Nikita took Roland's arm and followed the flow of people into a large room, looking around and being stunned. Matvey's classroom looked like a machine shop, with six magic steam engines lined up in the hall. In terms of factory power, it can only be regarded as a small steam engine, but the boiler is also more than six feet high, and it is still a behemoth with a complex structure in the eyes of Miss Mage.

Each steam engine is connected to a variety of mechanical devices by means of rapidly rotating gears and screws, which provide the latter with working power. The noise from the machines was so loud that it didn't look like a place to teach.

"Your Royal Highness, Sister Nikita, you are here too!"

The girl's call of surprise came through the noise, and Roland looked back to see the mayor's daughter in blue clothes and pants standing in front of an unknown machine, waving excitedly at this side.

"Good afternoon, Isabel!" Roland smiled and waved at her.

Isabel trotted all the way to him and Nikita and asked eagerly, "Did you go to the cemetery in the morning?" ”

"I went, and I met the old man Matway, if it weren't for an unexpected bunch of carnations, maybe the old man would have gone to Krasbourg with Roland by now, and there would be no need for us to come to listen to his lectures." Nikita grumbled.

Isabel wanted to continue to inquire about what "Carnation" meant, but Matvey's figure had already appeared at the door, and he quickly turned around and ran back to his seat, pretending to be well-behaved.

The students in the hall were very conscious, and when they saw the teacher coming in, they hurriedly put down the metal device they were working on, turned off the heating room of the magic crystal steam engine, and the harsh noise quickly subsided.

Roland discovers that the modified Magic Crystal steam engines in the classroom have a big difference from the 18th-century steam engines on Earth, and can easily stop heating. The Magic Crystal Steam Engine relies on the constant fire wall technique in the furnace below the boiler tank to heat, and the continuous and stable combustion of the fire wall technique relies on the magic crystal as an energy source, as long as a rune engraved on the outside of the furnace is triggered, the fire wall will be temporarily extinguished, and when the rune is triggered again, the fire will be rekindled, which is much more convenient and better than the steam engine that burns coal or heavy oil on the earth.

The only installation in the hall that has a bit of a classroom atmosphere is the blackboard that hangs on the wall. Matvey dragged a wooden table to serve as a lectern, opened his satchel, and took out three things from it and placed them on the table: a palm-sized gear, an ordinary piece of steel, and a high-hardness alloy with a dull sheen.

Matvey stood at the lectern and looked around to make sure the students were all there. Of course, he noticed Roland and Nikita standing in the corner of the classroom listening, but he didn't say anything, and continued to start the lecture at two o'clock sharp, as was customary.

Today's lecture begins with a question.

Matvey picked up the gear that served as a teaching aid and showed it to the students, and then said: "This is a relatively simple gear, which is often used in the watch industry, and the traditional process is to be cast by hand by blacksmiths, but that is too inefficient, and it is difficult to achieve precise and uniform specifications of the gears, now we have a different way of thinking, try to mass produce this gear of the same specification in the factory, who can tell me what to do?" ”

As soon as Old Man Matvey's words fell, Roland saw the only female student in the class raise her hand eagerly.

"Isabel, tell me what you think." Matvey roll call.

"Okay, teacher." Isabel cleared her throat, as if she intended to show off to the two auditors, "It's not difficult to produce such a symmetrical gear, first we need a magic crystal steam engine to power it, and then we need a hard enough cutter head to fix it on the extension screw of the steam engine, the cutter head rotates with the screw at high speed, and it can easily punch holes for the iron disc or cut the teeth ......"

Next, Isabel talked about some technical details of specific processing gears, and even Roland, a layman who has never touched gears, understands it, and it is indeed not difficult. The largest number of parts in a watch are gears of all sizes, large and small, and if these gears could be machined using a process designed by Isabel, it would be much more efficient to produce clocks in a factory than by hand.

However, it's not that simple.

"Isabel's idea is basically correct, but she ignores a key detail, to cut gears with a high-speed rotating cutter head, the material used to make the cutter head has to be harder than the material used to make the gear, what if the hardness of ordinary steel is not enough?" Matvey asks a second question.

Isabel fell into deep thought.

Nikita thought for a moment and couldn't help but raise her hand!

Matvey treated the auditor the same and nodded at her, "Miss Nikita, tell me what you can do." ”

"The hardness of the cutter head is not strong enough to cut gears, so the cutter head is enchanted to increase the hardness, and this is when the great value of magic is reflected." Miss Mage replied proudly.

However, Matvey was not satisfied with this, and further led to a new problem: "The enchanted cutter head can indeed become harder, but it will also be lost in the process of cutting metal gears, which cannot be seen in a short time, but it will become significantly dull after working for dozens of hours, and in the process of mass production of gears, the consumption of cutter heads is quite large, if you attach magic to each cutter head, it is not only troublesome but also has to pay a high cost of spell casting, which is obviously not conducive to industrial mass production, is there any room for improvement?" ”

Nikita frowned slightly, unable to think of any improved countermeasures for a while, and turned her head to look at Roland with an inquiring look in her eyes.

Roland smiled and raised his right hand.

"Your Highness Roland, tell me what you think." Matvey looked at the second auditor in the classroom with interest.

"Mr. Matvey, I noticed that there is a special alloy on your lectern, commonly known as 'black steel', which is harder than ordinary steel, and we can use this black steel to make the cutter head without the process of enchanting the cutter head, and greatly reduce the cost." Roland replied.

"But how are you going to mass-produce this particularly hard bit in a factory?" Matvey pressed in.

There was a buzz in the classroom, and the students whispered to each other, generally believing that a harder head would be needed to machine the bit, but so far, no genius mechanic or alchemist had invented a harder alloy than "black steel".

"Since it's hard to find a metal that's harder than black steel, we can only add magic to it, first make a machine that processes cutter heads out of ordinary steel, then enchant it to make it harder than black steel, and then use this machine to cut black steel to make cutter heads."

Matvey's answer was not surprising, but Roland was inspired by the analysis he made next.