Wang Jue asked Chen Zhaoming as he pointed to a giant printing machine-like device in the distance that was nearly 7 meters high. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 info The huge equipment was roaring and operating, and the noise was still very loud when it came to Wang Jue, and when he and Chen Zhaoming were talking, they were already shouting at the top of their throats unconsciously.

"Commander! That's a rolling mill! It is a ...... used to roll steel billets into armor steel plates for tanks" When he mentioned this equipment, Chen Zhaoming had a proud expression on his face. Because the Ming Empire had an early industrial start and a thicker industrial foundation, it had a greater advantage over other countries in traditional industries. For example, China has a rolling mill that can produce armor plates for battleships, the width of which is already more than 3 meters, and the length of the roller body on special rolling equipment is close to 4 meters.

Of course, the width of the rolling mill for the production of armor steel sheets for tanks does not need to be so exaggerated. However, the size of the rolling mill in front of me is not small. After all, the rolling mill needs to roll the produced billet into steel plate, and its own structural strength is higher than the strength of steel. Although the billet is heated to a hot and soft state, its hardness is still very impressive.

The whole process of rolling steel plate can not be done in one go, every process must be strictly implemented, and finally the original heavy and huge billet will be tempered and rolled again and again by the rolling mill to become a qualified steel plate. These plates will be welded to the front of the tank to protect the crew members behind them and the engine equipment that has already been ammodicated.

In the beginning, the prototype of Tank 1 used rivet structure to install steel plates - that is, rivets were densely packed on the front armor of the tank, and these rivets were used to hold these heavy steel plates. However, due to the weight of the car body and the idea of trying to update the technology, the welded body structure was finally adopted.

Even decades later, this was an advanced move, but at the time, it seemed that this frenzy of welding technology, which had just begun in the field of naval shipbuilding, was too ambitious. The first is that the construction is time-consuming and takes up a large number of scarce welding technicians, and the second is that the cost of manufacturing tanks is somewhat high.

The end result was a riveted structure to save cost and production time on the bottom and inside of the tank, and a stronger welding technique in the front of the armor protection zone.

The rolling mill continued to work under Wang Jue's watchful eye, and several workers were busy around the machine, they controlled pieces of billets that burned red into the rolling mill, and after rolling again and again, the original billets became thinner little by little, at first 300 mm thick, and finally became 30 mm thick armor steel plates in front of the No. 1 improved tank hull.

Sometimes you have to admire the wisdom of human beings, and use the adsorption force of two rollers when they roll opposite each other to design a machine that uses two large rollers to roll steel. Just as a modern photocopier rolls into a sheet of A4 printer paper, a rolling mill rolls in thick, lava-red steel piece by piece.

Chen Zhaoming loudly introduced this huge equipment to Wang Jue on the side, before the use of these huge steel ingots, those huge steel ingots have gone through countless processes before they finally become special steel, and the tank that is used: "These special steels are different from ordinary steel in terms of mineral processing, and each process is the crystallization of the collective labor of countless workers!" ”

Speaking of these professional knowledge, Chen Zhaoming could no longer explain in detail, so he had to call another engineer who was engaged in this work in the factory, and asked him to give Wang Jue a rough introduction to how the steel needed for the tank was produced.

The engineer who was hired did not refuse, and directly opened his mouth and introduced it from the far front: "General...... The first thing is to process the ore into fines, and I can talk to you about it all day. I don't think you're too interested in this aspect either, so to save you time, I'll just make a rough ......"

He pointed to several huge chimneys outside the door of the workshop, where smoke was constantly emitting in the distance, and shouted to Wang Jue: "After complex grinding and beneficiation, high-quality iron powder will be separated, mixed with additives such as accelerants as raw materials, and then calcined in the blast furnace, and finally form iron raw materials for steelmaking." ”

"These iron raw materials are then added with suitable rare metal trace elements, which are further sent to the steelmaking furnace to form the right steel for our use." The engineer turned around, pointed to the huge rolling mill that was working, and introduced to Wang Jue: "After the steel is formed, it is made into special steel plates through the rolling machine, and then transported to the next workshop and installed on the tank. ”

Truth be told, it's a complex process, and the actual steps are far more than the engineer described. Smart Chinese, smart foreigners, in the end, after countless failures and explorations, developed the original simple metallurgical equipment into such a large-scale and systematic collection of metallurgical industry.

The equipment here, from every simple detail to every complex innovation, contains the wisdom of countless engineers and technicians over the past hundred years, and is the crystallization of the hard work of several generations - any scientific research and technology climb is not as simple as it seems.

Often, a simple change in an industrial equipment is brought about by the entire industrial system, even after a series of progressive innovations such as education, agriculture, etc. The Emperor of the Apocalypse defeated the Later Jin regime in Liaodong in 1627 with a bulky arquebus, and then used his power to advance the arquebus to the height of the flintlock pistol, but still left only an unindustrialized Ming dynasty.

And the army of the Ming Empire, which relied on semi-industrial and semi-manual support, did not have the last laugh on the road to conquering the world. With endless regret and unwillingness, countless elites of the Ming Dynasty followed the path of the Emperor of the Apocalypse, and they overcame obstacles until today, leaving the most valuable wealth to future generations.

Yes, the most precious thing is not money, not plunder, but a system that is gradually summarized and developed in practice! From education to thinking, from materials to technology, from process to system, this system is too difficult to build, but the Ming Empire has completed this system in the ups and downs, which ...... is the greatest wealth of this empire. (To be continued.) )