If Zhao Dagui wants to make a silk reeling factory, he first has to imitate the boiler, so that he can obtain high-temperature hot water of more than 90 degrees in the process of boiling cocoons, and the temperature can be freely adjusted to 60 degrees;

Secondly, there should be a steam engine, which can drive the small runner of the silk reeling machine, and also the large runner of the recoiling machine;

Finally, there must be a large number of water pipes, wheels for reincarnated silk, gear mechanisms, etc., which should be understood by anyone with basic common sense.

Zhao Dagui, Xie Erdun, Chen Fan and other three people finally figured out the design plan of the silk reeling factory, and also figured out various parameters, such as the speed of the silk reeling machine and the pulling force of the silk reeling machine, etc., and then they had to move to the actual imitation stage.

However, there are many practical problems in this actual imitation stage, which are complex and cumbersome, and must be solved.

The biggest problems are often material-related and often unsolvable.

Let's talk about the simplest questions, such as what materials should be used to make water pipes?

Any ordinary modern person will blurt out that the outlet pipe is made of cast iron, what is the consideration, but this is very problematic in the era of the Qing Dynasty, especially with the extremely weak processing capacity in Zhao Dagui's hands.

Cast iron is strong, but the toughness and compression resistance are not good, the cast iron pipes used in modern society are not common, they are made with special technology, in order to withstand the water pressure, the cast iron of the Qing Dynasty does not necessarily have such good performance.

Again, cast iron is divided into white cast iron and gray cast iron, of which white cast iron is a very brittle pig iron, which cannot be cut by machine at all, that is to say, it is quite difficult to process threads or something;

Gray cast iron is lubricated with graphite and has better machinability, but the problem is that the craftsmen of the Qing Dynasty did not master the production capacity of gray cast iron, or at least not universally.

White cast iron is produced with clay molds, but gray cast iron should be produced with sand molds, so that the molten iron can be slowly cooled down to form machinable gray cast iron.

The problem is that the blacksmiths of the Qing Dynasty have mastered quite good clay mold making technology, but they have not mastered much sand mold modeling, which also leads to the fact that the artillery of the Qing Dynasty can only be white-mouthed iron cannons, and the performance (at least the rate of fire) is far less good than the iron cannons made of gray iron by the British, which made the Chinese army suffer enough during the Opium War.

In this way, it is quite troublesome to use cast iron to make water pipes.

Cast iron is not good, so wrought iron is used, the wrought iron is forged into thin sheets, and then rolled up and sewn into pipes, and the threads are processed, which can also be used as water pipes.

This is a very feasible method, many British factories also use this method, but this process is time-consuming and labor-intensive, and the shipyard workers and blacksmiths recruited by Zhao Dagui can also work together to make qualified water pipes, but the production speed is very slow, and it may take more than half a year to produce water pipes that meet the needs of the entire silk reeling factory.

Fortunately, Zhao Dagui has a way to solve this problem: "Since iron pipes are troublesome to make, let's use brass to build water pipes, that's fast." ”

"Brass is more than ten times more expensive than iron pipes, so why bother? Chen Fan, out of his duty as an engineer, spoke out against it, but was strongly suppressed by Zhao Dagui.

"It doesn't matter how much it costs, that's what I'm going to think about, let's get it done now. Zhao Dagui said.

Brass has much better machining performance than iron, it is very easy to cast, it is also convenient to cut with a machine, and even the machine tool used to cut brass does not need to be so hard, and it is much easier to produce than the tool for cutting iron.

It can be said that Zhao Dagui can only buy machine tools for processing ironware at a high price from foreign trading houses, but tools for processing brassware can be produced by hand-forging with a few skilled Chinese blacksmiths.

In this way, after several tests and grinding efforts, the material of the water pipe was finally determined to be brass, and such a simple thing had to be discussed with great effort to determine, and you can understand how cumbersome the real machining is.

Next, it's time to talk about the production of boilers.

Normally, boilers should be made of cast iron, even the British also use cast iron, but as mentioned above, according to the technology tree mastered by Zhao Dagui, there are many technical difficulties to overcome in the use of cast iron.

"Use brass. Zhao Dagui thought about it and made a decision.

"You're not afraid to spend tons of money. Sheldon and Chen Fan objected together.

"A ton of cooked copper is only about five or six hundred yuan, don't be afraid of spending money, what we lack is time, not money. Zhao Dagui still suppressed his words.

Okay, you have money, Sheldon and Chen Fan thought about it, and they could only give in, who made the metal processing capacity of the noble department so weak.

Don't think about saving money just yet, let's make things out.

Then, when it comes to steam engines, there are many places that require both good casting ability and good cutting performance, and this problem is much more complicated than water pipes and boilers, even if you want to replace it with iron, you can't do it.

"Use brass, we have money anyway. This time, Sheldon and Chen Fan said in unison.

"Hehe, I was going to say gold. Zhao Dagui smiled, and received a bunch of contempt from the other two.

Gears and other parts are made of wrought iron and cast iron, and all parts that are difficult to process are replaced with brass.

In this way, in the final complete set of silk reeling equipment, the proportion of brass material is extremely high, far more than the machinery of the general European silk reeling factory--- but this is also a helpless thing, who made Zhao Dagui's mechanical processing ability at this time so weak.

In short, with brass instead of magic, most of the machine parts can be produced.

It is also the equipment used for silk reeling is relatively simple, does not require particularly complex parts, and the requirements for materials are not high, so let the three stinkers barely come up with a feasible imitation scheme by looking at the books.

The next thing is to require a lot of hands-on work, and it requires the cooperation of the workers of the shipyard and the blacksmiths in Foshan, but Chen Fan is much more skilled than Zhao Dagui and Sheldun, after all, his hands-on ability and experience are very rich.

After more than a month of busyness, by May, the whole set of equipment was in shape, that is, the boiler was used to control the water temperature, and then the steam engine was used to make the runner of the silk reeling rotate at a uniform speed, that is, Chinese craftsmen had never made these machines, only in terms of technical difficulty, in fact, it was not high.

The next thing was simple: Zhao Dagui first bought a large amount of raw silk and silkworm cocoons and stored them in the factory area of the concession, and then went to Huzhou and Jiaxing to hire many masters who were good at silk reeling.

Those who are good at silk reeling work are generally ingenious farmers or workers in silk weaving factories in big cities, and according to the characteristics of this era, most of them are farmers, so Zhao Dagui's command has hundreds of three or five thick silk reeling workers.

Lord Zhao actually yearns for the ingenious textile workers, and he sighs when he looks at these thick and strong men.