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

At seven o'clock in the morning, Jiang Ming pushed open the iron door of Workshop No. 1.

Old Sun was already waiting in front of the grinding table. He tucked his pipe into his waistband, wiped his reading glasses clean, and was nervously rubbing his hands together.

"Is the blueprint revised?" Old Sun asked abruptly.

Jiang Ming walked to the worktable, spread out the corrected drawing in his arms, and casually pressed down the four corners with a wrench.

"It's fixed."

Jiang Ming pointed to the newly marked numbers on the drawing and explained, "This is an interference fit; the inner diameter of the seal is 0.015 millimeters smaller than the outer diameter of the pump shaft."

"When assembled at room temperature, the rubber will be slightly compressed. When the pump is running and the temperature rises to 120 degrees, the amount of rubber expansion and release is just enough to compensate for the micro-gap caused by the expansion of the metal."

Old Sun put on his reading glasses and leaned closer to stare at the numbers, his brows furrowed into a deep frown.

"A 0.015 mm interference fit, plus the previous 0.003 mm grinding tolerance—are these two precisions combined?"

"Difficult, but doable."

Jiang Ming turned to the second page of the drawing and pointed to the thin line marked "buffer layer" on the sealing surface, saying, "There is one more process. After the sealing surface is ground, a layer of vacuum grease must be evenly applied, and the thickness cannot exceed five micrometers."

The workshop fell silent instantly.

Old Sun's expression changed: "How much? Five micrometers? That's one-twentieth the thickness of a human hair!"

"You want me to apply it with my hands? Too much and it releases air, too little and it's useless. Is this a job for a human being?!"

He slammed his hand on the iron table, making the millimeter stand on end.

Da Liu and Xiao Li shrank back, not daring to utter a sound.

Xiao Zhao pushed up his thick-rimmed glasses, and his hand holding the pen trembled slightly.

Jiang Ming stood there without saying a word, knowing that Lao Sun needed to vent his emotions.

Old Sun cursed for a full two minutes, insulting Liu Shouxin's ancestors, and finally stared at the thin line on the drawing for half a minute.

Then, Old Sun suddenly turned around and pulled out a cloth bag wrapped in oil paper from the bottom of an old tin box.

Open the cloth bag, and inside lies a miniature scraper, its handle only as thick as a chopstick, its blade so thin it's translucent.

"This was left to me by my master for repairing clocks."

Old Sun gripped the scraper, his face contorted with pain, and said, "I've used it for twenty years and couldn't bear to part with it, but today I'm going all out."

Old Sun took out a sheet of the finest sandpaper and began to gently polish the blade of the scraper.

The rustling sound of friction echoed in the workshop.

He sharpened the blade to an extremely thin edge, then picked up a discarded seal from the pile of scrap.

"Da Liu, prepare the vacuum grease and bring it over."

Da Liu immediately ran to the mixing table and used a glass rod to stir out a small jar of pale yellow vacuum grease.

Old Sun dipped the tip of his scraper into a small amount of vacuum grease and slowly scraped a line on the sealed surface of the waste material.

He stopped what he was doing, tilted his head, and examined it for two seconds: "It's too thick."

Old Sun wiped off the vacuum grease, applied a smaller amount again, and scraped it once more, but it was still too thick.

After several failed attempts, sweat began to bead on Lao Sun's forehead.

It wasn't until the eighth time that he finally figured it out.

He abandoned applying the coating with the front of the blade, turned the blade over, and used the extremely thin back of the blade to glide it along the sealing surface at a near-zero angle.

The vacuum grease was evenly scraped into a thin film, so thin that it was almost invisible.

"Xiao Zhao, bring me the thickness gauge," Jiang Ming instructed.

Xiao Zhao quickly handed over the thickness gauge.

Jiang Ming took it and randomly selected three points on the coated surface for measurement: "4.8 micrometers, 4.6 micrometers, and 5.1 micrometers."

Old Sun suddenly looked up.

Of these three data points, the two middle points are perfectly acceptable, while only the edge point exceeds 0.1 micrometers.

"When I was pulling back at the edge, my wrist was a beat too slow," Old Sun reflected on his actions.

He wiped off the vacuum grease, picked up another piece of scrap material, and continued practicing.

Until the twelfth time, all three sampling points were stable between 4.5 and 5 micrometers.

"It's done." Jiang Ming nodded in confirmation.

Old Sun breathed a sigh of relief and carefully tucked the miniature scraper back into his inner pocket, as if it were a precious treasure.

At noon, the cafeteria's closing bell rang.

Old Sun stood up and stretched: "Let's go to the cafeteria, eat our fill, and then come back to get down to business."

Da Liu and Xiao Zhao followed Lao Sun outside.

