Nanming: I can build wonders

Chapter 23 Steelmaking Plant

After changing ideas, he still has 320 brilliant points left, it's time to go shopping in the system mall.

He first used 30 points to buy the blueprint and manufacturing method of the long-awaited French 1777 flintlock gun.

After buying and understanding, I found that mass production of flintlock guns is a big problem.

The craftsmanship of the flintlock can actually be done at the level of productivity in the late Ming Dynasty.

However, it was fully popularized in Europe in the early [-]th century. The reasons are that the technology needs a mature process, the cost and production speed must be optimized, and the bayonet technology must be matured.

The bayonets of the seventeenth century still had the problems of short service life and high scrap rate.

The problem of the flintlock gun is not as serious, but it still exists. The flintlock gun and the bayonet are advanced, but in the seventeenth century, these two weapons were slow to manufacture and quickly used. They were expensive and had mediocre shooting accuracy.

With Ming Zheng's current strength, it's really not a good weapon.

Zheng Kezang exchanged the 1777 model flintlock gun for France with barely good shooting accuracy.

According to the combustion situation of the gunpowder, the muzzle velocity of the bullet it shoots is between 200-300m/s.

Although the bullets of the 1777-type flintlock are still lethal at a distance of 300 meters, at a distance of more than 200 meters, ordinary infantry basically will not shoot at a single person.

To paraphrase the British Army, "None of the bullets that hit a soldier at 200 yards were aimed at that man."

However, "martial arts in the world can only be done quickly".

The high rate of fire of the flintlock gives the gunner a chance to shoot when the enemy reaches 20 meters, and there is no need to divide into several teams to shoot in turn like the arquebus, and the firepower density is greatly enhanced.

Moreover, the popularity of the bayonet has enabled the fusiliers to use the bayonet to fight the enemy hand-to-hand without relying on the protection of the spearman and the sword-shield hand when the enemy arrives in front of them.

But once it is installed in large quantities, it will face very embarrassing problems. Once the war starts, the speed of weapon production cannot keep up with the speed of weapon wear and tear.

It's not even as good as Dongning God's detonator.

But I bought everything, so I could only grit my teeth and spent 20 points to buy a slide-type bayonet. I didn’t choose the three-edged army stab in many time-traveling novels, that is, the 56-style sprint knife.

On the one hand, it is integrated with the gun body, and Zheng Kezang cannot produce it at this stage. On the other hand, the Type 56 sprint knife is strictly a product of compromise, and its only function is to stab. It has small trauma, single function, and lacks cutting. , sawing, shearing and other functions.

After buying and playing with these two things, Zheng Kezang discovered a new problem, that is, to mass-produce flintlock guns and bayonets, more high-quality steel is needed, but he learned about the steelmaking technology in the system mall, and directly scalped it. numb.

If you want to mass-produce gun steel and gun steel, you need too many pre-technologies, which cannot be solved simply by indigenous steelmaking.

For example, the core difficulty of steelmaking is how to increase the furnace temperature. This is the problem that has stuck human civilization for the longest time in steelmaking.

The primary problem from ironmaking to steelmaking is how to increase the furnace temperature. Without raising the furnace temperature, steel cannot be mass-produced. This involves refractory bricks, regenerators, coking, hydraulic blasting, and a bunch of other things.

The second is to avoid excessive pollution of raw materials, which involves a bunch of problems such as ore washing, beneficiation, refining, reverberatory furnace, crucible, chemical impurity removal, etc. Only by understanding these problems can industrial steelmaking have a basic foundation.

It's so complicated, unless Zheng Kezang is assigned a few engineers, he can't handle it by himself, what should we do?

Zheng Kezang suddenly had an idea, buying technology was too complicated to develop naturally, so he just bought finished products.

Then he continued to browse the system mall, searched for steel factories, turned left and right, and found the most cost-effective steel factory under the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau during the Westernization Movement.

Don't look down on the steel mills during the Westernization Movement. In this era, they are invincible.

According to the "Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau Records", the Bureau began to test "steel materials" in the 1891th year of Guangxu ([-]).This first furnace of steel was made with the Siemens Martin furnace purchased from Krupp.

This is the first real modern gun steel in China, and it is a real milestone in the history of Chinese metallurgy.

From this day on, the Jiangnan Bureau began to use self-refined gun steel for its homemade guns and small artillery.

In 1898, a writer of "Engineer" magazine visited Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau.

He was impressed by the steel production capacity of the Manufacturing Bureau, and gave the following description: "The part of the whole enterprise that interests me the most is the steel factory. Strangers would not have imagined that in a country like the Qing Dynasty there was such a successful heavy steel forging and Casting process. But the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau has done it, and from a small start a few years ago, the steelmaking plant has gradually developed into an important department of the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau. All gun barrel steel within 6 inches of caliber is produced by this department supply."

However, as a part of the military industry, the steelmaking plant is subject to the backward production management methods of the entire manufacturing bureau, coupled with the lack of strategic vision of the operators, and the products are outdated, resulting in very unsatisfactory operating conditions.

Because it is a special treatment of the system, it belongs to the castration version. There is only one acid steelmaking open hearth furnace, one converter, and one 2000-ton hydraulic press with a power system, but these are enough for Zheng Kezang.

Steel is very important to Zheng Kezang. In addition to military use, he urgently needs high-quality steel bars to lighten the reinforced concrete technology and add bricks and tiles to his subsequent wonder construction.

Perhaps the system also considers this point, so it deals with high-quality assets such as steel mills at a special price, which is really painstaking.

In particular, there is a hydraulic machine inside, which is a life-saver!

A hydraulic press is also a hydraulic press. In addition to being used to forge ordnance parts such as gun barrels and gun barrels, it can also be used to make advanced gunpowder.

In the "Krupp Gunpowder Manufacturing Method", whether it is maroon gunpowder or smokeless gunpowder, these high-density, single-hole or porous geometric powder cakes and nitrocellulose are basically pressed by hydraulic presses.

Of course, Zheng Kezang doesn't know about these for the time being, he only knows that he got a big deal.

"System, I bought a steel factory, how can I get it?" Zheng Kezang asked the key question without thinking.

[The host only needs to provide a suitable venue, and after the host confirms, the relevant equipment can be delivered immediately]

The sound of the system was as mechanical and emotionless as ever, and it sounded like the sound of nature to Zheng Kezang's ears.

"Worthy of being my golden finger, it's over!" Zheng Kezang was beaming with joy. As soon as the steel plant arrived, he whimpered and took off.

Strike while the iron was hot, he moved around in the study, and after careful consideration, he decided to set up the steelmaking plant on the flat ground near the back mountain of Dongning Military Academy, so that it could be heavily guarded to prevent safety problems.

It just so happens that the construction of the Dongning Military Academy is almost the same recently, and now a factory is urgently added, and it should be completed soon.

Thinking about this, Zheng Kezang made a decisive decision: "Mao Xing, invite eunuch Li over immediately."

(End of this chapter)