Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 981 Southwest ([-])

"The construction of the Southwest Railway this time uses the latest rolled rails. Both the quality and output are much higher than before. Of course, the cost has dropped even more. Generally speaking, this is a relatively major project. Industrial progress." As soon as Tian Xing entered the village, a high-pitched male voice rang in his ears.

He squinted, and saw that it was Pierre, the deputy chief of the technical department of the Northwest Special Steel Works——as a qualified intelligence officer, and in addition to being active in the nearby area all year round, Tian Xing still remembered the appearance of these important people very well clearly.Pierre and Hu Laosan are the two leaders of the factory's technical department, and they are the only students on the east bank who can be called metallurgical insiders. They are the objects that Shen Gang, the director of the factory, relies heavily on. .Listening to Pierre's tone just now, it seems that he sent new-style rails to Fenggezhuang Township?

"In the past, the rails we used were all directly cast, and the quality was not satisfactory, but it was almost enough. But in the past few years, we have not stopped the pace of technology research and development. Our factory technical department We have been cooperating with people from the Metallurgical Institute of the Academy of Natural Sciences to develop the steel rolling process, but due to technical and material factors, the results were not ideal. Later, we changed our thinking and did not seek perfection. We started with the simplest and most We started with the most primitive and basic, and finally came up with a—well, two-roll—rolling mill…” Pierre, who seemed to like to brag, was a little embarrassed when he said this, saying that the two-roll It's too embarrassing to call it a rolling mill?

Although it cannot be compared with the 14 rolls with a total of [-] large rolling forces for rough rolling and finish rolling in modern rolling mills, the rolling mill of your two rolls is indeed too primitive.Moreover, the design of this roll is also very problematic. There are only support rolls, and there are no vertical rolls, bending rolls, and string rolls. It is impossible to adjust the rolling force during the rolling process, and it is also impossible to adjust the gap between the rolls during the production process. It couldn't be more shabby!In other words, this rolling equipment can only roll components of a fixed type. If you want to roll a new type of product, sorry, you have to stop and overhaul the equipment first, replace multiple large and small parts, and then start debugging and production. This process is time-consuming It is laborious and very troublesome.

Of course, this so-called "time-consuming and labor-intensive" is also relative.Perhaps it is not so obvious when processing low-quality products such as railway rails, but it can show its advantages when processing prefabricated parts for railway bridges.After all, although its equipment is simple, its processing efficiency is still better than that of the steam forging hammer of the Western Forging Factory, provided that the processing object is a fixed model and fixed size component.

The rolling workshop of Tieling Special Steel Works once conducted a joint experiment with the West Forging Plant to produce the same type of iron bridge components within the same time period. As a result, the Tieling Plant produced 30 tons, while the West Plant only produced 2 tons. The efficiency difference is huge. too big.Moreover, the good product rate of the products produced in the Tieling factory is high, reaching over [-]%, while the good product rate of the western factory is only [-]% to [-]%. Perhaps the only thing worthy of praise is that most of the so-called "waste products" of the western factory are sent to the machining workshop to be polished After a while, it can become a qualified product, but most of the waste products produced by the Tieling factory are really waste products and can only be taken back to the furnace for resmelting.

However, compared with the 15 times difference in production efficiency, it is not a problem at all. As long as we think of ways to improve the roller conveying system and feeding system, and then control the furnace temperature of the heating furnace well-this can only be done by I feel it, after all, there is a lack of modern furnace temperature detection equipment such as rhodium-permant alloy thermocouples, which cannot measure such a high temperature-I believe that the yield rate will further increase, which undoubtedly means economic benefits.

After the successful development of this kind of steel rolling equipment, the number of workers required by the factory has been further reduced. In the past, the production of iron bars and steel bars exported to Europe from the east coast has increased tenfold. Correspondingly, the cost has naturally been reduced to an astonishing level. .However, the people on the east coast are not going to lower the price of steel bars or iron bars for the time being. Anyway, these products are of better quality and slightly lower prices than similar products in Europe, and their competitiveness in the market is already very strong.After a large number of new technologies are applied, the export volume can be increased appropriately, but the price cannot be lowered. This is the stage of enjoying the excess profits brought by black technology. How can we blindly lower the price in order to grab the market?Besides, it's useless for you to lower the price. The current market barriers are so serious that you can't grab the market of other countries even if you lower the price, so why bother?

Besides, you are now offering products made by these black technologies, and you have also raised the price substantially to grab Europeans' money. Isn't that stimulating people?Now there are some signs of technological innovation in Europe, such as the circular furnace cavity and furnace hearth that appeared in iron smelting in 1650, which were not paid much attention in history, and craftsmen still stick to the square furnace to collect molten metal. It took decades to try to make a change.However, under the butterfly effect of the people on the east coast, the Dutch have now begun to promote this technology on a large scale in Swedish iron smelting workshops, because it can obviously speed up metal smelting and save fuel, which naturally increases the production of pig iron. Yield.

