The brothers of the armory department were grateful to Dade one by one, although everyone had a blacksmith workshop in the past, they got up early in the morning and worked in the dark to worry about this and that, and they had to bargain for business from time to time, and it was only more than 20 taels of silver all year round. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

Now a helper in the ordnance institute can get such a large income, if the wife of the family does some needlework, weaving and weaving, etc., the income is not only worry-free, but also well-off. (At the end of the Ming Dynasty, a medium-sized family only had 20 taels of silver a year.)

Before the reform and opening up, the salary of many teachers was only 6 yuan, which was only 4.5 taels of silver when converted into silver taels (in the era of the silver standard, 1 yuan of silver was about 0.75 yuan).

In addition to caring about the creation of conventional weapons such as birds, knives and guns, and armor, Yang Xuan is more concerned about the casting of tiger squat cannons.

After the loyal and righteous army defeated the local tyrants and regained control of Pengzhou, a master claimed that he could cast a tiger squat cannon, which made Yang Xuan quite excited.

Yang Xuan, who has been tested on many battlefields in the past, has a deeper understanding of the ancient battlefield, even if everyone is replaced by a bird, they can't stop the waves of people from the local tyrants.

You must know that many people have no armor, and in the future, if they face the well-equipped Great Western Army, in the face of the barbarian Qing, in the process of fighting, the other party may cover with a shield in front, and no matter how powerful the firearms are, it will be difficult to shoot through the thick shield.

Although the improved Earthquake Thunder can be used at close range, it is necessary to repel the crowd at a distance, and artillery such as the Tiger Squat Cannon and the Furlong Machine Gun must be used.

And at this time, I heard that two craftsmen were involved in casting the tiger squat cannon, so they were invited by Yang Xuan to cast the tiger squat cannon.

In the past, the casting cannon mainly used the mud mold casting method, and the biggest change in the casting cannon this time is the use of iron embryo casting technology.

Clay mold casting is to make the corresponding mud embryo with wet mud first, make a mud mold after natural air drying, pour melted copper water into the mold, and then break the mud embryo after natural air drying, so as to cast the required artillery.

It takes a month to cast a tiger squat cannon just to dry the mud embryo, seven or eight days to cast, and seven or eight days to cool naturally, so it takes a full month and a half to make a tiger squat cannon

Even so, there is no guarantee that the cast cannon can be used on the battlefield, and there are many small honeycombs on the inner cavity and outer wall of the cast Tiger Squat Cannon, which seriously affects the use and life of the artillery. (The East once went to the Humen Fort to watch, the Chinese made a lot of artillery honeycombs, and the 20,000 jin coastal defense guns purchased by the Westerners were forged, and the barrel was smooth as new after more than a hundred years.)

The most lethal threat of artillery is honeycomb, which not only affects air tightness, but also is very easy to explode. ）

In order to inspect the cannons, craftsmen often fire one or two rounds in the foundry to inspect the cannons, and then inspect them after they have been fired, and if there are no visible cracks, the ones that have not been blown up can be put into military use.

Through this traditional casting process of the tiger squat cannon, the pass rate is only three percent, as the master said, if the casting of a larger Franc cannon, the red cannon, its pass rate is not even about one percent.

Seeing such a result, Yang Xuan initially thought that the casting master's craftsmanship was a problem, but seeing that he said it categorically, and then asked other masters, it seemed that it was such a result, so Yang Xuan also believed it.

Seeing too many hornet's nests on the waste cannon, and then thinking about the casting process in the previous life, combined with the experience of injection molds and hardware molds, after thinking for a long time, Yang Xuan began to find the reason with these casting masters and craftsmen.

In the process of casting the mold, the longest time is the clay embryo, so it takes a month, how can it take so long in the world?

For such an unprofessional question, the masters disagreed one by one, and everyone shook their heads and defended one after another.

Slowly, the reason is basically figured out:

There are gaps on the surface of the mud embryo itself, and the air absorption of the mud embryo is not good, so the cannon cast in this way certainly has gaps.

The mud embryo takes a month because the mud embryo needs to be dried.

If the air drying is not thorough, if the mud embryo contains water, there may be a hornet's nest during casting

There are problems with the shape of the mold base, the structure, and the quality of the cast artillery.

…….

Yang Xuan listened carefully, there was water in the mud embryo, the surface of the mud embryo was rough, and the mud embryo was completely disposable, in this case, why not use an iron mold?

In the previous life, both plastic factories and steel factories used iron molds, and it seems that clay molds are the most primitive casting molds.

Besides, if an iron mold is used, the surface of the iron mold can be smoothed by friction.

On the surface, the cost of casting iron molds is large, but compared with clay molds, iron molds can be reused many times, so the cost is reduced a lot.

