I am an industrial worker during the War of Resistance

Chapter 12 Marble Machine Tool Base

The snow was very heavy; as soon as you went outside, the snow on the ground was up to your ankles.

Before we knew it, it was January 1936, and the New Year was just around the corner.

This made Chen Changzai feel that time was passing too quickly.

He couldn't stop time, so he could only race against time.

"The snow is so heavy, why don't you wear more clothes?"

If you catch a cold, I'll get criticized again.

Wang Ling caught up with Chen Changzai and told him to hurry back inside and change into the new cotton-padded jacket that she had just made for him.

"It's okay, I'm not cold."

Chen Changzai still wanted to struggle a bit, to show that he was still very strong and resistant to the cold.

However, under Wang Ling's tugging, he had no choice but to obediently return to the cave dwelling and put on the cotton-padded clothes that Wang Ling had sewn for him by hand.

The new cotton-padded coat is really warm, but Chen Changzai really doesn't want to wear it.

Both the military and civilian sectors are facing severe difficulties, and cotton is a strategic resource.

Making a new cotton-padded coat is a very difficult thing these days.

Even the new cotton-padded coat that Chen Changzai was wearing, whether it was made of cotton or cotton cloth, was specially approved for him by the headquarters.

He was ordered to have a new cotton-padded coat made, and only then did he make it.

Otherwise, he would have taken the new cotton from this cotton-padded coat and used it to make nitrocellulose long ago.

The current situation is very tense, and the pressure from the surrounding areas is immense.

Many supplies have been blocked, and even food is now being supplied in rations.

No matter when, people need to eat.

The food we eat can only be grown from the ground.

We don't have the technology of producing starch from carbon dioxide that we have in later generations.

Now, if you want to have enough to eat, you have to work hard to farm.

But if we want more food to grow in the land, we need better tools.

They relied on people to dig the ground with hoes and oxen to plow the land.

At that rate of land reclamation, it would be extremely difficult to support a large population.

That kind of limit cannot be completely overcome simply by people working themselves to the bone.

To feed a large population and ensure that everyone has enough to eat.

In addition to hardworking people, more powerful farming tools are also needed.

Now, Chen Changzai is trying to develop his next power machine, a single-cylinder diesel engine.

In this vast Northwest, although there are no large oil fields, small oil pockets are everywhere.

They vary in depth and size, and it is indeed impossible to support the industry of a major country solely on them.

However, at this point in time, these small oil packets are still sufficient to support the military's nascent and weak industrial development.

Petroleum refining is essentially a high-temperature cracking process.

Even using rudimentary methods, this oil refining method can produce diesel and lubricating oil.

Currently, due to the need to refine large quantities of paraffin wax, a significant amount of diesel, gasoline, and lubricating oil has already been extracted during the paraffin wax refining process.

However, currently, apart from lubricating oil which can be used in steam engines, other types of oil are not yet available.

So these were all stored away, and when they were needed, they would require secondary purification.

Now, Chen Changzai doesn't need too many types of petroleum products; he only needs to be able to extract diesel and lubricating oil.

With these two things, he will be able to get a diesel engine running.

The single-cylinder diesel engine is the best tool for agricultural development.

This is the northwestern region, characterized by its dense mountains and crisscrossing ravines.

Hand-held tractors are the real deal when it comes to traversing hillsides and field ridges.

To get this single-cylinder diesel engine running.

Therefore, machine tools are indispensable.

Without machine tools, engines cannot be mass-produced.

Even if it is cast using the lost-wax method and then finished by hand, it is still impossible to mass-produce it.

And the essence of industry.

It means that through industrial division of labor and sophisticated industrial equipment, countless industrial products can be manufactured in large quantities.

So even though we already have steam engines, new steam engines are still being manufactured continuously over the past two or three months.

However, Chen Changzai still felt that this speed was too slow. So, after the third steam engine, which had already been finalized, was produced...

Chen Changzai then handed over all the production work to the master craftsmen who had been officially transferred to the Wujiabao Arsenal and his own students.

Chen Changzai, on the other hand, threw himself into machine tool design.

I want a good machine tool.

Therefore, a good machine tool base is absolutely indispensable.

A good machine tool base needs to be left to rest for one to two years, or even longer, after it is cast to release the internal stress.

If the stress on the base is not relieved, the accuracy of this machine tool will change drastically in a short time.

In severe cases, the entire upper part of the machine tool may be slightly twisted due to the stress on the base.

As for the aging furnaces used in later generations to release stress by simulating natural aging, that is not possible now.

Because that requires extremely strict temperature control; the amount of temperature increase and decrease per hour is extremely precise.

There are still ways to develop machine tools even when there isn't much time available.

That is, using a marble machine tool base.

Although marble is very brittle, it is still the most suitable compared to other types of stone.

As long as you are careful and cautious at work.

Don't smash the marble; a marble base can still last a long time.

Later high-precision machine tools also commonly used marble as a base.

Today, Chen Changzai wanted to go and ask Commander Chen and his men if they had found the marble.

Although marble is produced in this northwestern region, finding and bringing back such a large stone is not easy.

After all, even the smallest stone used as a base weighs more than a ton.

They arrived outside Commander Chen's regimental headquarters.

I asked the guards at the gate and learned that Commander Chen and Political Commissar Liu were both working at the regimental headquarters and hadn't gone out.

Chen Changzai then strode inside.

"Uncle Chen, Uncle Liu, are you busy?"

At the entrance of the cave dwelling, Chen Changzai called out, not knowing what Commander Chen and the others were busy with inside.

If it were a classified matter like a battle plan, it would be very bad if he barged in rashly.

They heard Chen Changzai's shout.

Commander Chen replied from inside the room, "It's Changzai. Come in quickly, I was just about to look for you."

After Chen Changzai entered the cave dwelling, he saw that Political Commissar Liu was also inside. Political Commissar Liu said to Chen Changzai, "Changzai, come in quickly, it's too cold outside."

What brings you here?

"Well, I just came to ask if the marble has been found."

After hearing Chen Changzai's question, Regiment Commander Chen and Political Commissar Liu exchanged glances.

Then Political Commissar Liu laughed and said, "Old Chen, I wasn't wrong, was I? I said Changzai came for this very reason."

Commander Chen smiled and said, "Changzai, even if you hadn't come today, I would have wanted to come find you anyway."

The marble has not only been found, it's almost home!

"Really? How come it's so fast?"

Commander Chen said, "Our men discovered a quarry more than 80 kilometers to the northwest."

After looking at it, I realized that it was a marble quarry.

It had been open for decades, but now it's abandoned.

Later, after inquiring, I learned that it was because a few years ago, bandits had killed the entire family of the quarry owner.

Later, the quarry was shut down.

Our people found quite a few pieces of marble in the quarry that meet your requirements.

So they brought it back in a horse-drawn carriage.

But those things were too heavy.

It takes a four-horse carriage to pull one stone.

The first batch, five large stones, will arrive tomorrow. I was just about to tell you, but I didn't expect you to come.

Isn't this just a coincidence?

"That's fantastic! Now we can produce high-precision machine tools as quickly as possible," Chen Changzai said with a hearty laugh after hearing this.

(End of this chapter)