Material Empire

Cui Hongchun really had no choice, so he took the rotary tillage blade as a life-saving straw. The best way to let the superiors see the results in the shortest possible time is to make an appearance at such an international exhibition. Given the level of China's agricultural machinery technology back then, it was undoubtedly very difficult to win an award in this kind of competition. However, the rotary cultivator blades from Qingfeng Factory gave Cui Hongchun a glimmer of hope. After all, this kind of blade can enter the Japanese market. Although its service life has only reached the average level of similar products in Japan, with such a foundation, if you work harder, can you create a miracle?

Cui Hongchun didn't have much confidence in this point, so he needed to ask Chen Heqian and Qin Hai to evaluate it. He has already figured it out, as long as the two think it is possible, he will try his best to meet whatever conditions are required. To put it bluntly, what he wants to do is a performance project. This is the case in China, as long as this performance project is completed, the follow-up work will be smooth.

"This... I'm afraid it's a bit difficult." Chen Heqian frowned, and poured cold water on Cui Hongchun's head.

"What's the difficulty, Professor Chen, please tell me." The muscles on Cui Hongchun's face twitched slightly, but he still asked Chen Heqian calmly.

Chen Heqian said: "I haven't personally observed the blades of the rotary tiller in Qingfeng Factory, but I heard Xiaoqin introduce the whole process to me. Qingfeng Factory can increase the service life of the blades of the rotary tiller by nearly 500 mu. There are two main improvements. First, they re-smelted the purchased steel to increase the strength of the steel; second, they introduced a high-frequency surfacing process, covering the cutter head with a layer of high wear-resistant metal .”

"Well, Xiao Qin also introduced this situation to me." Cui Hongchun nodded.

Chen Heqian continued: "To further improve the durability of the blade, we still need to start from these two aspects. One is to further improve the steel formula, and the other is to improve the solder composition for surfacing. As far as I know, Qingfeng Factory They have already made some attempts, and what they can do so far is already their acme. Of course, there may be some improvements in the future, but it may be difficult to make a substantial improvement."

"Xiao Qin, is that so?" Cui Hongchun turned to Qin Hai and asked.

Qin Haidao: "I have roughly thought about it. If the cost cannot be greatly increased, there is not much room for improvement of the blade steel. The solder for surfacing welding can be optimized, but this requires experiments. If everything goes well, we will It is possible to increase the service life of the blade from the current 1200 mu to about 1500 mu, reaching a higher level of similar products in the Japanese market. But..."

"1,500 mu... This level is completely incomparable with the international advanced level." Secretary Li Yang continued coldly from the side. Cui Hongchun has been thinking about this matter these days, and Li Yang, who is a secretary, naturally has to study this issue in depth. According to the information he has seen, some agricultural machinery manufacturers in Japan and France have been able to increase the service life of the rotary cultivator blades to more than 2,000 acres. If Qin Hai only produced 1,500 acres, he would not be able to compete at all.

When Qin Hai said "but", he was actually thinking about this issue. He knows that the service life of better rotary tiller blades in the Japanese market is about 1,500 mu, but this is only a product sold on the market, and the highest-end technology possessed by the manufacturer must be more than that. For this gap, he is also helpless, because the more he goes to the high end, the more precise technical details are needed, which cannot be solved by the memory fragments he brought from later generations.

As far as the surfacing technology is concerned, he knows how to use this technology, but when it comes to the solder formula, he can only continue to explore. Foreign manufacturers have been groping in this area for many years, and the gap between Qingfeng Factory and others is really too big.

"Secretary Li, as far as you know, what is the service life of the blades of the rotary tiller before it can get a better ranking in international competitions?" Qin Hai asked Li Yang.

"Not less than 2,000 mu." Li Yang said, after all, he added: "This is also limited to the information that can be obtained through public channels. I think that if it is to participate in the competition, some manufacturers may be able to get Produce products with a lifespan of 2,500 mu or even longer."

"This means that we have to double the current level. This...is almost impossible." Chen Heqian said. He also intentionally made the difficulty higher so as not to put too much pressure on Qin Hai from Cui Hongchun.

"Twice as much..." Qin Hai pondered.

"The Ministry can provide you with all the necessary conditions." Cui Hongchun reminded, and he was beginning to retreat, but since Qin Hai hadn't explicitly retreated, he still wanted to try harder. In his heart, he faintly felt that Qin Hai might be a person who could create miracles.

"If you want to double the improvement, you won't be able to rely on the surfacing process." Qin Hai said softly.

Hearing this, Cui Hongchun was a little disappointed, but Chen Heqian's eyes lit up: "Xiao Qin, you mean, are you considering using other techniques?"

