I am an industrial worker during the War of Resistance

Chapter 10 The First Cry of the Steam Engine
Political Commissar He acted swiftly. That very evening, two carpenters, along with a group of people, arrived at Chen Chang's place with two woodworking machines and a large quantity of timber.

Political Commissar He is actually working very hard right now.

The Wujiabao Arsenal's main work now is manufacturing explosives and assembling landmines, grenades, and reloading bullets.

After Chen Changzai selected the factory site and formulated the process flow and safety rules,

The remaining production process has been handed over to his students.

The entire factory's production management and safety control, as well as material procurement.

All these extremely complicated and intricate matters fell on Political Commissar He's shoulders.

However, Political Commissar He was quite happy with it.

Chen Changzai is now more like the director of an arms factory.

It would be more accurate to say he is the factory's chief engineer.

He now does almost entirely technical work.

The management work has now been almost entirely left to Political Commissar He and his students.

Now that Chen Changzai has taken over the steam engine project, he will only have less to do with the factory.

Chen Changzai's courtyard is now covered with wood chips and shavings.

With the help of two carpenters, Chen Changzai, and the special agent squad soldiers protecting Chen Changzai's safety.

A wooden, fixed-power steam engine verification model, over one meter tall and over two meters long, has finally been completed.

This is a horizontal cylinder flywheel type wooden verification model.

Chen Changzai made this model mainly to verify the overall stability and power output stability of a steam engine operating at a certain speed, as well as the amount of power transmitted.

If we were to use cast iron parts now, it would be time-consuming, labor-intensive, and wasteful of materials.

If there is a problem with the design, the machine might be knocked over by the vibration as soon as it starts running.

Or if the power output becomes jerky and causes a mechanical accident, those would be serious matters.

Therefore, Chen Chang first made a life-size wooden model.

First, examine whether his design, which is a variant of the domestically produced "Shangyou" type steam engine from the 1960s, is reasonable.

Nowadays, there's no such thing as computer-aided drafting or automatic graphic detection.

Everything must be tested through models.

When the water in a large gasoline drum boils.

The wooden piston inside the wooden cylinder began its reciprocating motion.

The piston drives the connecting rod, which in turn drives a large wooden wheel.

A long shaft extending from the center of the wooden wheel connects to a wooden gearbox, which in turn drives the counterweight wheel.

The counterweight box of the counterweight wheel is filled with bags of weighed soil.

This is a test of the entire steam engine, assessing its power output and stability.

As the wooden steam engine moved rapidly, the entire wooden frame that held it in place swayed slightly.

As the counterweight was added, the wooden steam engine creaked and groaned incessantly.

At this moment, Chen Changzai shouted: "Stop!"

A tremendous exhaust note followed.

The steam engine, which had been moving continuously, suddenly stopped.

"How many kilograms of counterweight have you added now?" Chen Changzai asked.

"Reporting to the factory manager, after ten shutdowns, with twenty pounds of counterweight added each time, the weight has now reached two hundred pounds."

"The special operations company soldiers who came to help shouted."

Chen Changzai did a rough calculation.

How much torque will the test flywheel generate with a 200-pound counterweight?

After roughly calculating it in my mind,

If all of these were replaced with steel components, then this steam engine, along with the gearbox, could easily power a forging pressure of 100 to 150 tons.

Such forging pressure is fully capable of meeting the needs of a normal steam engine.

It seems I don't need to upgrade the steam engine again.

It is entirely possible to forge a fully functional steam engine connecting rod mechanism based on the prototype. This is perfectly feasible.

The reason why this wooden steam engine cannot be re-weighted is due to the limitations of the wood material itself.

Adding more weight would cause the entire wooden steam engine to break completely.

"It's done. This experiment was a success," Chen Changzai said to everyone with a smile.

Upon hearing the news of the successful experiment, the carpenters on the site and the special agent soldiers who worked with him all jumped for joy.

They didn't know what this huge thing in front of them was for.

However, they knew that everything that Director Chen produced was extremely important.

Now we can say the experiment was a success.

That means their hard work these past two days wasn't in vain.

There will definitely be good things coming out in the future.

Chen Changzai looked at the cheering crowd and chuckled to himself.

The steam engine model that has been created can only be used on a mechanical forging press.

It is not yet compatible with hydraulic presses and oil presses.

It's not that Chen Changzai didn't want to get better equipment, but the current conditions simply didn't allow it.

Neither the supporting pipelines nor the processing precision can currently meet the requirements.

Instead of demanding those things, it's better to first create a usable, most basic free-fall forging hammer.

When a five-ton hammer is hoisted and dropped freely from a height of two meters.

This powerful impact force can reach tens or even hundreds of tons.

While such power cannot compare to the forging presses of later generations that weigh thousands or tens of thousands of tons, it still possesses immense power.

However, forging load-bearing components such as connecting rods for steam engines and crankshafts for small diesel engines is perfectly feasible.

At least for the current needs, there are no problems.

If forging these things is no problem, then forging gun steel and low-pressure artillery steel will be even less of a problem.

After the experiment was successful, Chen Changzai, unusually, treated everyone who came to work there to a meal out of his own pocket.

Chen Changzai also received a stipend, and his stipend was quite substantial.

Commander Chen and Political Commissar Liu's allowances were only three yuan each.

Because Political Commissar He was involved in military technology, his allowance was a bit higher, but it was only six yuan.

Chen Changzai's initial allowance was twelve yuan.

Because he was a senior technical officer specially approved by headquarters, his allowance was already the highest in the military.

He was higher than all the leaders at headquarters.

However, Chen Changzai, through the ups and downs of the following decades, understood very well the principle of doing things with high profile and living a low profile.

He is uncompromising in his work, but unassuming in his personal life.

He ate the same food and wore the same clothes as the workers in the arsenal.

The only unique thing about it is that it has a cave dwelling with inner and outer rooms.

However, this was simply the organization taking care of him so that he could work from home.

However, from the day he was given his allowance, Chen Changzai handed it all over to Wang Ling to collect and manage, and he himself did not have a single penny.

So this time, Chen Changzai entrusted Wang Ling to help him make arrangements.

In the evening, Wang Ling and her two older sisters served two dishes: hot and sour shredded potatoes and stir-fried chicken with pickled vegetables and chili peppers.

In addition, each person received three ounces of sweet potato liquor and steamed corn bread.

But everyone was completely satisfied with their meal.

Although the stir-fried chicken had a lot of pickled vegetables and chili peppers but not much chicken, everyone was still very satisfied with the meal.

Seeing everyone in the courtyard eating to their heart's content, Chen Changzai was also overjoyed.

After all, at this time, being able to eat meat was a real luxury.

(End of this chapter)