Inside a shed in the factory, the car-making order with four Shaofu craftsmen and more than a dozen helpers is tinkling in it to speed up the manufacture of four-wheeled carriages, sawing wood, punching holes, and carrying wood back and forth, which looks very lively.

A four-wheeled frame has been assembled, and the car builder is directing several helpers to do steering adjustment, seeing Chen Xu walking in accompanied by a group of people, everyone in the shed quickly stopped and saluted.

"Don't be so polite, you go on!" Chen Xu waved his hand and walked to the front of the four-wheeled carriage that already had a prototype and circled, feeling similar to what he imagined.

"Master Hou, according to the drawings and hints you draw, we just installed the wheels and frame today, and the effect is very good, and it can indeed turn flexibly!" The car made the excited body tremble slightly.

"Tried?"

"Well, after the assembly was completed, I pulled it out for an interview, and there was no problem with more than ten people standing on it, but now I just adjusted the distance between the front and rear wheels to make the carriage more evenly stressed, and then changed the steering bearing part to steel, which can bear more weight, and it is not easy to break......" The car building order carefully introduced the sample of the four-wheeled carriage next to each other.

"Very good, very good, as long as you can make a flexible turn, as soon as possible, after the sample is completed, get it on the road and try to run to see the situation, continue to improve the size, width, length and length of the body, and then record the data and structural drawings in detail!"

"Hou Ye, rest assured! In fact, the reason why the four-wheeled carriage could not be manufactured and used in the past was because of the steering problem, but now after Hou Ye solves it with this whimsy, the rest is very easy to complete, and I will carefully draw the drawings and data and hand them over to you. ”

The car maker nodded again and again, and after finishing speaking, he pointed to the wheel and said: "Master Hou, we have increased the rear wheel by one foot according to your proposal, the width and thickness have increased a lot, the spokes and wheels are reinforced with iron bars, enough to bear the weight of tens of thousands of catties, and there is no problem with carrying more than ten people after manufacturing, but it may have a large wear and tear on the axle, and it will bend and deform after a long time......"

Chen Xu looked at the wheels that were as tall as his chest, squatted down to look at the combination of the axle and the frame, and then frowned slightly.

At present, the structure of Daqin's carriage is different from that of later generations, its main shaft and wheels are fixed together, and when it rotates, the entire axle and the two wheels rotate together, and the combination point of rotation is between the frame and the axle, so the axle and the driver will loosen and make a squeaky sound after a long time of wear, and because most of the carriages are wooden axles, it will not take long for a carriage to repair and replace the axle and replace the wood under the frame, otherwise it will break when it runs one day.

Although the axle and wheel are fixed together, although the rotation is inflexible and the wear is serious, there is another advantage on the battlefield, that is, when the chariot is used to charge into battle, sharp weapons are generally installed at both ends of the axle of the chariot, and the weapons will rotate together when the chariot runs, so that you can attack the enemy on both sides of the chariot, and at the same time, you can use this weapon to destroy the opponent's chariot and war horse.

And now, with the gradual rise of cavalry, the chariot has begun to fall out of fashion, too bulky and inflexible, slow, in addition to looking mighty, in fact, it is like a chicken rib, and it is almost out of the battlefield.

The civilian version of the carriage does not need to use the aggressiveness of the axle, but needs to carry a large capacity and be flexible.

And the only way to solve this problem is to use bearings.

"Ma Pole~" Chen Xu turned his head and yelled.

"Master Hou, I'm here!" The hemp pole that came with him hurriedly ran over.

"How's your bearing?" Chen Xu asked.

"Uh~" Ma Zhu's face turned a little red, shrunk his neck and laughed a few times: "Master Hou, there are still some gaps in the bearings built recently, but we embedded two pieces of iron on both sides of the collar to block the steel balls, so that the steel balls will not fall out, which is much better than the original......"

"Go get it and I'll have a look!"

He turned around and ran out of the shed, and in less than five minutes he came back sweaty, holding a few things that didn't look much different from the bearings of later generations.

"Hou Ye, you see, the two sides are cut into rings with thin iron sheets and embedded between the inner and outer rings, just blocking the steel balls inside, although there are still some gaps, but as long as the steel balls do not fall out, they can still rotate flexibly......"

Chen Xu took one of the large bearings with a diameter of nearly ten centimeters and looked at it and rotated it to observe it, and found that it was indeed similar to what the hemp rod said, and it was slightly shaking when it turned too fast, but the steel ball was blocked by the iron sheet and did not fall out.

