From Chief to Ball

Of course, iron smelting is the foundation, or mother, of the entire group of future workshops, and this is unshakable.

The amount of charcoal piled up is enough for a while, and the large-scale leather bellows have also been made. It is not yet a bellows with a double-acting piston structure that can blow air through push and pull, because the carpenters did not think of adding a two-way valve at the air outlet. So that there is no way to make one half close when the other half blows.

But they used the hundreds of years old trees all over the mountains and fields at this time to hollow out the core of the tree as the shell of the wooden bellows, which is stronger than the wooden board splicing, and the circular structure can also withstand greater wind pressure.

There is no way to use leather, because the wind pressure of the iron smelting blower bellows driven by animal power is too high, and the cowhide will probably explode. On the contrary, the wooden structure will be more durable.This kind of large bellows probably needs two cows to pull it, but it is impossible to stop day and night.

On the river, Chen Jian built a simple dam and aqueduct. The six-meter-high three-story drop canal can store the potential energy of the water at about [-] kilowatts, which is about half of the kinetic energy loss and [-]% of the normal mechanical loss. , Xiacheng's original wooden waterwheel is estimated to be [-] to [-]% left, and it can actually provide three to four horsepower after calculation.

In addition to the hydraulic machinery for blowing wind, Chen Jian also asked the carpenter to continue to make wooden waterwheels. As the same principle as the crank hammer for smashing wool felt, Chen Jian also built a crushing machine for crushing ore.

The ore cannot be in full contact with the charcoal without crushing, and it is not conducive to blasting nor the carbon to reduce the oxygen in the ore. The speed of manual smashing is too slow, which can save some manpower.

The crushing hammer is not far upstream of the smelting furnace, connected by a canal, transported by ships, and the charcoal has already been piled up there.

Proposed locks downstream of the canal are also being built, to allow ore-carrying ships to be able to deliver ore directly to the location of the crushing hammers.

Acorn has not been idle these days. Although the pottery kiln for daily necessities has been shut down, he is still in charge of firing ventilation pipes, and he also has to cooperate with the casting mold team and the brass parts team to prepare various materials needed for production. supplies.

Casting molds, raw materials, blasting, crushing, refractory clay bricks, foundations, rammed earth layers, pottery pipes, simple copper pulleys, rivets, connecting rods, castor oil for lubrication, salt and oil for quenching, stone rods for stirring pig iron, The plan may be a clay crucible for pouring steel, the plan may be a pig iron remelting crucible for rubbing pig iron on wrought iron, the plan may be a calciner for slow annealing so that graphite condenses and softens into castable malleable iron, and dozens of brick kilns and charcoal kilns are used to accumulate Masons who have mastered the technology and can easily issue vouchers for the arch structure, Chinese people with several years of bronze smelting experience, hundreds of workshop workers who are strong enough, calm down the anger and let the workshop workers see hope...

Basically, the preconditions to be done have been basically prepared. No matter whether the first iron smelting is raw or cooked, white or gray, the follow-up process is also ready.

Only the construction of the most important smelting furnace remained, and what surprised those Chinese people who smelted bronze was that while building the shaft furnace, Chen Jian also built something that he had never seen before smelting bronze.

The blast preheating chamber of the smelting furnace.

Chen Jian told them that this is very important.

1 Nineteen chapters supporting

There are about four ways to make the temperature of the smelting furnace sufficient.

More scientific blast furnace, more powerful blower, perfect coke, preheating of blast air in advance.

A more scientific blast furnace will have to wait for later generations, and it will take at least half a year for coke refining to succeed.

The limit of the high-power blower is estimated to be the same before the emergence of thermal power. Although a larger waterwheel can be made, the material science is not good enough, and it may be broken and damaged under tension and pressure. It is too difficult to make rolling bearings by hand. I don’t know if there is iron or not. It's not realistic either.

The only thing that could be improved is the preheating chamber.

Let the air blown into the blast furnace by the blower heat up in advance to ensure that the air that enters is not normal temperature air. This is a relatively feasible method at this stage.

This method is also feasible with earthen methods, which are similar to the fireplaces in houses today.

That is to build two rooms, pile up refractory blue bricks with gaps inside, and bake the refractory blue bricks.

After half an hour, it was determined that the green bricks in one room were hot enough, and then the green bricks in another room were heated.

The green bricks in the previous room heated the air in the room in advance within half an hour, at least making the temperature in the room reach about [-] degrees, and the blower blows the preheated air into the smelting furnace.

Although the temperature is not high, although it is only a mere [-] degrees, it is far from the [-] degrees required by the smelting furnace, but compared to the normal temperature of [-] to [-] degrees or even below zero Wendy, this [-] degrees can make the furnace temperature much higher. It is easy to achieve the desired effect.

Cost is not an issue Chen Jian needs to consider for the time being. All he wants is the first batch of iron, so he doesn't need to think about designing a way to recover heat from the exhaust gas of the smelting furnace and preheat it. He is afraid that the carbon monoxide inside will cause an explosion.

After the refractory blue bricks are estimated, the heat that each piece can hold is calculated, and the air quality that the blower can blow for half an hour is calculated. The volume of the entire preheating chamber does not need to be too large.

According to the experience of building a fireplace wall, the clay bricks are arranged in the preheating room, and the firepit for heating is dug out below.

After stacking, use coal to burn inside to sinter the clay inside to seal it. In case of possible cracking of the preheating chamber caused by thermal expansion and contraction, Chen Jian asked someone to carve some marks on the ground with a chisel, just like repairing in the previous life. The concrete road is divided at intervals, so he doesn't know if it will work, and he can't think of any other way.

