I am an industrial worker during the War of Resistance

Chapter 13 Lathe, Oh Lathe

In the furnace in the workshop, coke burned the furnace walls until they were glowing red.

The heat emanating from the furnace kept Chen Changzai, who was busy in the workshop, from feeling any chill.

"Give me a size 26 wrench," Chen Changzai said, without even turning his head, just looking at the lathe in front of him and reaching out his hand.

"Here you go, sir, a size 26 wrench." His student quickly handed him a size 26 wrench.

A size 26 wrench is a wrench with an opening of 26 millimeters and 2.6 centimeters.

Finally, the adjusting bolts for the lathe head position were adjusted again.

Then he said, "Turn the drive wheel."

"Okay, sir, I'm going to turn the drive wheels."

Another student said.

Then the two students started vigorously turning a large disc at the power input end of the lathe's gearbox.

This was added temporarily as a manual drive wheel for adjusting the lathe.

When actually using a lathe, this drive wheel needs to be removed.

The input end of the gearbox is to be connected to the drive shaft leading out from the steam engine reduction gearbox.

As the machine head began to rotate, Chen Changzai held the alignment ruler he had made, checking whether it was concentric with the top shaft on the opposite side as the machine head rotated.

If there is no consensus, further corrections will be necessary.

It's already mid-February, and the weather should be warmer than it seems, but it's still eerily cold.

But no matter how cold it was, Chen Changzai dared not stop working.

In a little over a month, we will enter the latter half of March and the beginning of April.

It's time to start spring plowing here.

If I couldn't produce a decent hand tractor by then, it would cause a lot of trouble.

Chen Changzai had no idea that he had made ample preparations in advance.

However, this lathe still presented itself with a major problem.

Let's not even talk about the flatness and shaping of the marble base of the lathe.

The casting of those two crane guide rails, the large lead screw, and the small lead screw caused him a lot of trouble.

Although he is still making the simplest ordinary lathe.

However, because there were no other machining tools, all the parts of this machine tool, even a single screw, were all cast using the lost-wax casting method.

Without casting, and given current processing conditions, they couldn't even manufacture a single screw without a lathe.

Chen Changzai didn't want to waste time on those human-powered machine tools; he could have used that time to build this steam-powered machine tool.

However, this one-meter-long guide rail and lead screw, which require extremely high precision, failed to be cast more than ten times in a row.

After ten days of hard work, two qualified guide rails and a large lead screw were finally successfully cast.

After overcoming this hurdle, things went much more smoothly afterward.

Finally, on February 20th, this initial, simple machine tool was completed.

After installing this simple machine tool onto the marble machine tool base, which had been polished over a period of nearly a month,...

Chen Changzai felt that he was finally close to success.

After the final calibration of the head.

Chen Changzai turned the crane crank, and the tool holder slid back and forth smoothly on the guide rail.

After using a self-made tool setting bar and height gauge to measure the progress data of the tool holder for the last time, I confirmed that the travel distance of the entire leadscrew was completely consistent with the scale on the crank handle.

The feed distance was then checked, and there were no issues.

At this point now.

This machine tool can basically be considered a success.

After letting out a deep breath, Chen Changzai said, "Alright, it's basically done."

As soon as Chen Changzai finished speaking...

Political Commissar He, who had been hovering around the machine tool without daring to utter a sound, and the experienced workers who had been busy working alongside him, all breathed a sigh of relief.

Political Commissar He asked, "Director Chen, can we test drive it now?" "Yes, we can test drive it now after connecting the power shaft."

Let's order something simple first.

"Let's machine out some screws first and see how it goes," Chen Changzai said.

"Great, that's wonderful! Try it quickly, try it quickly!" Political Commissar He was extremely excited at this moment.

Because he knew that if this machine tool was successful, then there would be more machine tools available in the future.

With machine tools, we can make more machine guns, and even a cannon, without any problem.

Just like now, thanks to the steam engine, they can now stamp bullet casings themselves.

No longer do we have to collect old bullet casings and repair them before we can reload bullets, as we used to.

To be honest, those reloaded bullets aren't very effective.

After a cartridge case has been used once, the amount of deformation can vary, resulting in vastly different effects when a reloaded bullet is fired.

But now, the bullet casings that we stamp ourselves are different; the bullet trajectory can be kept basically consistent.

This is the result from the headquarters' gun factory.

They are now extremely satisfied with the two steam-powered stamping presses.

Looking at that machine is more precious than looking at your own eyes.

The machine tool is currently placed against the wall in the workshop, and there is a steam engine right outside the wall.

Its power shaft passes through the wall, extends into the workshop, and is then connected to the machine tool's power shaft.

This also uses a sliding connection.

Sliding sleeve connections are simple to manufacture and stable and reliable.

After the power connection was established, Chen Chang shifted the transmission into first gear, and the engine began to slowly rotate.

The gearbox uses a sliding gear connection.

He hasn't figured out a synchronizer yet, so he can only use this oldest linking method.

This design is similar to the gearbox concept of the old Jiefang brand trucks.

However, this machine tool gearbox does not have a clutch; it relies on a reduction gearbox and a steam engine to reduce speed and shift gears.

Let's deal with it for now, since the machine tool's rotation speed isn't designed to be that fast anyway.

Shift to neutral.

The lathe head stopped rotating, and a screw blank was clamped on, with the top shaft holding the blank in place.

Shift into gear again, and the engine starts spinning.

As Chen Changzai cranked the handle, the cutting table moved and began to feed the blade.

With a series of hissing sounds, a ring of iron filings, like a bright blue thread, flew off the blank and slid into the receiving groove.

After running the cutter three times, a screw emerged.

An experienced craftsman, seeing the screw that gleamed with a metallic sheen, had beautifully chamfered edges, smooth threads, and no burrs, said softly, "Well, this little guy is really beautiful. It's much prettier than the screws we make by hand."

Chen Changzai said, "We don't have the necessary conditions right now, but once we do, we can build a cold forging thread rolling machine."

Back then, we could make dozens or even hundreds of screws of all kinds in a minute.

"That's amazing! Wow, if that's the case, we can make anything we want."

The old master grinned and said.

"Yes, then we'll be able to do whatever we want."

However, we still need to get the second lathe out first.

"Yes, yes, with this, we can create even more great things."

Then Chen Changzai used an internal thread cutter to cut out a nut, which fit perfectly and smoothly when combined with the screw from before.

When Chen Chang's face, stained with oil, revealed a satisfied smile as he looked at the qualified forged steel short lead screw in his hand.

He knew that he had overcome this small hurdle with the lathe.

(End of this chapter)