The General Machinery Factory of the Manufacturing Director's Department is located in Bairen Industrial Zone. Although there are many manufacturing companies under the manufacturing director's department, the core is this machine factory - most of the machinery and equipment brought from the old time and space are installed here, except for the STC. There are special machining workshops, assembly workshops, metalworking workshops, riveting and welding workshops, forging workshops, heat treatment workshops, casting workshops, electroplating workshops, woodworking workshops, standard parts workshops, bearing workshops, chain workshops, measuring tool workshops...... A range of professional workshops. It not only manufactures a variety of machinery and equipment, but also manufactures a large number of standardized parts, tools and measuring tools commonly used in the industrial field. It is a core part of the industry that crosses the group.

In addition to these tasks, another important task of the machine factory is to carry out the self-replication of industrial equipment, and finally achieve the purpose of enabling the entire industrial system to self-replicate and self-upgrade without relying on the equipment of the old time and space.

In the past, the General Machinery Factory was just a greenhouse with bamboo poles on brick pillars and straw curtains as a roof. With the continuous strengthening of the Lingao regime, the conditions of the factory also improved significantly. Like the arsenal in Bopu, it has gradually become a heavily guarded fortress. On the 1-meter-high reinforced concrete base stands a 5-meter-high clear water red brick wall, on which stands a dense array of battlements and watchtowers. The walls of the factory themselves are also workshops, warehouses and offices. Two circular red brick towers arch to the left and right to guard the deep and tall doorways. The arched lintel of reinforced concrete is inlaid with a line of large characters made of red broken glass, "Bairen Machinery General Factory directly under the Ministry of Manufacturing". On the walls of the towers to the left and right of the gate stretched out a clenched fist of cast iron, a muscular arm holding a torch of cast iron—on which the light of the gas burned at night. Illuminate the entire gatehouse

The roar of machinery in the machinery factory did not stop all night, and black smoke and white vapor steamed day and night. Naturalized immigrants who had special passes that allowed them to work and study in it would be greeted by a circular plaza in the center of which was a modern sculpture symbolizing industrial liliang - but ten out of ten natives could not read it.

The square is surrounded by a small three-storey building that is used for administration and offices. From the square is a cinder avenue large enough for four heavy carriages to pass side by side, and on the east and west sides of the road is an elevated factory with a wrought iron truss-structure red brick façade next to each other - the truss factory building is fast to build. The structure is lightweight, which is the mainstream of modern workshops. Between the workshops are light rails embedded in the concrete roadbed.

There is a power shop on the east and west of the road, and the powerful power output of the steam engine is transmitted to the ceiling of each workshop through the sky axis, and is transmitted to each machine tool through many belts and gearboxes. Although the power in the workshop is driven by a sky shaft, there is electricity here – each machine has its own lighting lamp for the workers to operate. On the walls of the workshop, day and night, the blue flame of the gas lamps burns behind the explosion-proof lampshade, radiating a snowy glow. Cast iron pipes are fixed to the walls, which supply a steady stream of water to the machines that need to be cooled by water.

The workshop is filled with the smell of water vapor, soot, engine oil and steel after heating, the roar of machinery and equipment, the sharp grinding sound of processing parts, and the impact of loading and unloading materials. The natives who came here for the first time were all shocked by this scene, and then they were impressed by the "divine power" of industry. And the patriarchs were able to control such liliang as they pleased, which made the natives all in awe.

The naturalized people who work here are the elite of the naturalized people. In the traditional agrarian society, there were not many people who were suitable to be modern mechanical workers. Those who can stay in the machine shop, even the handymen, are ingenious and responsive natives, almost all of whom are young people under the age of 20 and are very capable of learning.

The working environment in the pre-industrial society was very harsh, and the exhaust fumes, noise, vibrations and highly concentrated work made the workers extremely labor-intensive. In order to ensure the health of the hard-working industrial workers and to serve the cause for a long time, not only the industrial workers are treated preferentially, but also canteens, public baths, health rooms and temporary dormitories are set up in the factory area. We also do our best to supply labor protection supplies. Lingao's self-produced cotton gauze gloves, work clothes, masks, and even labor protection glasses and earmuffs are all available.

At the end of the road was a high wall, and the gate guarded by a watchtower was closed. Pedestrians enter and exit only through the small gate next to it, and only when the carriage or rail car carrying large goods arrives, the gate will be opened, and at this time, the sentry on duty will be loaded and guarded to prevent any unrelated people from entering.

