Great Power Industry: You're a private company building an aircraft carrier?

"Brother Chuan, you're amazing! You tricked the Japanese so easily!"

Watching the Japanese leave, Li Jianshe was filled with admiration for Qin Chuan.

Qin Chuan smiled and said, "Thanks to Brother Babich, I'll have a few more drinks with him later!"

It's better to come early than to come by coincidence.

If Babich hadn't suddenly appeared and shown his back, Ishino Hiromitsu wouldn't have been so easily fooled into thinking that his side's technology came from the Russians. Even after he went to the Russian steel mill, he still wouldn't have been able to find a suitable expert.

When he comes back, don't blame me for being ruthless!

Today I'll play the bad cop, next time I'll play the good cop. I've already said if you feel you're losing out, just get your shipping fee back. I've shown you enough sincerity, but you're still not letting it go. What exactly do you want?

Go ahead and sue me, I'm ready for it!

……

The next day, at the seaside branch factory.

The space at the steel mill is limited, but the beach area is much more spacious.

The beach remains, and we'll bring in more scrap ships to dismantle them later. On a sufficiently high ground level, workshops and factories have already been built, and the machinery and equipment we got from Dongfeng Machinery Factory are just the right size to put in for future use.

At the same time, some new machinery and equipment were added, such as a rope winding machine, which is responsible for winding steel wire into steel wire rope. If you want to make barrier cables, you must have this kind of machine.

Babbage and Qin Chuan had a good drink last night, but they still got up on time this morning to continue watching the manufacture of the arresting cable.

He didn't understand the special formula of the steel wire, but he knew the testing standards. Once the arresting cable was made, it could be tested on a tensile testing machine. If it really met the requirements... those scrap aircraft carrier steel materials were truly a treasure!

Upon arriving at the workshop, Qin Chuan began his work, placing 30 steel wires onto the rope-making machine, which resembled a spider web, giving it a feel of a textile factory.

There are many intricacies involved in weaving steel wire ropes.

Qin Chuan explained the operation to the experienced workers in the factory as he worked, since the experienced workers would be doing this job in the future, and he wouldn't stay in the factory all the time.

"Especially the tension adjustment. If the tension is too low, the wire rope will loosen; if the tension is too high, the wire rope will break prematurely due to excessive tension. The specific tension adjustment..."

Later rope-making machines were all computer-controlled and easy to adjust, but now they are all manually controlled, and it all depends on the skill of the master craftsman.

The rope-making machine hummed as it wove together three different types of steel wires, large, medium, and small. Babbage watched from the side, his eyes sparkling.

"With the arresting cable in hand, the technical preparations for the aircraft carrier are much more complete. As for the steel plates, I reckon you have the ability to manufacture them too. Oh, and the aircraft carrier boilers..."

Babbage has already planned to continue his career in the East and naturally hopes that these preparations will be completed as soon as possible.

Qin Chuan demonstrated strong metallurgical skills; the steel plate probably wouldn't be a problem for him. The main remaining issue is the power source.

Upon hearing Babbich's words, Qin Chuan immediately realized: "That's right, where's the boiler!"

He initially used a boiler to set up a stall at Dongfeng Machinery Factory, but after the boiler was brought back, he got busy with other things.

However, he remembered that Yu Hongxin from the Bingcheng Boiler Factory hadn't left yet.

Where is Uncle Yu?

"Workshop No. 3 has been there for the past few days."

"Mr. Babbage, shall we go take a look at the boiler?"

"it is good."

The place was spacious and there were plenty of factory buildings. Workshop No. 3 was almost empty. In this empty workshop, there were two large wooden crates, which were the boilers that had been brought back.

At this point, one of the boilers had been dismantled; to be precise, it had been cut open from the middle of the shell using an oxy-acetylene flame, and one side of the shell had been removed, exposing the internal structure.

Yu Hongxin squatted down beside her, holding a vernier caliper, measuring data. She recorded each measurement on a piece of drawing paper next to her, looking very serious and focused.

However, while taking the measurements, he couldn't help but shake his head, seemingly sighing about something.

"Uncle Yu! Has the survey drawing been completed yet?"

Qin Chuan greeted them as soon as he entered.

"Drawing is underway, on this boiler..."

"What's wrong?" Qin Chuan asked curiously.

"This boiler uses high-pressure pipes that we don't have in China!"

Yu Hongxin said, "Back then, we formulated our domestic standard YB529-65 based on the Soviet Union's YMTY2597-54 high-pressure boiler tube standard. After that, all the boiler pipes produced in our country were made according to this standard. I never expected that the old Russians would change their standards!"

“The standard hasn’t changed; it’s just that we’ve developed a new standard as boiler technology has improved.” Babbage nodded. “If we compare it to Western standards, this would be classified as a P92 seamless steel pipe.”

Shipboard propulsion differs greatly from land-based propulsion. First, there are requirements on size; it cannot be too large. In order to reduce the size, high-strength materials are used, especially for the internal high-pressure steam pipes.

In fact, the Russian KVG-4 type pressurized boiler is a level lower in technology than that of the West. The internal pressure of the boiler is only 6.47 MPa, the temperature of the superheated steam generated is only 470 degrees, and it can only produce 115 tons per hour.

The boilers used on the Kitty Hawk-class aircraft carriers have a pressure of 8.45 MPa and a maximum temperature of 580 degrees Celsius, generating 118 tons of steam per hour.

Boilers with pressures between 6 and 13 MPa are classified as high-pressure boilers. Due to their high internal pressure, these boilers use specially made pipes, typically thick-walled seamless steel pipes, as only such pipes can withstand high-temperature and high-pressure gases.

To improve efficiency, reduce size and weight, the Russians reduced the wall thickness of the seamless steel pipes in their boilers to two-thirds of what it used to be, but the pressure they could withstand remained the same!

Without a doubt, this is a brand new, top-quality pipe that can be compared with international P92 seamless steel pipes. It is used to manufacture supercritical boilers with pressures of up to 13 MPa or more!

Make bricks without straw.

The boiler factory makes boilers, but it doesn't manufacture seamless steel pipes, and other steel pipe factories in China can't make them either.

Even if you disassemble this boiler and study it thoroughly, you still can't replicate it!

"We are still too weak in the field of high-strength alloy steel," Yu Hongxin said. "If we want to imitate it, we can only purchase it from abroad. I remember that Kobe Steel has steel pipes of this grade, but..."

Yu Hongxin's feelings were complicated.

He wanted to build world-class boilers and advanced naval boilers. He also knew that the military would definitely pursue complete domestic production in these areas. If the power of warships needed to be imported, then if the external environment changed and imports could not be made, they would be held hostage!

"Are you kidding me? Kobe steel?" Qin Chuan shook his head. "Of course not."

Even without the recent incident of ripping off Kobe Steel, given their notorious reputation for falsifying data, I wouldn't dare to buy from them!

"I thought it was something else, but it's just P92. It's okay, we'll build a furnace after we're done!"

What? You can do that?