Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 273 Deepening the Roots ([-])

When Pingan Iron and Steel Works was in a meeting, a group of technicians were gathering together to study the transformation of old-fashioned lathes in the machine tool workshop of the No. [-] Machinery Factory just across the wall from it.

In fact, regarding the lathe, as early as the Renaissance, Da Vinci had drawn many mechanical drawings of the original lathe.Later, when many carpenters, locksmiths and watchmakers in Europe processed products, they often manually manufactured and assembled some machine tools to process parts according to their needs.Of course, the structure of these lathes at that time was very simple, and the production was quite simple. Many of them were pedal lathes made of wood, which were used to cut some wood and iron.

There is no one who has studied machinery in the crossing crowd, and occasionally a few who understand a little bit only know some concepts and general principles, such as feed boxes, lead screws, tool holders and so on.In the past, due to the low requirements for machining accuracy, the First Machinery Factory has always used mold casting for various parts required for mechanical products, and then slightly processed them with old-fashioned machine tools as the main production mode. The degree of mechanization is extremely low, but This is generally sufficient when the precision of the parts is not high.In addition, there is a real shortage of people in other projects, so there has not been much urgency for the improvement of lathes and even machine tools.

However, the situation has changed in the past two years. First, the successful development and popularization of the steam engine made the First Machinery Factory put forward requirements for the accuracy of the processing machine tool for the first time.Later, with the help of some European craftsmen, the technicians in the machine tool workshop finally developed a boring machine with an accuracy of 1-1.5 mm after a collective project research, which can be used to process steam engine cylinders and barrels.

In the past two years, with the deepening of industrialization, the issue of machining accuracy of parts has gradually been put on the agenda.Because large-scale industrial production means standardized production, this requires the processing of all equipment and product parts to be of uniform size, which involves the issue of part processing accuracy.Moreover, as machinery is used more and more widely, the number of parts that need to be processed also increases geometrically.Under such circumstances, it is neither economical nor realistic to let those skilled craftsmen who have been cultivated with great difficulty to hand-make and process parts.

Therefore, the First Machinery Factory began to have more and more urgent needs for the development of a machine that can automatically and accurately process parts.Finally, with the support of the special scientific research funds from the Government Administration Council, the machine tool workshop gradually began to "modernize" the existing old-fashioned hydraulic and pedal machine tools imitating Europe.

The first is the thread lathe.In recent years, with the gradual deepening of mechanization, whether it is military industry, shipbuilding or civilian vehicles, tools, etc., the use of threads has gradually become more widely used, and the requirements for precision are also increasing day by day.Under such circumstances, the original method of processing threads with molds in the East Coast Republic gradually failed to keep up with the requirements in terms of accuracy, and if the skilled craftsmen in the factory were to manually process threads, it would be time-consuming, laborious and costly .Therefore, it has become the unanimous voice of industrial enterprises to use a machine that can process threads on a large scale and quickly to replace expensive and time-consuming manual processing.

Under such a demand, the development team of thread lathe came into being.There are more than ten people in this group. Except for two people who are time travelers, most of them are traditional locksmiths and watchmakers who immigrated from Europe and Ming Dynasty.These people are dexterous and capable of designing and assembling machines with their hands, because that's what they've always done.After coming to the First Machinery Factory for so many years, their technical level has been greatly improved through continuous learning and mutual communication.Of course, the improvement is mutual, and the improvement of the technicians of the time travel is not small.

In fact, although the existing pedal lathes are crude, their principles are not bad. They all rely on the relative distance between the moving workpiece and the tool holder to realize turning processing.In particular, the technicians in the R&D team gave full play to their ingenuity after hearing the concepts of modern machine tools such as moving tool holders and feed boxes from the public, and they took the lead in producing a wooden thread lathe at the beginning of the year.

The lathe uses a gearbox to adjust the feed speed, and uses a movable tool holder and a hard high-carbon steel tool head for turning processing, and the effect is not bad.To be honest, the technical content of this lathe is not much better than the original pedal lathe, except that there are more gear boxes and movable tool holders for adjusting the feed speed.Therefore, after making several prototypes and handing them over to the machining workshop for a trial period, they improved the prototypes according to some problems exposed during use.

For example, the user pointed out that the bed of the wooden lathe is too light, and the vibration is relatively severe during the processing, which easily affects the processing accuracy.Therefore, they quickly replaced the bed of the lathe with cast iron, which greatly increased the weight, and the bed has basically not shaken since then.Another user asked whether the boiler workshop can design and develop a special steam power system for these machine tools to replace the traditional pedal and hydraulic power sources.

