Chapter 251: The Machinery Factory

To be honest, Yao Zhesheng was unwilling to let that bunch of chemistry dogs led by Hong Xu off the hook so easily. But as Zou Guoqing had said, things had already come to this — could they really tear out all those chemical pipes?

So Yao Zhesheng was a bit frustrated. He had studied machinery and was not very proficient in chemical equipment; this time, those bastards had found a loophole. In the end, once he figured out that this matter could only be avenged in a gentleman's fashion, he could only shake his head helplessly and accept the loss.

After carefully recording the accounts in his mind, Yao Zhesheng pulled himself together and began following Old Zou on an inspection tour of the machinery factory.

The General Machinery Factory was one of the core departments of the Kiln Area Base. It gathered all the imported and non-imported machine tools the Crossing Faction had acquired to date, producing a wide variety of mechanical products every month.

Just like the old state-run factories of later generations, the General Machinery Factory set up by the Transmigrators in the Kiln District was fully equipped with everything it needed.

This large factory, exceeding 1,000 people, had not only various workshops and warehouses but also essential functional buildings like an administrative building, a mess hall, a bathhouse, dormitories, an emergency room, and cultural studies classrooms.

As Yao Zhesheng walked along the cement-paved factory road, workers wearing blue hemp canvas work uniforms and rattan safety helmets, pushing simple slide-rail carts, passed by him from time to time.

The machinery factory's formal workshops were also very comprehensive in content. Not only were there machining workshops No. 1, 2, and 3, graded by equipment, but also auxiliary workshops for heat treatment and forging.

Most of the "self-produced" equipment was in Workshop No. 1, so this was an Apprentice's paradise. Much like many products of the rabbit in later generations, the so-called "self-produced" items actually had core components that were imported.

The most critical lead screws and stepper motors for machine tools were still beyond the Transmigrators' ability to manufacture. Or rather, the quality of those forcibly produced could only be met with a wry chuckle. Fortunately, the volume of these two critical items was not large; otherwise, this machinery factory in the Kiln District truly could not have been set up.

One part of Workshop No. 1 consisted of these "fully self-produced machine tools" used for training Apprentices. Beside these few crudely styled machines, piles of various metal offcuts were stacked; they were made entirely of self-produced parts and had to endure the Apprentices' rough handling every day.

The Apprentices varied greatly in age. In the wildly expanding immigration environment of Dayuan, everything was in a state of rampant growth, so middle-aged and elderly Apprentices with shaved heads and wrinkled faces were numerous in every factory.

These people came from all kinds of trades. Carpenters, blacksmiths, stonemasons, locksmiths, bamboo weavers — in short, any craftsman who came from the Ming Dynasty would get an opportunity to enter a factory for an internship and selection.

Traditional craftsmen had never seen the wide variety of machines and equipment, so before they completed their apprenticeship, no one knew which position suited them. These Apprentices would, like medical interns, first rotate through multiple posts. After this, they would be assigned work based on their personal interests and the capability they demonstrated during learning.

This was the scene Yao Zhesheng and the others saw upon entering Workshop No. 1: three generations of Apprentices — old, middle-aged, and young — gathered around a few simple lathes practicing, while young Native "master workers" wearing yellow-painted helmets were instructing them.

The remaining lathes in Workshop No. 1 were all ordinary goods. These homemade machines DIYed by the Industrial Party members were ugly in appearance but complete in variety; all sorts of boring, milling, planing, and grinding machines were present, lying there like two rows of pitch-black bears, occasionally emitting various strange sounds.

These two rows of machine tools were the "agricultural machinery backbone" of the Crossing Faction's booming development. Almost all machinery that did not require precision parts, including various agricultural machinery and small equipment like brick making machines, was currently produced by these lathes.

These machine tools shared one common characteristic — their beds, the most material-intensive part, were all made of marble.

Marble has a precise structure, uniform texture, good stability, high strength, and high hardness; it does not rust, resists acid and alkali, is non-magnetic, does not deform, and has good wear resistance, making it an excellent material for machine tool beds.

As long as it is not a type of machine tool requiring heavy impact, marble can in fact be used for the bed. And all this marble was manually carried out from the Central Mountain Range.

Site survey, wood cutting, blasting, quarrying, transport — only after the South Seas Slaves paid a continuous price in death were the giant blocks of marble carried out of the deep mountains by slave labor crews of several dozen people using wooden poles and hemp ropes.

Once this marble arrived at the Kiln District, after grinding and shaping, it would be fitted with other accessories to become a standard machine tool capable of producing parts.

The operators of the machine tools were all Ming Natives. Without exception, these people were apprentices brought out by the Industrial Party members during the early pioneering days; now, they had all become the backbone of their respective factories.

However, speaking of which, the difficulty of training a machine tool operator was much easier than training a chemistry dog.

The machining industry's requirements for personnel quality are actually not high. In the late Qing period, many foreigners had already opened factories on the Shanghai Bund, and most of the workers inside were actually illiterate.

After this, during the founding period of the rabbit, the young workers recruited into factories from the countryside in large numbers were also mostly illiterate or semi-literate; all of these people's technical and cultural knowledge was gradually supplemented only after entering the factory.

The Transmigrators were no exception here; the Newcomers they received were likewise mostly illiterate, even if these people originally made a living by their craftsmanship. The only difference here was that the machining industry is intuitive. After the initial "astonishment," Newcomers could quickly understand the principle of the cutting tool head machining a workpiece.

Chemistry, however, was different. Without foundational theoretical knowledge as a base, getting these people to imagine the various chemical reactions inside a high-pressure vessel out of thin air was fundamentally impossible.

This was the reason the machinery factory could now flourish — the shortage of skilled workers was not as severe as in the chemical plant.

Under a master's guidance, an ordinary Apprentice could usually independently cut simple workpieces in about half a month. And among those who had been following behind the Transmigrators to learn knowledge since over a year ago, some were already able to operate the CNC machine tools in Workshop No. 2 and input some machining programs into the main computer.

This was the industry threshold; those playing with chemistry for one year had not even graduated from their studies yet.

Workshop No. 2 was the CNC workshop. Placed here were some imported CNC lathes. The "domestication rate" of these lathes was quite low; apart from some cast iron and marble bases, the vast majority of components, including guide rails, spindles, lead screws, motors, and computer operating systems, were imported.

And some of the "precision instruments" the Transmigration Nation currently used were produced by them. For example, most industrial gears, and for example, the old-style wood-gas engines that rumbled every day, clumsy as oxen, carrying two iron furnaces as their power source.