I am an industrial worker during the War of Resistance

Chapter 25 A Skyscraper Rise from the Ground

Thousands of tall buildings rise from the ground.

If you want to build a tall building, you have to bend down and dig the foundation first.

Steel mills and forging presses will form the most solid foundation for future high-rise buildings.

Neither of these two items are available.

If you want to develop large-scale chemical industry, you can't produce qualified pipes and reactors.

Not to mention compressors, a core component of large-scale chemical plants.

Without large-scale chemical industry, large-scale fertilizer industry cannot be developed; and agriculture can only develop rapidly by relying on the large-scale fertilizer industry.

As for small fertilizer plants.

The seed tanks that are now everywhere are the most basic prototypes of small fertilizer plants.

It just wasn't granulated.

Without steel mills and forging presses, it's impossible to build turbine rotors for power plants.

The torque capacity required for the rotor shaft of a steam turbine in a small power plant cannot be achieved simply by casting and hammering with a large iron hammer.

Even small to medium-sized generators of around 100 kilowatts require a high-power diesel engine to power them.

The crankshaft of a high-power diesel engine requires a large forging press to forge.

That thing isn't like a single-cylinder diesel engine; it's a small crankshaft with only one crank.

Even if it's a steam engine driving a generator.

The rotor shaft of that 100-kilowatt generator also needs to be forged by a forging press with a capacity of at least 500 tons before it can be used.

Generators with a few watts or tens of watts are basically useless in industry, and can only provide electricity for things like lighting.

So in the end, the foundation of everything came back to the two major projects: the steel plant and the forging press.

The leader left Wujiabao.

They left with a heart full of joy.

Before the leader left, Chen Changzai had another in-depth conversation with him.

Chen Changzai then took out two bundles of blueprints from the wooden box filled with blueprints beside the kang (a heated brick bed).

After opening another bundle of blueprints, he said to the leader, "Leader, this blueprint is the one I designed a long time ago: the blueprint for a thousand-ton forging press."

This is the overall blueprint, so that the leaders can see it more clearly.

When the leader saw the blueprints, which were drawn like works of art, with their various lines and densely packed, yet incredibly clear, numbers, he was deeply moved.

The more the leader looked at the drawings, the more he felt that Chen Chang had drawn them beautifully.

The drawing depicts a forging press with four large iron pillars and three crossbeams.

Although the leader couldn't understand the details of the blueprints.

However, he could understand the length, width, and height markings on the drawings, as well as the directional arrows and numbers.

When you see the height of this machine, it's marked as 15 meters high.

But it gave the leader a big fright.

"Wow, this thing is huge!"

In the leader's mind, that thousand-ton forging press should be as big as the mechanical forging press currently in use, which suspends a five-ton iron hammer.

It would be quite remarkable if it were three or four meters tall.

But when I looked at the blueprints, wow, this is much taller than the three sledgehammers combined!

When the leader exclaimed in surprise at the size of the forging press.

Chen Changzai smiled and continued, "Yes, leader, this is my design. It uses a steam engine as the main power source, a flywheel for energy storage, a three-beam, four-column, free-type hydraulic forging press."

This thing does look really big to us.

But in the world of forging presses, it's just a small machine.

When I was in school, the school once invited a physics teacher from the Soviet Union.

He said that the Soviet Union was building a giant hydraulic press with a capacity of 15,000 tons.

That thing was over thirty meters tall just above ground.

The foundation for this behemoth is over fifteen meters deep.

To enclose this steel giant, they also built a factory building over fifty meters high.

That thing is the real strongman.

Red-hot steel is no different from soft dough in front of it.

That Soviet teacher said.

With this forging press, it is possible to forge turbine shafts for large power plants, main shafts for giant ship engines, and even barrels for real large-caliber artillery.

The barrel of a large-caliber artillery piece, several hundred millimeters in diameter.

Upon hearing Chen Chang's words, the leader unconsciously swallowed.

Who wouldn't want something this good!

He also dreamed that tomorrow he would have such a steel giant, standing tall on the land of his country.

But when he looked down and saw the 15-meter-tall forging press on the blueprints...

He knew that the road ahead was still long.