The surface of the iron mold can be smoothed by grinding

The moisture content in the iron mold is very low

The airtightness of the iron mold is very good

The most important thing is iron mold casting, which can be quickly cooled by cold water and other methods, which not only speeds up the casting speed, but also improves the hardness of the artillery.

During the casting process, the freshly solidified wrought iron is constantly calcined and hammered to increase the steel content of the artillery and increase its hardness and air tightness.

…..

(The earliest use of iron mold casting in the West began in Russia, and during the Crimean War, the Russians found that the number of artillery was small, and also used iron mold casting.)

However, because of the gradual invention of large hydraulic presses, the forging method was finally used to cast cannons

After the casting of iron molds, the West found that forging wrought iron many times could greatly improve the performance of steel, so the cannon was cast by forging with a large-tonnage hydraulic press.

During the Opium War, the Chinese Gong Zhenlin was the first to use iron mold casting. (See "Diagram of Iron Mold for Cast Cannon").

At that time, the artillery of the Manchu Qing Dynasty had not made new artillery for many years, especially the guns of many forts in the south were decades ago or even earlier in the Kangxi and late Ming periods.

Iron mold casting cannons not only have the advantage of short construction periods, but also have the advantages of reuse - this not only reduces the manufacturing cycle but also makes the cannon uniform in size, and its process can also reduce the possibility of defects such as honeycomb.

It's a pity that not long after Gong Zhenlin's new method of casting cannons came out, the Manchus surrendered and didn't cast a few cannons. ).

In addition to the iron embryo casting technology, the tiger squat cannon casting adopts the iron core copper body technology that has been maturely applied.

A few days ago, watching Sun Yuanhua's "Western Divine Machine", Yang Xuan knew that during the reign of Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty, the Chinese people had adopted the iron-core copper casting method.

In the past, only the Francophone cannon and the red-coated cannon used the iron-core copper method, but the cannon cast purely by the barrel, because the bronze is relatively soft, the continuous firing of the cannon affects the range of the cannon many times.

In ancient times, bronze was not only a precious metal, but also a currency second only to gold and silver, and its value was far from comparable to that of previous lives.

Cast a copper cannon with copper, then there is a cast cannon, which is clearly a weapon piled up with money.

But steel is different, the price of steel is less than one-tenth of copper, and there are many large iron-smelting workshops near Shunqing City, if you use wrought iron to cast artillery, the cost can be reduced to at least about 5% of the past.

Some people say that feudal society is a bronze weapon, and bronze farm tools are replaced by weapons and farm tools made of steel.

At present, small weapons such as bird guns, hand guns, and three-eyed guns are all made of steel, so why do artillery guns need to be made of bronze instead of steel?

Listening to Yang Xuan say this, some people don't think so, some people are trying to think hard, and sure enough, the hard work pays off, some people think that although there is no completely iron cannon, but the iron core copper cannon is seen in the annals of history, and I have heard the old generation of casting masters talk about it in the past.

During the Jiajing period of Shi Zaiming, there was a master to explore whether it was possible to use wrought iron instead of bronze casting cannons, and at present, the Franc cannon with iron core and copper body has been cast, which is very durable.

Yang Xuan was shocked and asked if there was such a Franc cannon in the army, and everyone looked at a loss, and immediately asked people to go out to investigate, so that in less than a moment, there happened to be a Franc cannon in the army with an iron core and a copper body.

Yang Xuan was overjoyed, and asked people to push the Franc cannon outside the yamen, and personally led everyone to watch and discuss the method of casting the cannon.

On the surface, there is little difference between the two types of artillery, but if you look closely, the barrel of the cannon cast with iron core copper body is thinner, and the ratio of the wall of the barrel to the caliber of the iron core copper barrel of the same caliber is 0.5:1~0.75:1, while the Franc cannon cast completely by bronze is 1:1.

In addition, the weight of the cannon cast with iron core copper body is less than 7 percent of that of the bronze cast gun, which is very light, and it is not easy to heat up and not easy to explode.

According to the masters who understand the industry, because copper is less refractory, it can be melted into copper water at a lower temperature (the melting point of copper (1083 °C) is much lower than the physical properties of iron (1538 °C)), and the iron core copper cannon is made by the method of two casting molds, first making a mold base to cast an iron tire, and then casting the copper body after the iron tire cools.

This casting method can also be used to test the casting effect of iron tires first, a small amount of gunpowder is installed on the cast iron tires, after firing several times, if the chamber is not exploded, then through a period of forging, the tempering performance of the steel is improved, and finally the outer copper body is cast.

There is no need for pure copper cannons, which are all cast from fine copper.

