Chapter 1088 Progress of the Brewery

Everyone looked around the threshing ground of the farm again and checked the preparations for various measures. After seeing that there were no problems, Luo Chong prepared to leave.

He was the leader of the Han tribe and had a lot of things to do. It was impossible for him to stay here and watch how to collect grain. However, She Xin had other plans and was ready to take Luo Chong to another place.

"Chief, there has been progress at the brewery. Do you want to go and take a look?"

"Huh? There has been progress? What progress?" Luo Chong turned his head and looked at him and asked.

"Now the foundation of the entire factory area has been completed, the ground has been hardened with cement, the water supply and drainage system has been installed, and two large factory buildings have been built. The research institute has begun to design the production line inside, and the glass bottle canning, stamping and capping that the leader mentioned have also been completed." She Xin immediately reported the situation.

"Oh? The capping machine and the filling line have been made? We must go and have a look."

Luo Chong was interested when he heard it. That was beer in glass bottles. He had never seen this kind of industrial beverage since he traveled to this world for nearly ten years. How could he not go and have a look?

"When are we going, then, Chief?" She Xin asked again.

Luo Chong looked up at the sky. It was already around four o'clock in the afternoon. Even if they set out for the brewery now, they would probably arrive at five or six o'clock, and they wouldn't be able to see anything. So he said, "Let's not go today. Let's stay at your Liuyang County government office for one night. We'll go there tomorrow morning after dinner."

"Okay, I'll make arrangements." She Xin nodded in agreement.

It was still early in the evening, and Luo Chong suggested going to the farm under the farm. Anyway, it was not far away, and everyone agreed, so the group set off again.

The farm was still carrying out the tasks that Luo Chong had assigned before, and there was still not much change this time.

The new breed of beef cattle that Luo Chong asked them to breed are still in the belly of the cows. It seems that they may not be able to give birth this year. The several breeders in the cowshed have the task of taking care of these cows waiting to give birth wholeheartedly.

Fortunately, the breeders are herdsmen transferred from Kaiyuan County on the grassland. They are very experienced in raising cattle, so the problem is not big.

On the other side, the research project here in the pigpen is also ongoing.

Luo Chong asked them to try to castrate piglets and raise a batch of castrated pigs. He also asked them to summarize their experience, from feed to growth process, and the habits of castrated piglets, etc. Now these eunuch pigs are getting bigger and bigger, directly opening a big gap with other piglets born in the same batch, which proves the point Luo Chong made before.

Castrated animals are lazy, do not go into heat, do not make noise, do not like to move, sleep when they are full, and eat when they wake up, so they grow fat quickly.

However, these pigs are not ready for sale yet, so they have to be raised. By comparing the data, we can determine how long the castrated pigs should be raised, and then how many cycles they should be put on the market for sale. In the future, such pigs may be raised on a large scale, and finally sent directly to the factory to be made into various canned pork, sausages and other items.

The remaining is the most stable project of the farm, the enclosure of sheep, which is the most stable project of the farm at this time. The reason for raising these sheep is to consume the grain straw grown in the farm's mechanized fields, and to produce some livestock manure, which will be fermented into fertilizer and then used to fertilize the mechanized fields.

After walking around the farm, it was time for dinner in the evening. Luo Chong bought a few sheep and took them to the Liuyang County Office to let everyone eat meat. Although everyone usually ate meat, this was the guest invited by the leader, so they were still very happy.

After staying in the backyard of the Liuyang County government office for one night, everyone had breakfast the next morning and started to run towards the brewery in the north of Liuyang County's main city.

It took more than an hour on the road. When they arrived at the outskirts of the brewery, Luo Chong directly ordered everyone to dismount and walk into the factory area.

This was because he saw the newly made cement floor of the brewery from a distance. Horse hooves would cause huge wear and tear when walking on such a paved road. It was also for the good of the horses not to let the horses come.

Leading everyone to walk to the brewery, it now looks very open, because there is no wall or gate here for the time being. There is only a gray and white bare cement ground, covered with two tall factory buildings, and two tractors parked here, and nothing else.

When Luo Chong and his team walked towards the brewery, some temporary staff here also looked over. Seeing Luo Chong, the leader, everyone greeted him.

At this time, there were no brewers in the brewery. Those who stayed here were all construction teams from Xingang County. They were responsible for the construction of reinforced concrete structures. There were not many people in the Han tribe who mastered the craft of pouring concrete.

In addition, the remaining people were researchers from Xingang County Research Institute who came to debug machinery and design production lines. If they were called in modern terms, they could actually be called mechanical engineers.

They also provided some suggestions for the construction of the factory. For example, the researchers who were developing the production line must first predict the size, height, length, and floor space of the production line on the drawings, and then leave a certain amount of margin. Then, they would tell the people in charge of the factory construction this data, so that they would know how big the factory workshop should be.

When Luo Chong walked into the factory, he felt that it was very empty. There were only a few green-painted machines temporarily placed in the corner near the door.

"Didn't you say there is a capping machine here? Where is it? Show me." Luo Chong asked directly.

"Head, here, I came to see this thing once when it was first delivered. It's very powerful." She Xin responded and took Luo Chong to the several stamping machines in the corner. The stamping machines looked very old and were obviously not new, but some of the parts on them were very new. Even a fool could tell that they were added later.

Well, this should be a capping machine directly modified from an old stamping machine.

Luo Chong immediately made a judgment in his mind.

"Chief, please look, this is the capping machine. I heard it's just a model machine for testing, but it can also do what the chief said, punching a piece of iron into a bottle cap, padding it with a layer of milky white rubber sealing gasket, and then tightening the bottle cap on the bottle mouth. I heard they made many improvements before they succeeded." She Xin immediately introduced it.