Behind the heavily guarded gates were two of the only four combined machining centers in the Senate. It is installed in a specially built workshop. The other was installed in a secret workshop in the Alpine Ridge area. Another set was mothballed. The high precision of machining that can be achieved by the joint machining center is not achieved by all the current equipment of Lingao combined, and it is specially used to manufacture many molds and special parts that require high-precision machining. The use of the joint machining center requires the signature of Zhan Wuya and Wu De of the Planning Institute.

There is also a warehouse directly under the management of the Planning Institute in the tightly guarded processing center compound. In order to make it easier for the manufacturing department to access the nearest place, the Planning Institute has set up a warehouse for the management of materials brought from the old time and space: special steels of various markings, non-ferrous metals, standard parts, tools, and measuring tools.

Turn to the left from the entrance of the combined machining center, past a row of factory warehouses, and you will arrive at a large open space, which is a shiyan yard dedicated to assembling and testing large-scale equipment and a yard for the accumulation of coarse and heavy raw materials. At the base of the wall of the clearing, there stood a simple earth crane, next to which were piled up with many steel plates, steel and several machine bases, which had become rusty in the wind and rain.

In order to facilitate the testing of some large-scale engineering equipment, a set of reinforced concrete columns to support the equipment was built in the open field. Now this pillar houses the chain tipper that has just been manufactured. A locally produced pot camel machine temporarily acts as the power of the equipment.

Tracks are laid on the artificially built slopes, and dump rail cars are parked on the slopes. The principle of the whole dump loader is very simple, many dump buckets are raised to a high position by chain rotation, and then automatically overturned, tipping the ore into the cargo hold. The tipping bucket goes down, and when it descends to the surface section, the ore is continuously filled with the dump bucket through manpower. The chain and the tipping bucket hanging on the chain is a cyclic action. Although the refueling is still done by manpower, continuous loading and unloading of goods is realized. I don't know how much more efficient labor is than dockers who carry large baskets.

Although the principle is simple, the chain is a great jishu problem. It is a high-strength circular chain with high strength. 34 dumps are on chains, each carrying several tons of iron ore. There are high demands on the load of the chain. There are many aspects to be involved in materials, heat treatment and machining.

Now, Shiyan's wooden dump buckets have all been hung up, and the workload has been filled with sandbags and iron ingots. Zhan Wuya and some of the backbone veterans of the machinery factory are watching with anticipation.

Seeing that the people were almost there, Zhan Wuya waved to the workers and said, "Everyone retreat, start immediately"

When the workers heard Zhan Wuya's order, they immediately turned on the transmission switch, and the pot camel machine output power through the gearbox, and then the winch began to rotate. The chain was taut, and a row of hanging buckets began to move slowly, rumbling upward, rising higher and higher, and in an instant it reached two-thirds of the height.

Zhan Wuya, Jiang Hongjun, Liang Xin, Sun Li and other veterans of the machine and all the workers present looked at it with fascination, and the flip bucket rose higher and higher, and the happier they were. Although the chain is small, it is a necessity in the field of industrial equipment, and now the hanging chain produced by Lingao is very insufficient in terms of load and durability, and this time both the material and the processing means have been greatly improved, and if it can be manufactured successfully, it will solve a big problem of industrialization.

Everyone looked at each other, and suddenly there was a click, and the chain broke.

"Oops" Everyone just shouted, only to hear a loud bang, and all the buckets fell to the ground, smoke rose everywhere, and smashed to a pulp.

Sun Li touched the helmet on his head: "The load capacity is still insufficient." ”

"To do a metallographic analysis," Zhan Wuya said, "to see if it's a material problem or a processing problem." ”

At that moment, everyone lifted the chain back and put it in the forging workshop. The scale of the forging workshop of the General Machinery Factory was comparable to that of the Arsenal, and of course the large steam forging machine was made after D-Day.

"Let's do the analysis in the evening." Zhan Wuya said to the disillusioned mechanical mouth elders, "Does anyone want to have sex with the maid at night?" If you have this jihua, you can not come. ”

A few laughed, and Sun Li said: "The maid is always there, and she wants to use it at any time, in the morning and in the evening." I'm definitely coming. ”

Several others also said they would come. The machine factory is the most densely populated place for veterans, and many of the operators on the machine tools are the veterans themselves, especially in lathes, fitters and combined machining centers, and the main force is still the veterans from Jishu workers. Not only do they have to operate the equipment themselves, but they also have to teach their apprentices. It's a very busy job. Many people have lived in the factory since the beginning of the machine factory, and many people still sleep in their own offices. For many people, work is their entertainment.

Zhan Wuya also lived in the factory, and his affection for the machinery factory was particularly deep - the earliest foundation of this machinery factory was when he opened a small machinery processing factory in the suburbs of Guangzhou. He slept in a dormitory in the factory on weekdays - just like he used to do when he was a small boss.