Naturally, technological progress in Europe is not limited to this. The research results of the Dutch on gear involutes have spread to neighboring England, France, and Germany. Many European animal power, wind power or hydraulic machinery have begun to apply these new technologies in large quantities, and the production efficiency has greatly improved. Increase; the latest looms produced in Leiden, the Netherlands, are not far from the early technology on the East Coast. These high-efficiency machines are currently widely used in the textile factories of Leiden, Calais, Manchester, West Riding and Venice Here, the cost of the European textile industry has been effectively reduced. At present, their bottleneck is mainly stuck on the spinning machine, which is the key to preventing their textile industry from entering a leap-forward development channel. The Bureau of Patient Statistics further strengthened the regulation of textile technology, doing everything possible to prevent Europeans from obtaining these technologies.

The progress of Europeans in other small technologies is also obvious to all, so I won’t repeat them one by one. In a word, they are not fools, and they will not just watch the technology on the east coast and remain indifferent.In fact, this kind of promotion is mutual. You make progress, and others are not asleep, and they are also struggling to catch up after suddenly waking up.Although this kind of catching up is often just an unconscious move by some businessmen, it is a kind of catching up after all, and it is worthy of vigilance by people on the east coast.

Of course, Tian Xing doesn't know the twists and turns behind these technologies. He only knows that the rails produced by the latest technology are used on the Southwest Railway. The quality is better than before, and the price is slightly lower than before. The Genoese have made a profit!He glanced at the rails piled up under the awning. Only a small part of these rails were produced by the Western Forging Plant, and most of them were produced in the rolling workshop of the Tieling Special Steel Plant—because there were labels on them.

However, except for the rails, most of the small components are still produced by the Western Factory, where there are many small and medium-sized steam hammers.For example, Tian Xing happened to know that there was a six-ton ​​forging hammer, which was driven up by a steam engine, and the hammer anvil was installed in a cast iron base of more than four tons (replacing the wooden base fixed on the ground in the past).It is very convenient to use this kind of steam hammer to process some non-standard components, because you only need to adjust the hammer and anvil, and it can hit dozens of times per minute, and the production efficiency is still so-so.A while ago, Tian Xing vaguely heard people saying that the Western Factory would design and produce larger forging hammers, specially for processing ship ribs. There was no demand for this before, so I will still use small forging hammers, but I can’t say no in the future. Cleared up.

However, this matter should not be too optimistic, because the wood is quite cheap now, and the tonnage of the ship is not very large, the competitiveness of this iron rib on small and medium-sized tonnage ships is actually not good, and it takes one time to build a large ship. The starting point may work when the ribs are on.But then there will be a problem. You may need a larger forging hammer to forge the keel. This technical requirement is even greater. Is it possible that you need to install a hydraulic press with hundreds or even thousands of tons?Is this possible in a short time?

Shaking his head, Tian Xing put away the flagon and put away the technical nonsense, and then led the team into Fenggezhuang Township.Under his command, hundreds of internal affairs policemen came to help. They drove more than 300 handcuffed Kelandi people to the large drying ground in front of the township government.

There used to be a flock of chickens walking on the drying ground. When they saw a group of people approaching from a distance, they dispersed in a rush, leaving a lot of chicken feathers and chicken droppings all over the floor.The policemen from the Ministry of Internal Affairs kicked and beat the dishonest Hejian slaves, and they all squatted on the ground after a lot of effort.Tian Xing inspected back and forth, then asked his subordinates to cross their heads, and finally said to a veteran who was walking towards him quickly: "Major Li, the 352 Hejian slaves are here, you Send someone to receive it."

The veteran nodded without the slightest hesitation, and said, "No problem, the district administrative office and the county have already talked to me about the arrival of a group of slaves in the near future." After speaking, he let his two men go down Count the number of people.

"Major Li, this time I sent people over, and Commissioner Tang of the District Administrative Office asked me to help bring some words. He said that the Southwest Railway has a lot to do with it. You'd better get nervous in the near future. The sandy road that needs to be repaired should be repaired as soon as possible. This is related to the transportation efficiency of railway equipment; the materials that should be hoarded must be prepared as soon as possible; in addition, is the area of ​​land planned to be reclaimed up to the standard? The seeds will be planted after the spring, and this matter cannot be ignored." Tian Xingcompleted Repeating the words of Tangyuan, the commissioner of the district administration.

"Major Li" laughed a few times when he heard the words, then took off his hat, scratched his head and said, "Please don't worry, Commissioner Zhuan Tang, there will be no mistakes. After the beginning of spring, a crop of corn will be planted. At that time, even thousands of people will come." Italian savages can't starve them."

(End of this chapter)