Luo Chong walked around the machines twice, just nodded from time to time, but didn't express any opinions. After She Xin finished introducing it, Luo Chong asked him.

"Is the person in charge of the capping machine here? If so, call him over and introduce these machines to me."

Luo Chong has always been based on the concept of letting professionals do professional things. She Xin is an administrative official, he knows nothing about machinery, what's the point of just listening to this guy bragging here. What

Luo Chong needs to know is whether this machine can be used, if it can be used, when can it be equipped in batches, if it can't be used, then what problems have been encountered, tell me, maybe Luo Chong can help solve it.

Seeing that Luo Chong had no interest in listening to him, She Xin went to find the researcher in charge of the capping machine. He was not a project leader, but just a team member. Fortunately, he knew everything about capping, so it was no problem for him to introduce it to Luo Chong.

"Chief, this is a machine we modified using two old-fashioned stamping machines. We first stamped out iron sheets from iron sheets, and then stamped the iron sheets into bottle caps. In addition, we added a gluing device to the bottle cap stamping process.

" "That is to say, the step of sticking the rubber sealing gasket is carried out together with the stamping. We initially adopted the thermal bonding technology, which uses heating to stick the sealing gasket on itself.

"After this step is completed, the iron sheet has become a bottle cap with a pleated skirt, and a rubber seal has been attached inside. Finally, a shrinking machine is used to clamp the bottle cap on the bottle mouth.

"We have a bottle with a cap that has been made here. The leader can check the effect. At present, no problems have been found in our own tests. Safety is absolutely guaranteed. It's just that we don't have real beer for the experiment. I heard that the beer seems to have bubbles in it. I don't know if it will affect the bottle cap."

Luo Chong nodded and asked again, "Did you encounter any problems in the process of research and development? Is this the final product you finalized? Do you have to make new production equipment when you really equip it in the future?"

"Yes, this is a prototype model used for experiments, otherwise we wouldn't modify the old stamping machine, but these two prototypes have completed all our experiments and are qualified. When they are officially equipped in the future, they will definitely be new machines. I heard from our team leader that when the production line is officially equipped, many copper-plated parts will be used on it. I don't know why.

"As for the problems encountered during the research and development, there are actually no unsolvable problems in terms of stamping. It's just stamping a bottle cap, which is not difficult. On the contrary, we encountered some troubles when rolling the cap to hoop the bottle mouth, but now they have all been solved." The researcher explained again.

"Oh? What's the problem? The bottle is not strong enough?" Luo Chong asked speculatively.

"The leader is really amazing. He can guess the reason even if he has never seen it. The bottle is not strong enough. Their glass factory made a new mold on our side, and it seems that they used less material or something. I heard that the thickness of the bottle is not enough. In the end, the bottle mouth often broke when rolling the cap. Later, after we reported the situation, they made a new batch of bottles for us, which solved the problem."

Luo Chong nodded. He was worried when he first proposed this, but he didn't expect that there would be a problem in the end. Fortunately, they solved it themselves and didn't let Luo Chong worry more.

After understanding the capping equipment in front of him, Luo Chong looked at the empty factory workshop and asked again.

"How much do you know about the filling line and the fermentation equipment? Do you know the progress there?"

The researcher thought about it and hesitated for a long time before saying, "I don't know much about this, but I know that they quarrel all day long. Some people say that the leader's requirements are too difficult and it is difficult for them to do it. Even if they really want to do it, they have to consume huge resources. It's not worth it just to make a bottle of wine."

"Oh?" Luo Chong raised his eyebrows and became interested. "What is the point of their dispute? Are the requirements I raised difficult to achieve?"

The young researcher hesitated for a long time before making up his mind and said, "To reply to the leader, it is difficult. You require all brewing equipment and canning production lines. All parts that need to come into direct contact with raw materials must be copper-plated on the surface, but it is really difficult to copper-plate.

"Take the fermentation tank for example. I heard that a tank is about the same size as a ship. How can such a large workpiece be chemically copper-plated? The chemical copper plating technology currently used by our Han tribe is actually to boil the workpiece in potion, but if we want to copper-plate a ship, how big a pot would we need?

“Another thing is that the copper-plated surface is actually not strong and has poor wear resistance. It may not take long for the surface coating to be worn away, so they came up with another idea, which is to use a new type of bronze alloy material to make the production line instead of copper-plating the workpiece.

“They can definitely do it this way, but if they want to build a whole production line, they need too much copper. A few days ago, Babaoshan sent another batch of copper ore. We sent most of it to the mint after smelting, and the rest was taken away by the weapons project team, saying that they would use it to produce bullet casings. We simply cannot come up with that much copper to make this beer production line now.” "

Perhaps the young researcher was bold enough to complain in front of Luo Chong, who frowned repeatedly.

It was not that Luo Chong was angry with them, but he was reflecting on his own mistakes. With the improvement of the equipment rate of the Han tribe's firearms army and the emergence of machine guns and other rapid-fire weapons, the consumption of bullets used by the Han tribe was getting bigger and bigger. In addition, the Han tribe was still using copper coins as currency, and the tribe's copper production, which was not much, was almost directly divided up.

Copper plating is not wear-resistant and is not easy to make. Just like the young researcher said, chemical copper plating is actually boiling it in potion. The problem is that the Han tribe doesn't even have such a big pot, how can you boil it?

Luo Chong thought too simply.

He pondered for a while, and then said to the young researcher.

"Well, you go back and tell them my order, asking them not to consider copper plating or new bronze alloy materials for the time being. I'll see if I can ask the Comprehensive Research Institute to come up with a new type of corrosion-resistant steel, which will save you the trouble. "

At this moment, the idea of ​​making stainless steel suddenly popped up in Luo Chong's mind.

(End of this chapter)