Major Heavy Industry: Starting with a Fake Marriage

Jiang Cheng looked at him, wanting to say something, but his throat felt like it was blocked by something, and he choked up.

"Master, please don't say that."

"I'm telling the truth." Huang Deqing stubbed out his cigarette and threw the butt into the trash can. "Go for it. If you succeed, I'll be happy for you. If you mess it up, I'll take the blame with you."

He turned around, walked back to the corner, picked up the whetstone from the windowsill, squatted down, and continued sharpening the scraper.

Jiang Cheng stood in front of the equipment, watching his master's back. His back was more hunched than last year, and his shoulders were narrower, but his squatting posture was exactly the same as it had been more than a decade ago. When he squatted, his back was very straight, his left hand supporting the workpiece, and his right hand holding the whetstone, moving slowly and steadily. He had maintained this posture for thirty years.

He turned around and walked towards the control cabinet.

The equipment modification work began on the second day.

Engineer Liu and Xiao Ma spent the entire day working in front of the control cabinet. They removed the old control board and replaced it with a new one. The new control board was made by the Automation Research Institute itself, and it was densely packed with integrated circuits, capacitors, and resistors, looking much more complex than the old one. The circuit board was dark green, and the wiring was like a maze, winding and twisting. Sun Deming stood beside them, watching and taking notes, his notebook filled with circuit diagrams, every line drawn perfectly straight. He used a pencil, which could be erased if he made a mistake, but his notebook rarely showed any signs of erasure.

"Xiao Ma, what is this chip for?" Sun Deming pointed to a black square on the board. There was a line of white text on the surface of the square, indicating its model number.

"CPU, Central Processing Unit. It's the brain of the computer. Programs are stored here, and it executes them one by one."

Sun Deming stared at the black cube for a long time. "This little thing, can it remember the program?"

"Yes. There are tens of thousands of instructions inside. Each instruction is a string of binary code. Once the CPU understands it, it executes the corresponding operation. For example, when you press the start button, the CPU will read a signal, and then it will look for the corresponding instruction to make the robotic arm start moving."

Sun Deming gasped, then didn't ask any more questions. He drew a square in his notebook, wrote "CPU" next to it, then drew an arrow and wrote "tens of thousands of instructions." After finishing, he looked at it again and changed "tens of thousands" to "several tens of thousands."

Jiang Cheng conducted verification experiments in the lab. Using the data provided by Engineer Liu—a positioning accuracy of 0.2 millimeters—he re-optimized the spraying parameters. The powder feed rate was adjusted from 6.5 to 6.8, the spraying distance from 105 to 110, and the substrate preheating temperature remained constant. He made three sets of test pieces, measuring the coating thickness and adhesion strength for each set. The thickness gauge was an eddy current type; the probe slid across the coating surface, the readings fluctuating before finally stabilizing. He recorded each reading, writing it down three times to ensure there were no errors.

Group 1: Thickness 280 micrometers, bonding strength 420 Newtons. The thickness is slightly thin, but the bonding strength is acceptable. Group 2: Thickness 310 micrometers, bonding strength 390 Newtons. The thickness is acceptable, but the bonding strength has decreased. Group 3: Thickness 295 micrometers, bonding strength 450 Newtons. Both are acceptable.

He organized the data, plotted it as a graph, and posted it on the wall. On the graph, the horizontal axis represented the spraying distance, and the vertical axis represented the bonding strength. There was a clear peak where the two curves intersected. He stood in front of the graph for a long time, staring at it. Sun Deming came over, looked at it for a while, and said, "Is this peak the optimal parameter?" Jiang Cheng nodded.

"Brother Jiang, how's it going?" Sun Deming walked over from the control cabinet, holding a notebook with a few new pages added to it.

"Feasible. With an accuracy of 0.2 millimeters and the adjusted process parameters, the coating performance meets the standards."

Sun Deming grinned. "That's good. I was worried it wouldn't work."

"How's it going on your end?"

"Engineer Liu said the control board can be installed today, and we'll start writing the program tomorrow. Xiao Ma has already set up the framework." Sun Deming opened his notebook, which was filled with dense writing. "Look, this is the control logic diagram. Xiao Ma drew it for me, and I copied it. This part is for judging the coating thickness; if it's not enough, it sprays another layer. This part is for alarms; if the parameters exceed the limits, it stops the machine. This part records the data; the parameters for each spray are saved for future analysis."

Jiang Cheng took it and looked at it. The logic diagram was very clear, with each decision branch marked with a different colored pen. Sun Deming's handwriting was neat and tidy, each stroke precise, a stark contrast to his previous careless and hasty manner.

"Deming, you've improved."

Sun Deming scratched his head and smiled sheepishly. "It's not progress, it's being forced into it. I don't understand what Xiao Ma is saying, but I don't dare say I don't understand. I'm afraid he'll look down on the people in our center. If I don't understand, I write it down and look it up myself when I get back to the guesthouse at night. I looked it up until midnight yesterday, and I went through it again this morning. There are still some parts I don't understand, but it's much better than yesterday."

Jiang Cheng patted him on the shoulder.

That evening, Jiang Cheng returned to the guesthouse and called Zheng Yanxi. The phone rang for a long time before she answered; her voice was a little hoarse, as if she had just woken up.

"Yanxi, it's me."

"It's so late, what's wrong?" Her voice was more awake.

"It's nothing. I just wanted to let you know I've arrived in Beijing."

"Um."

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone. Then she said, "Jiang Yuan learned a new word today."

"What word?"

"The light. He pointed to the light on the ceiling and said 'light.' He said it several times, looking up each time. After looking up, he looked at us again, as if to make sure we had seen it. I told him it was a light, and he kept pointing at it, saying 'light light light.'"

Jiang Cheng smiled. "Tell him that Dad can also say 'lamp'."

"I told you. He looked at your picture, called out 'Dad,' and then pointed at the lamp and called it 'Lamp.'" Her voice lowered. "It was like he was talking to you. Like he was saying, 'Dad, look, this is a lamp.'"

Jiang Cheng gripped the receiver, his heart aching as if someone had tugged at it. He heard the soft sound of pages turning on the other end of the line.

"Yanxi, have the results come out yet?"

"Not yet. Next month."

"Don't rush."

"I'm not in a hurry."

After hanging up the phone, Jiang Cheng sat on the edge of the bed, looking at the moon outside the window. The moon in Beijing was still hazy, but he knew the moon in Shenyang was bright. He remembered Jiang Yuan pointing at the lamp, remembered his little hands, chubby, with short fingers and round fingertips. He remembered that lamp, an old-fashioned incandescent bulb, covered in a layer of dust, which required pulling a cord to turn on.