Hearing that the method of casting iron core copper cannons has been adopted, I can't help but rekindle hope for pure iron cannons, which not only cost less than one percent of pure copper cannons, less than 1/30 of the iron core copper cannons, but also the density of iron is much lower than that of cast bronze (7.87:9.54), and it is easier to carry the artillery with the army with pure iron casting cannons.

However, the masters repeatedly claimed that if all wrought iron were cast, it would be difficult to cool down because the barrel was too thick, so if 100 pieces were cast, less than 1 good product would be cast.

Thinking of the injection molding that I came into contact with in the factory in my previous life, and thinking of the quenching process that I came into contact with in my previous life, I suddenly had a bold idea, using the empty mold method, hollowing out the inner mold, and putting cold water into the hollowed out inner mold during casting, so as to achieve the effect of rapid cooling.

When everyone heard this, their eyes lit up, most of them were blacksmiths, and when they struck iron, they burned the iron red and then tempered it thousands of times, and in order to achieve the effect, they put the beaten steel in cold water to cool.

If the inner mold is hollowed out, after pouring cold water, the cooling effect can be completely accelerated, so that the cooling effect can be solved.

Besides, although it is a front-loading smoothbore gun, there is a blast hole, after casting to the blast hole, you can open the mold core of the casting blast hole, or simply use the empty mold to cast the hole, and the water inside the empty mold can continue to flow out through the blast hole, so as to achieve the effect of water cooling.

When casting artillery in this way, the inner wall is first cooled and gradually cooled from the inside to the outside, because of the principle of thermal expansion and cold contraction, the inner wall of the barrel must be very smooth.

In addition, the gradual cooling of the outer wall will inevitably produce a centripetal force, which will squeeze inward to ensure the high strength and compression resistance of the cast gun.

For this kind of inner hollow mold method, everyone seems eager to try, anyway, Yang Xuan encourages everyone to try, failure is the mother of success, today's failure may be that you don't grasp something well, as long as you keep trying, you may succeed tomorrow.

At first, the casting master thought that it was just casting according to the traditional casting technology, but he knew that he used the iron embryo casting technology and the iron core copper casting technology, and everyone felt very dazed for a while.

Everyone thinks that this casting artillery mainly depends on the blessing of the gods, if you are pious at that time, since the gods will protect, so the pass rate will be a little more.

Seeing that everyone seemed very wandering and confused, in order to ensure the success of casting, Yang Xuan went to the construction site every once in a while to guide, and constantly encouraged everyone to continue to innovate and try.

In the end, it is to add officials to make a wish, if the iron mold casting is successful, the government not only gives the eight grades of civil officials, but also the treatment is also the eight grades.

Eight products, that is the county Cheng, the reward is not rich, and everyone usually uses iron molds to cast farm tools or something, and now listening to Yang Xuan say this, everyone is eager to try.

In this way, it took half a year's effort, and in the process of continuous failure, the cannon casting process of the loyal and righteous army has been improved by leaps and bounds, and the solid cannon casting method of the past has been replaced by the hollow iron mold casting method, the natural cooling of the past has been replaced by cold water cooling, and the pure copper casting of the past has been replaced by the iron core copper body.

Everyone looked at the cast tiger squat cannon, not only no longer a large number of hornet's nests like mud molds, the appearance of the cannon has been greatly improved, and the weight has been reduced from 36 catties to 32 catties, which is 4 catties lighter than in the past.

More importantly, the iron core copper cannon cast out of the iron embryo is not easy to explode, and it is placed in the school field for testing, so that more than 40 cannons are fired in a row and there is no explosion.

Yang Xuan deliberately tested the quality of this hollow iron embryo cold water casting cannon, and asked people to pour water on the artillery, and then fire more than ten cannons before giving up.

Everyone saw the remarkable effect of this new casting process, and their faces were happy.

It is conservatively estimated that the pass rate of this new casting process has increased from one percent to ninety percent in the past, and the casting time has been increased from one and a half months to three days (three days to cast one door), and the cost has been reduced by forty percent (without considering the pass rate, but considering the cost of using a single artillery).

Yang Xuan rewarded all the craftsmen involved in the casting process, each of whom was rewarded with 10 taels of silver (equivalent to half a year's income of an ordinary family), awarded Hu Benchu as the general manager of Zhengbapin, and asked everyone to record the key control links of each casting cannon to provide a basis for future process improvement.

In addition, Yang Xuan adopted a variety of security measures to prevent the leakage of the cannon casting process.

Everyone was also quite excited, Hu Benchu, who had just been promoted to the general office, promised to cast twenty tiger squat cannons every month, and even guaranteed to start casting Franc cannons within three months.