With Li Jing leading the troops to go on the expedition, Zou Yu was very relieved, after he handled the affairs of Yuyang, he rushed to Liaodong, he wanted to see how Yan Lide was doing.

Liaodong's technical foundation is weak, fortunately, the waterwheel is not a particularly unfathomable thing, Yan Lide trained a group of carpenters, and then let them go to various places to make, erection, he personally stayed in the mine, set up a large waterwheel, and wanted to follow Zou Yu's suggestion, make a waterwheel to drive the hammer of the machine.

Technically, this instrument was not in the slightest difficulty for him, because he was able to easily make a set of small samples of movement out of wood.

In order to make a device that can be used, the material has always been limited. Steel, which has good toughness and hardness; The casting method can also perfectly make the aliquot gear, which makes everything simple.

You know, in the past, if you want to make a thick enough and practical gear, the first thing is the material, and you can get a piece of iron (steel), and if you want to make iron into equal gears, it goes without saying that it is definitely not an ordinary craftsman who can do it.

The problem is that a device must need more than one gear, which is quite time-consuming and labor-intensive, and it is conceivable that such a troublesome thing must cost a lot of money, how can it be used to make an ordinary instrument.

Iron itself is a very valuable thing, from ore to iron, to go through mining, refining, forging, after dozens of people's efforts, continuous beating, thousands of tempering, time-consuming and labor-intensive, in order to make a piece, no one is willing to use it in an ordinary object.

Even if it is the imperial court, it will only be used where they think it needs to be used, such as an iron weapon, which is given to a general, and the general can be regarded as a family heirloom.

Now many generals, the use of iron lance, in fact, is the iron made of horse lance, only the iron made of horse lance, only the iron of the horse lance, enough weight and enough toughness and hardness, although the iron horse lance, unlike the Trojan lance, it takes several years, but the time consumed, the same is not short, the technical content of the demand, lies in the iron production.

Trojan horse lance and iron horse lance, which involves the two most representative generals, one is a skill type and the other is a strength type. Just like a spear, it is also divided into a flower spear and a large spear.

Skills and strength, there is no difference between who is strong and who is weak, just look at the person who uses it, but on the battlefield, the strength of the generals, rampage, can improve morale, the skill of the generals, although not so eye-catching, but for themselves, the guards are better and thoughtful, often in the thousands of troops, can be unscathed.

Of course, skill-based generals are not powerless showmen, but the way they use weapons, habitually use skillful strength, avoid heavy and light to kill opponents, the most famous of which should be Zhao Yun, the battle of Changbanpo, back and forth to kill a few in and a few out, but also escort A Dou to kill out, although there is Cao Cao's order, not allowed to release arrows, which also shows his superb skills.

This can also be reflected in the name of his marksmanship handed down, "A hundred birds and a phoenix!" "Seven Probes Snake!" , This is also why when he was young, Zhao Yun seemed invincible, but when he was older, even Jiang Wei couldn't beat him, because of the decline in physical strength, many moves could no longer be used freely.

Strength-based generals are brave and brave, but they generally use heavy weapons, so every time they fight, they are easily injured, especially those whose strength and skills are not at the top, they are more likely to be injured, and most of them die on the battlefield, or end up with a cripple.

Having said that, because of the casting, the gear production is very convenient, so when Zou Yu arrived, he saw Yan Lide debugging the machinery.

A canal dug out of the river, passing through the workshop, a waterwheel about five meters high on the canal, slowly rotating with the flow of water, driving more than ten gears of different sizes, gears turning, a fixed, three or four meters long hammer, is swinging up and down.

Soon, a craftsman took out a half-body armor from a nearby stove, placed it under the hammer, quickly observed it, and then shook an iron ring like a steering wheel.

"Bell! Clang! The hammer struck the armor with a loud striking sound.

The dug canal, thousands of meters long, will be set up along the way waterwheels, only now started, there are only two, the first is to drive a big hammer, one by one, to thin the steel armor; The second one was a small hammer, but it was very fast, and it struck the steel armor quickly.

Of course, this is still in the experimental stage, because the purpose of building a waterwheel and beating steel is not simply to make weapons and armor.

Weapons and armor, made of graphite dry pot, refining steel, is enough for defense, Zou Yu wants to make precision equipment, more sophisticated equipment, need better steel, the demand is very large, pure manpower, I'm afraid it will take decades to make the parts.

Don't think about the steam engine at the moment, Zou Yu just mentioned it for a while, so that Yan Lide and the others, when they have time, can think about whether it is feasible.

What he wants to do is a steel catapult, a steel ballista, and even a steel toad cart, an arrow tower. Of course, you can't use all of these things, but you can make the most of them.

For example, the key components of the catapult, the defense of the toad car, several arrow towers, and the undertaker. There are also pulleys, which are too delicate to make, but there is no problem with the rough ones.

This involves the need for better steel, the need to refine the steel from the graphite dry pot, and then forge it into steel!

Stainless steel is thinner, lighter in weight, easy to transport, 20 to instrument forging, the volume is guaranteed, just like the assembly line, convenient for instrument installation, replacement.

Only the toughness and strength of stainless steel can support the continuous use of catapults and ballistas.

There is also a repeater, Yan Lide is also responsible for making a steel repeater, the previous wooden repeater, the range is shorter, according to the steel to make the repeater, not only can increase the range, but also more compact, easy to carry, but also more strong, Yan Lide deduced, the production can do five to ten consecutive shots, depending on its size.

Using stainless steel to make equipment, Zou Yu also gave Yan Lide a task to make drilling machines and lathes. Of course, this is a very simple machine, a machine driven by water power, the main test, but the use of gears, how to increase the speed, and how to better control the speed, this is the direction that Yan Lide needs to study next.