Jiang Ming stuffed the blueprints into his pocket and casually placed the notebook on the worktable.

As he reached the door, he glanced back and saw Xiao Li squatting beside the tool rack, clutching his stomach.

"Xiao Li, aren't you going to eat?" Da Liu called from the doorway.

"Brother Liu, my stomach isn't feeling too well, I'll be fine after a rest." Xiao Li's face was a little pale.

"Then you can rest. I'll bring you some cornbread later." After saying that, Da Liu turned and left.

The iron gate closed, and the footsteps outside gradually faded into the distance.

Xiao Li slowly straightened up and put his hand into his pocket.

His heart suddenly raced when his fingertips touched the hardcover notebook and a pencil stub.

He listened quietly for ten seconds to make sure there was no more noise outside before quickly walking to the worktable.

Jiang Ming's thick, hardcover notebook sat quietly beside the wrench.

Xiao Li reached out and opened the cover.

A dense array of formulas and data immediately came into view.

He quickly flipped through a few pages and found the page labeled "Fluororubber Vulcanization Parameters".

"170 degrees, plus or minus 3 degrees, for 25 minutes."

Xiao Li took out his notebook and quickly copied it down with the stub of a pencil.

Although his hands were trembling and his handwriting was crooked, the data was accurate.

Turning to the next page, it reads "Interference allowance of 0.015 mm, exhaust valve spring preload reduced by 40%, guide groove size parameters".

Xiao Li had just finished copying two pages when he could faintly hear conversations coming from afar.

He slammed Jiang Ming's notebook shut, stuffed his own notebook and pencil back into his pocket, and quickly retreated to the tool rack, squatting down beside it.

Fortunately, the voices were just passing workers.

Xiao Li clutched his stomach; his back was already soaked with cold sweat.

At 1:30 p.m., everyone returned to the workshop one after another.

Old Sun flexed his fingers and pulled out the third-to-last piece of raw fluororubber seal blank from the pile of materials: "Let's get started."

Vulcanization, demolding, and cooling – the entire process flows smoothly.

Next comes grinding.

Amidst the rustling sound of grinding, Lao Sun's upper arm moved his wrist, drawing a perfect arc on the cast iron grinding disc.

Forty minutes later, Lao Sun stopped what he was doing and put the micrometer on.

"0.08 micrometers!"

When Xiao Zhao read out the numbers, his voice cracked a little.

The grinding precision this time is even slightly higher than the last time.

This is followed by the application of vacuum grease.

Old Sun took out the miniature scraper from his inner pocket, dipped it in vacuum grease, and slid it across the sealing surface at an almost zero-degree angle.

He slashed all the way through, his movements fluid and seamless, without any unnecessary pauses.

Xiao Zhao took the thickness gauge and randomly checked three points: "4.7, 4.9, 4.8, all qualified!"

Jiang Ming installed the sealing component, which embodied everyone's hard work, into the test bench.

"Pressure to 0.5 atmospheres and maintain pressure for 10 minutes."

Da Liu cranked the handle, and the pressure gauge pointer stopped steadily at the 0.5 position.

"Start timing." Jiang Ming pressed the stopwatch.

A minute passed, and the clock didn't move.

Three minutes passed, and the pointer still hadn't moved.

Five minutes passed, and the pointer still hadn't moved.

Old Sun clenched his fists, staring intently at the watch face. Last time, they had failed in the eighth minute.

Seven minutes passed, and the pointer remained motionless.

By the eighth minute, the workshop was so quiet you couldn't even hear breathing, and the pointer still hadn't moved.

Nine minutes passed, and the pointer remained firmly stuck at 0.5.

At the tenth minute, the ticking of the stopwatch was exceptionally clear in the quiet workshop.

Jiang Ming pressed the stop button: "Ten minutes exactly, zero leaks."

Old Sun's body went limp, and he collapsed to the ground.

Da Liu was so excited that he spun around on the spot, his face turning bright red.

Wu Hanzhang strode forward, grabbed Jiang Ming's shoulder, his lips trembling for a long time, too excited to utter a single word.

When Xiao Zhao was recording data, his hand trembled, and his pen left a long ink mark on the paper.

Jiang Ming looked at the black seal on the test stand, his tense nerves not completely relaxed.

A single successful unit does not guarantee batch reliability. To complete the modification of the entire rotary vane pump, at least three qualified seals are required.

The remaining fluororubber was just enough to make three pieces.

This means that in the subsequent production, not a single item can be wasted.

Jiang Ming looked at the rough blanks on the worktable, then turned to Old Sun: "Master Sun, are you confident about the remaining three pieces?"

Old Sun sat on the ground, looking up at him, his lips twitching: "Engineer Jiang, are you asking me if I have the guts to win all three bets in a row?"