closer and rummaged through the toolbox to find the 10x magnifying glass.

Problems on the surface of the copper parts are clearly visible under a magnifying glass.

The grain boundaries are covered with countless tiny holes, some of which have extremely thin copper sheets sticking out from the edges, as if they were pushed open from the inside by something.

At some of the cavity walls, several copper grains have peeled off, revealing a deeper gray cross-section underneath.

"It's deflated."

Fang Xudong straightened up and handed the magnifying glass to Jiang Ming.

"This is not a normal deflation."

Jiang Ming pointed the magnifying glass at the largest area of ​​peeling and looked at it for about ten seconds before putting it down.

"Mr. Fang, look at the shapes of these holes."

He pointed to one of the rows with the tip of the tweezers.

"It's not round, it's an elongated ellipse along the grain boundary, and the inner wall of the hole is smooth, not a corrosion pit."

Fang Xudong squatted down and looked at it again, his brows furrowed tightly.

What kind of gas can crack grain boundaries at 580 degrees Celsius?

"water vapor."

"The partial pressure of water vapor cannot be that high."

"It's not water vapor from outside."

Jiang Ming put the tweezers back on the table, walked to the blackboard, and picked up the chalk.

"It's generated naturally within the copper itself."

He wrote a chemical equation on the blackboard.

When cuprous oxide is reacted with hydrogen gas, it produces copper and water at high temperatures.

"Oxygen-free copper has an oxygen content of less than 0.003 percent, but it is not zero."

"The residual oxygen will be dispersed at the grain boundaries in the form of cuprous oxide."

"The heating element in the exhaust furnace is graphite, which releases trace amounts of hydrogen at high temperatures."

He added another line below the equation.

"Hydrogen atoms are very small and diffuse quickly. They can penetrate the copper lattice and reach the cuprous oxide particles at the grain boundary when the temperature is above 500 degrees Celsius."

Hydrogen reduces cuprous oxide to produce water vapor.

"Water vapor molecules are much larger than hydrogen molecules, so they can't escape and will accumulate inside the grain boundaries, increasing the pressure until the grain boundaries crack."

Jiang Ming put down the chalk.

"This is hydrogen disease."

After hearing this, Old Sun braced himself on the edge of the workbench with both hands and looked down at the scrapped anode blank.

He started meticulously working on this bronze piece at seven in the morning, hand-scraping each of the eight crescent-shaped grooves. Da Liu brought his lunch to the workshop for a full ten hours.

"Engineer Jiang, isn't this because the Shenyang copper isn't pure enough?"

"The purity is sufficient, 99.97%, no problem."

Jiang Ming walked back to his worktable.

"However, the production of oxygen-free copper can only guarantee a low oxygen content, not a completely oxygen-free one."

"After Ivanov's process correction, the yield was 87%, which means that there may still be trace amounts of cuprous oxide segregation areas inside 13% of the copper ingots."

"The blank we used just happened to be cut into that area."

Fang Xudong stood there for a while before asking, "Then what should we do? Cut it into a different piece?"

"Replacing it with another one isn't safe either."

Jiang Ming touched the cross-section of the bronze piece with his finger; it was already cold.

"Forty-eight copper ingots, enough to cut out at least a hundred blanks, can't be gambled on one by one."

"The solution lies in the process itself. Before baking, the residual cuprous oxide in the copper must be removed."

Old Sun raised his head.

"What should we do?"

Jiang Ming did not answer immediately.

He walked to the metal table in the corner of the workshop, sat down, placed his hands flat on the table, and closed his eyes.

My mind was already tracing the outlines of the Heavenly Record.

The vacuum induction melting correction method that Kozlov mentioned is aimed at the deoxidation process of copper ingots during the melting stage.

The problem now is not remelting copper, but rather protecting the finished billet from dehydrogenation during secondary heating.

These are two issues at different stages.

Did Kozlov mention a pre-drying dehydrogenation scheme?

He needs to have another psychic session.

"Old Sun, keep this piece for today. Label it and write down the reason for the failure and the furnace temperature data."

Jiang Ming opened his eyes and stood up.

"Engineer Fang, the heating rate of the process curve will be adjusted tomorrow. I will recalculate the stage above 500 degrees Celsius."

"You already have an idea?"

Fang Xudong stared at him.

"We have a direction, but we still need to go over the details."

Jiang Ming walked towards the door.

"I'm working overtime in the secure cubicle tonight, and I'll show you the new plan tomorrow morning."

Old Sun straightened up from the worktable and watched Jiang Ming's figure disappear outside the side door.

The only sound left in the workshop was the faint ticking of the exhaust furnace as it cooled down, the sound of the graphite trays shrinking.

Fang Xudong walked over and flipped the scrapped anode blank over.

The situation on the back was even worse than on the front; the entire grain boundary looked as if it had been punctured one by one with a needle, with countless holes.

"Master Sun."

"Um."

"He said he could release a new plan tonight, do you believe him?"

Old Sun did not answer immediately.

He covered the copper piece with the white paper again, sealed the four corners with tape, and added a line of text to the label: 580 degrees, vacuum drop, suspected hydrogen disease.

The sound of the tape tearing was very soft.

I believe you.

Fang Xudong looked at him.

Old Sun pressed the record paper down next to the copper piece, making a very flat sound.

"Last time, the anode exhaust of the type B pipe also got stuck. He worked overtime all night, and the next day he came up with a reverse pulse solution that tripled the lifespan."

No one spoke in the workshop anymore.

The residual heat in the furnace was still dissipating little by little, and the scrapped copper parts were covered with white paper, like a fault report that had already written down the reasons and was just waiting to be turned over.

After leaving Workshop No. 1, Jiang Ming did not return to his dormitory.

He went to the confidential cubicle.