Surfacing welding is only one of the methods to improve the wear resistance of cutting tools. Since Qin Hai said that the surfacing welding process cannot be used, it means that other processes are still possible. Only people like Chen Heqian who have a tacit understanding with Qin Hai can hear the subtext in Qin Hai's words.

Qin Hai smiled and said under cover: "I have some ideas, but I'm still very immature."

In fact, Qin Hai had already thought of an excellent solution at that moment, but it was not convenient to say it in public. Because this program involves a new material technology that is still very immature: thermal spraying technology.

Rotary tillage blades are used to cultivate the land. Although the material of the blades is steel, they will still wear out after long-term friction in the soil, until they are scrapped. In order to improve the wear resistance of the blade, it is necessary to attach some highly wear-resistant materials to the tip of the blade. This kind of material is not difficult to find, the difficulty is how to bond this material to the body of the knife.

The surfacing welding technology that Qin Hai used before is a method of bonding materials. The principle of this method is to mix the wear-resistant material with iron powder to form solder, then apply the solder to the cutter head, heat the solder to melt it, and fuse it with the cutter body.

The wear-resistant materials used in surfacing technology have higher wear resistance than ordinary steel, but they are far from the ideal level. In the field of materials, the material with the best wear resistance is ceramics. If ceramics can be used as the edge material, the wear resistance of the blade will be doubled.

The problem is that, although people know that ceramics can improve wear resistance, they can't find a way to combine ceramics with steel. Ceramics have a much higher melting point than metals and cannot be treated with overlay welding. At that time, the United States, Britain and other countries had already developed ceramic knife heads, but they could only use high-strength resin to stick it to the knife. The wear resistance of the glued cutter head is sufficient, but it is conceivable that its impact resistance is extremely weak. After all, the strength of resin bonding is not the same as that of welding.

Thermal spraying technology is a new material coating technology, its principle is also very simple, that is to heat the spray material such as ceramic particles to a plastic or molten state, and then spray it on the surface of the pretreated substrate, On the premise that the substrate remains unmelted, the spraying material is attached to the substrate to form a coating with special properties.

To put it more simply, it is equivalent to putting the material to be attached in a gun and firing it towards the substrate, so that the material is shot into the substrate like a bullet to form a coating.

The origin of spraying technology can be traced back to 1909, a Swiss youth invented zinc metal spraying technology. In the following 70 or 80 years, spraying technology has been developing, and it has been widely used in the field of aviation and aerospace. But at this stage, the spraying process is still very complicated, especially the technical requirements for forming a ceramic coating are still very high, and it is only used in high-end equipment manufacturing.

In 1982, SKS Corporation of the United States developed the technology of using high-speed flame spray gun to realize thermal spraying, which lowered the threshold of thermal spraying. In the next ten years, the high-speed flame spray gun spraying technology has been greatly developed, so that the thermal spraying technology has stepped down from the altar and entered the production field of ordinary products.

Qin Hai is very familiar with the history of this period of technological development. He knows that countries around the world are still in the groping stage of thermal spraying technology, and it is impossible to talk about using this advanced technology on agricultural machinery and tools. If he can take the lead in applying this technology, he will be able to rely on the technical gap to leave his competitors far behind.

If he can really stand out in the basic parts competition, for Cui Hongchun, he can earn a great honor, and for Qin Hai, he can develop his own technology brand and take the lead in thermal spraying technology machine. The agricultural machinery market is actually only a small market. Once the thermal spraying process is widely used, its market value is immeasurable.

Of course, Qin Hai would not reveal such an idea to Cui Hongchun in advance, and because he didn't want to explain it to Chen Heqian in advance, how could this old man get excited and start to do it by himself? Qin Hai has countless technical essentials of thermal spraying technology in his stomach, and he doesn't want to give such a big piece of fat to Chen Heqian for no reason.

Cui Hongchun guessed what Qin Hai was thinking, and he felt a little helpless for this young man who was obsessed with making money. If Qin Hai had any political demands, he could exchange political interests with Qin Hai, but now it seems that Qin Hai has no intention of doing so, and he has no other options.

"Xiao Qin, are you really sure that you can produce a knife that can participate in the competition within three months?" Cui Hongchun asked.

"I'm 80% sure." Qin Hai said in a low-key manner. When he thought about the thermal spraying process, he knew that he was at least ninety-nine percent sure that he would be able to get a place in the competition, unless the world changed and foreigners also solved some core problems in this process in advance. Thus come up with the same product.

Some content on materials and craftsmanship is definitely not what Du Niang said, but Cheng Zi summed it up while reading the book, I hope I am not wrong. Let's forget about the technical details that are too detailed. For novels, it's fine if there are no major mistakes.