It requires taking things one step at a time.

At this point, Chen Changzai continued, "Leader, although we have now broken through the bottleneck in our manufacturing of forging equipment..."

However, this does not mean that we now have the capability to immediately manufacture forging presses capable of handling thousands of tons. Firstly, we have never actually manufactured a forging press.

They basically had no experience in manufacturing forging presses.

Moreover, manufacturing such a forging press requires a massive amount of molten steel.
We want to cast parts for this forging press.

It requires a huge amount of molten steel to be poured at the same time.

There's no time to wait for a second batch of molten steel to be fired when casting such components.

It must be formed in one go within a short period of time.

With the current capacity of our blast furnaces and steel frying tanks, it is far from sufficient to meet the amount of molten steel required for casting such components.

so."

At this point, Chen Changzai opened the second bundle of blueprints.

The forging press drawn on this blueprint is basically the same in overall form as the blueprint for the thousand-ton forging press we just saw.

It is also a hydraulic forging press with three beams and four columns, powered by a steam engine and stored in a flywheel.

However, according to the dimensions, this forging press is only three meters high.

I saw the puzzled look in the leader's eyes after he finished looking at the blueprints.

Chen Changzai said, "Leader, this is something we can do with our current capabilities: a 150-ton forging press."

Its overall form is basically the same as that of the one-thousand-ton one.

We can understand it as a scaled-down version of a thousand-ton forging press.

I think we can make it first.

One hundred and fifty tons of pressure is absolutely not enough to forge a small-caliber cannon.

Even a 12.7mm heavy machine gun barrel, once forged, cannot be used safely.

However, it can be used to forge the barrels of rifles and light machine guns that we use today.

I think these two weapons are what we urgently need right now.

In this way, this small forging press with a capacity of 150 tons...

This allows us to validate our production technology and train our technical team.

It can also solve the problem that we cannot mass-produce and equip our rifles and light machine guns.

After the forging press was successfully completed.

We have already accumulated a lot of experience, and at this point we can move on to the second step.

That is to manufacture a 500-ton forging press.

A conclusion can be drawn through calculation.

A 500-ton forging press can fully meet the forging requirements of gun barrels with a caliber of 85 mm or less.

The forging of barrels for heavy machine guns, anti-aircraft machine guns, and anti-aircraft cannons was not a problem.

As long as our 500-ton forging press can be successfully completed.

Then I am confident that I can successfully build a 1,000-ton forging press in one go.

By then, we will be able to produce barrels for all types of artillery with a caliber of 155 mm or less.

I think that in land warfare, this caliber of artillery is already the limit of what can be moved under the current road conditions in our country.

Like those super-heavy artillery pieces from Europe and America, often exceeding 200 millimeters in diameter.

Given the current road conditions in our country, it can only be used as a defensive artillery piece for city defense.

Moving them would be incredibly difficult.

When Chen Changzai was explaining the overall concept of forging press manufacturing to the leader, the leader didn't say a word, but just listened quietly.

Occasionally, he would use a pen to jot down the key points Chen Changzai mentioned in a notebook that he kept on the kang table.

Keeping records at all times is an excellent tradition in the military.

After Chen Changzai finished speaking.

The leader took out two hand-rolled cigarettes from the cigarette box in his pocket, handed one to Chen Changzai, and took one for himself.

He even lit it for Chen Changzai himself.

He took a drag, then exhaled a deep puff of smoke.

The leader said, "Changzai, do you know that in my opinion, the greatest achievement Commander Chen has made so far is saving you?"

This is Commander Chen's good fortune, our good fortune, and the good fortune of the entire unit.

I agree with everything you said, and I think the headquarters team will agree as well.

When I get back, I will transfer the deputy director of the steel plant to you as soon as possible.

Let him take charge of the preparatory work for the steel plant first.

Chang Ni's main task right now is to get this 150-ton forging press working.

Don't be afraid of failure. If we fail, we can start over.

Failure can be beneficial to us as long as we can learn from our experiences and lessons.

All of this depends on you.

"Yes, sir, I guarantee I will complete the task."

　Thank you to all my friends who have supported me.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)