Chen Xu played with bearings when he was a child, and made a three-wheeled scooter with bearings, and played with a group of babies all day long in a dirt road downhill place in the village, once he didn't control it and planted it in a pile of cow dung on the side of the road and got his face all over it, and then cried home with a cow dung, and then was chased by his mother with a broom for half of the village, that deep memory was not cleaned up by the Time and Space Administration even if it was crossed, and every time I saw something like a bearing, it would always emerge from my mind like a devil.

The feeling of being covered with a pile of cow dung paste on the face is unimaginable, extremely sour, and people who have not experienced it do not know that kind of happiness...... I'm so happy that I want to die!

Later, when I went to junior high school, I didn't know where the scooter was lost, and now that I think about it, except for the experience of arching cow dung, it seems that everything else is a good memory of childhood.

Although Chen Xu has seen the bearing since he was a child, he has not been clear about how the steel bullet in the bearing is loaded, he once dismantled a steel ball bearing violently, and then never installed it back, so after crossing over, he could not guide the hemp rod and the male to win the steel bullet perfectly into the right size of the collar.

What's more, even if Chen Xu knows how to perfectly put the steel bullet into it, in this era when there are no various precision measurement and manufacturing instruments, no matter the size of the outer ring and the inner ring, or the size of the steel ball, it is impossible to achieve a perfect gap, and he does not know the cold and hot expansion properties of the metal, and without accurate scientific calculation, he will inevitably not get a perfect ending.

So this is the limitation of the times, and it has nothing to do with whether Chen Xu knows it or not.

The simplest is the manufacture of steel balls, not pressed by machines, but made by a very primitive method of dripping, not to mention the material of steel, it must be very rubbish, and the materials of later generations specializing in the manufacture of ball bearings are very different.

The steel bullets made by the drip method with a large iron pot seem to be very round and regular, but in fact, if you use precision instruments to measure, they are basically not round, even after grinding with a roller, what you get is just some seemingly smooth spheres, which are not strong enough, are not resistant to wear and tear, and are easy to break.

In addition, the inner and outer rings cast by the casting method have grooves, and the parts in contact with the steel balls are also very rough, and the grinding is very difficult and slow, and it takes several days for a craftsman to make a pair of collars with completely smooth inner grooves.

Therefore, although the bearing is successfully made at the moment, it only looks like it, and it is specious.

It works, but it's not durable, and it will definitely go wrong after a period of use.

But in this era of J8 eggs, this is definitely a great innovation that has never been seen before.

A group of people gathered around Chen Xu at this time, constantly looking at these bearings and being amazed, and their eyes fell on Chen Xu in admiration, I don't know how the little marquis can have such incredible innovative skills and invent such an incredible thing.

Maybe there is a white-bearded old fairy living in the head of the little marquis, you can chop it and take a look.

Although Chen Xu knows that this bearing is not very durable, but in any case, the bearing is much better than the direct contact friction between the axle and the frame, and the wear can basically be reduced to a negligible point.

And with the continuous attempt to smelt other varieties of steel, and so on to develop thermal cutting equipment and stamping equipment, to create a perfect spiral groove, Chen Xu believes that whether it is the inner and outer rings or the roundness and resistance of the steel ball, there will be a great improvement, this time may be three years or five years, or ten years or eight years, the quality of the bearing will continue to improve with the development of the process.

The inner ring aperture of the bearing with a diameter of half a foot in his hand is the same size as the diameter of the axle of the carriage under Daqin's eyes, which is the largest bearing designed by Chen Xu at the beginning, and the purpose was originally intended to be used in the carriage, but the quality has not met the requirements.

That is to say, this bearing can be directly driven into the axle of the carriage, and then the wheel can be modified to be used on the bearing.

Seeing Chen Xu squatting in front of the wheel with a bearing and constantly gesturing, many people were confused, but after being confused for a while, the car maker suddenly made a few violent swings and exclaimed: "Master Hou, you want to install this bearing between the wheel and the axle." ”

"Ran~" Chen Xu nodded slightly, "You see, the wheels and axles under the current are fixed, and they have to rotate together, which has great wear and tear on the axles and frames, but if the bearings are installed, it will be different, the axles will no longer rotate, just as a support, only the wheels are rotating when moving, and it will become more than ten times easier and more flexible, and it will naturally run faster......"

As soon as Chen Xu said this, several craftsmen quickly understood, and they squatted down excitedly and looked at the bearing in Chen Xu's hand with bright eyes.