Although the quality of the steam engine produced by the boiler workshop is considered extremely suspicious, but there is no second supplier at the moment, and the power system still has to ask them for help.Li Hongxing was very talkative. Without further ado, he organized the technicians in the boiler workshop to start designing a small general-purpose steam engine for lathes. At the end of June, a prototype was produced and handed over to the machine tool workshop for trial use.

The technicians in the machine tool workshop made some improvements to the power part of the lathe, and connected the steam power to drive the machine tool to work at a constant rate.After eliminating technical and mechanical failures one after another, the basic model of the steam-powered thread lathe was successfully developed.The next thing to do is to produce a batch of such lathes, and then hand them over to the machining workshop for trial use, and then find out the various problems exposed in use one by one, and then make improvements to make this type of lathe more perfect. Complete.

In addition to thread lathes, the East Coast Republic of China also has a great demand for equipment such as woodworking lathes and sawing machines.Especially in the shipbuilding industry, which is in a period of rapid development, the two shipyards have to process a large amount of wood every day, which consumes a lot of human resources.In the past, because the country had no money, the business volume of the shipyard was very small. Generally, there was only one ship order per year, and two shipyards had to compete for it.Therefore, the shipyard has said nothing about the lack of efficient machines for processing wood.After all, the original hydraulic sawing machine they used at that time was still sufficient.

However, in the past two years, due to the large naval orders from the Kingdom of Spain and the Ottoman Empire, coupled with the vigorous development of the domestic export economy, the maritime transport capacity has suddenly become tense. With the support of the Government Affairs Council, the South China Sea Transportation Company has also begun to build large merchant ships. The business volume of this shipyard has surged, and there is a serious shortage of manpower; moreover, this year, with the establishment of the New China Colony and the discovery of extremely rich local timber resources, the domestic industrial sector naturally has the urge to develop local high-quality hardwood resources.

Therefore, under the combined effect of these factors, the two shipyards and the wood processing department, which were short of manpower, put forward the requirement to use advanced machines to liberate a lot of manpower.For their demands and voices, the pressure was finally passed on to the machine tool workshop of the First Machinery Factory.Soon, after the thread lathe research and development team was established, research and development teams for woodworking lathes and sawing machines were also established one after another.

The steps of their research and development are quite similar to those of thread lathes, that is, to design and trial-manufacture based on the existing hydraulic and pedal machine tools, and then gradually improve the defects exposed in the actual use of the machine tools according to customer requirements, and then hand them over to customers. Try it out, then improve.This cycle goes on and on until a mature and used machine tool is designed and produced.

A batch of woodworking lathes delivered to the northern arsenal last month showed satisfactory performance in trials. The workers in the arsenal used these lathes to process a batch of spear shafts for the English.As a result, it took only ten minutes, and a hardwood spear shaft about 15 feet was processed. After touching it with hands, it was found that although the surface was not as smooth as hand-cut, it was still quite good.More importantly, the cost of using a lathe to process this spear shaft is low, and it only takes about ten minutes.This is the magic of industrialized production, and its cost and efficiency are completely beyond the reach of handicraftsmen.After processing the spear shaft, the technicians slightly modified the machine tool, and then began to process the wooden butt, which was still extremely efficient.

The magic of production by large industrial machines is on full display here.Perhaps in the production of small batches, the superiority of the machine cannot be reflected.Just as the military business of the people on the east coast hadn't been developed before, the carpenters in the arsenal had plenty of time to slowly process gun stocks and spear shafts, and at most they used some simple hydraulic and pedal machines.However, when a large number of production tasks are placed in front of you, this simple and low-efficiency production method is somewhat inadequate, and it is replaced by the model of large-scale industrial production by machines.

With these new machines, of course, there must be enough personnel to operate the machines.In fact, this problem is easy to solve, because after the machine tools become popular, quite a number of carpenters, blacksmiths, and coppersmiths in various factories will be collectively "unemployed".These people have already worked in the factory, are familiar with the system in the factory, and have a good understanding of the products produced (at least the process that they are responsible for), and they are the source of ready-made machine tool operators.

Therefore, each factory began to train these craftsmen from this month, and took them to the machine tool production workshop of the First Machinery Factory to visit and learn, so as to become familiar with the machine as soon as possible.It is conceivable that when "modern" machine tools are popularized in every factory in the East China Republic, the industrial production capacity of the entire country, that is, the ability to create wealth, will expand to an astonishing degree.To improve the country's industrial production capacity is to improve the country's comprehensive strength, which is a profound and fundamental event!

(End of this chapter)