A total of three sets of six rooms were built in the preheating room, two sets are used on weekdays, and one set is used as a replacement for special circumstances.It is impossible to stop the smelting furnace. Once the slag and molten iron condense inside, the entire furnace will be considered useless.

The smelting furnace was also built at the same time, and the ground had been dried before, so there was no need to worry about water seepage.He has experience in building bronze furnaces, and iron smelting furnaces are taller, larger and thicker. Chen Jian has basically drawn up the blueprints, but they are only at the level of rural local methods.

After various drills some time ago, the Planning and Statistics Department was basically able to handle the cooperation between various workshops, and also had some ways to deal with the resistance from the bottom. Chen Jian was able to devote himself to the Smelting Department.

Because the smelting department has too many things to do.

In addition to building smelting furnaces, various supporting facilities must also be built.

It is impossible to stir the iron slag outside after the smelted pig iron flows out. One is that there is still a lot of slag inside, and the iron slag will not separate after stirring.

The second is that as the carbon in the stirred pig iron gradually decreases, the melting point of the carbon-iron alloy will increase. At the same temperature, the pig iron will melt, but the wrought iron will condense.

Therefore, it is necessary to build a frying iron furnace, which is divided into two chambers.A fire is fired in one room to increase the temperature, and the other room holds the smelted and condensed pig iron, which is re-melted and then fried.

This is to obtain wrought iron that can be forged and hammered, this furnace must be built.

In addition to the iron frying furnace, an annealing furnace must be built.

Before the coke is fired by the local method, the temperature of the iron smelting furnace can never reach [-], and there is no way to make silicon dioxide and iron carbide react to form free silicon in liquid iron.The carbon in pig iron can only exist in the form of iron carbide, not graphite. This iron can only be cast and cannot be forged and hammered.

That is to say, even if it is to make agricultural tools, this kind of iron is disposable. It is impossible for a village blacksmith to smash the blade with a hammer or repair the blade of the plowshare. It can only be re-smelted. It's almost the same as bronze, and has no practical significance.

If you want the iron carbide inside to dialysis into graphite, you have to put the ironware at a temperature of [-] to [-] degrees after casting all kinds of utensils, and keep heating for about ten days, so that the inmalleable cast iron can be transformed into malleable. High-quality cast iron, with increased toughness, is truly practical ironware.

Therefore, it is necessary to build a special annealing stove according to the technology of firing pottery kilns. Castings within days will do.

After all three furnaces are completed, the theoretical iron smelting system will be completed.

But iron needs to be cast after smelting, which requires molds.There are basically only two types of casting molds in Xiacheng: lost wax and clay molds.

The disadvantages of these two methods are that they are too slow, and the molds are all one-off, so for mass production, Chen Jian plans to go directly to Tiefanfa.

It is to use iron to make the mold. After the molten iron is poured into the iron mold, because the heat conductivity of iron is very good, the surface of the molten iron will immediately condense into a film after pouring into the iron mold, just like... a balloon filled with water , or a raw egg with its shell removed.

As the internal molten iron cools, the casting will shrink, and eventually there will actually be a very thin gap between the mold and the mold, so there is no need to worry about the casting and the mold sticking together.

However, after the first batch of iron castings are produced, the first batch of cast iron plowshares still needs to be based on clay molds.

Then use the formed cast iron plowshare and mud to make a mud mold that perfectly fits the cast iron plowshare, which is divided into upper and lower layers. These two layers of clay molds are called the upper mold and the lower mold.

If we want to find a way to turn the upper and lower fans into iron, we need a mold that can make the upper and lower fans.To get one, you need to use a mold like the two, but the mold like the two is made of clay at the beginning, you need to use the two as an imaginary casting to make three molds, and finally melt and cast it into the iron two, which is considered the final completion.

The steps are very complicated, and there is a circle in the way of thinking. Compared with the previous clay modeling method or lost wax method, it takes one more step to think about, but it is not difficult to operate, and sometimes it is a simple matter.

The castings used as samples must be fine, so the clay molds used to cast the first batch of samples are all made of lost wax method, as perfect as possible, and even a simple plowshare needs many different types.

The land near Xiacheng is relatively hard, while the land on both sides of the river is relatively soft, so the two types of plowshares are not the same.

At the same time, a fender is needed on the plowshare to divide the soil reclaimed by the plowshare to both sides of the furrow. It used to be made of wood, but now it can also be made of iron.

Hoes, picks, cutting knives, tile knives, woodworking planers, and mortise and tenon chisels can all be directly cast with pig iron.However, sickles, saws, and scissors are best made with wrought iron. After hammering, the pig iron bar is burned to a semi-melted state, and rubbed on the cutting edge. The combination of high and low carbon can also be regarded as a wrought iron steel blade.

Of course, in addition to these agricultural tools, there are also pig iron ignition grenades with cast iron shells, and a special mold group is also in the process of making them. The effect should be similar to that of the previous life's Borderlands, but the Borderlands is at least used to pull fires. Here we can only play with ignitions. , the cost of copper wire and glass powder is too high, and the internal structure is too fine.

The granulation of gunpowder is also in the plan for next year. In addition, as a short-range projectile, the weight can be increased appropriately, and the cast iron fragment grooves are reserved in advance. The power should be OK.The combination of field battles and chariots should have miraculous effects, and city defense is even more powerful.