Xiao Heng has been doing the pre-research work on steam engines for a long time, and the more critical technologies have made certain breakthroughs. The main problem that troubles them now is that the processing accuracy and accuracy are somewhat inconsistent.

At this time, a small steam engine had been running for more than 3 hours. Xiao Heng took advantage of the steam engine running and testing and went to school to attend a class, and then went to the laboratory to assign new experimental projects to the students. Finally, when he came back, he saw Wang Tiechhui squatting in front of the small steam engine with a big bowl and eating.

"Wow, it smells so good, what are you eating?" Xiao Heng looked at the operation of the steam engine and thought it was OK, so he began to care about what was in Wang Tiech's rice bowl.

"Plum vegetable buckles." Wang Tiehui grinned, turned around and continued to stare at the small steam engine while squeezing the rice.

"Oh! Hard food! Watch me serve rice first..." Xiao Heng hasn't eaten yet. Although the food at the school is good, he was afraid that there would be any problems with the steam engine, so he came back and took a look.

When Xiao Heng saw that the steam engine was running normally, he felt relieved. He went to the kitchen to serve a large bowl of rice, picked up several pieces of fat meat slices and put them on the rice, and finally poured it with gravy... Don't mention the fragrance.

After Xiao Heng came back, he squatted beside the steam engine and started to squeeze the rice into his mouth.

The steam engine in front of me is mainly composed of two parts, part of which is the part of the high-pressure boiler... Overall, this part is almost a gas tank, with the lower half of which is lit, and the scorching flames licking the tank body, dyeing it a layer of smoke black.

The upper half of this "gas tank" has a lid similar to a pressure cooker. The lid and the edges of the tank are protruded in a circle, and then riveted with sealing rivets.

Originally, special insulation rubber should have been used between the lid and the can, but Xiao Heng and others now don’t even have ordinary rubber, so they were forced to use specially treated leather materials.

This is the material that Xiao Heng accidentally slapped his forehead while wandering around the Internet, and then searched the Internet and found that in modern times, leather is actually used as a sealing material... At least for the time being, the effect of this leather seal is quite good, and there is no air leakage between the boiler cylinder and the lid.

Two pipes are riveted on the lid of the high-pressure boiler, one of which is the water inlet pipe and the other is the air outlet pipe.

The small device next to these two metal tubes is a pressure-reducing valve. The function of this thing is somewhat similar to the small parts on the pressure cooker that will jump. It mainly discharges part of the steam first before the pressure in the boiler exceeds the design pressure to reduce the pressure in the boiler and reduce the risk of explosion.

After all, the high-pressure boiler is filled with high-temperature water vapor, and as long as a small mouth is exposed and sprayed onto a person, it will be severely scalded.

High-pressure boilers provide high-pressure water vapor, and the power mechanism that converts the internal energy of these water vapor into mechanical energy is a power mechanism - a single-cylinder reciprocating engine.

The hot water vapor pushes the piston of the single cylinder outwards, and the piston drives the connecting rod and finally pushes the crankshaft to rotate... This is the simplest reciprocating engine.

In order to load the steam engine, the engine itself also had a belt hanging, pulling the millstone not far away and turning it around... Several servants were busy adding soybeans to it.

Anyway, tofu is always ground, and the consumption of protein in the military camp is amazing. Basically, I have to eat a few pigs or an equal amount of other meat every day, which has not added the consumption of poultry and eggs.

As an excellent and cheap source of protein, tofu is only a small amount, and it is not enough to eat it for those strong men with big and thick skin.

At first, these servants had awe of the steam engine, but after they gradually became familiar with the noise of the steam engine and the white mist that erupted from time to time, they soon realized the benefits of the steam engine - although this machine was swallowing clouds and spitting mist, it didn't know how tired it was when it stayed asleep, and it was even easier to use than the most powerful cow!

This is the case for ordinary people... As long as you know that this thing is easy to use, you don’t care what the principle behind it is? Water vapor, the Kitchen God or any god in any place are good, as long as it can be used and easy to use.

Even the repetitive and boring noise of the single-cylinder reciprocating engine seems to be pleasant.

Although this kind of engine is the simplest structure of all engines, it also took Xiao Heng a lot of energy. The biggest problem is still the sealing.

Before checking the information, Xiao Heng always believed that there was hard friction between the piston and the cylinder. If it was hard friction, the accuracy would be very, very high to ensure that there was no air leakage, so he had been struggling with this matter for a long time.

But after he looked up some information about the engine, he realized that he was wrong, and it was outrageously wrong. If it was so precise that the gas molecules had no escape, the friction between the cylinder and the piston would become extremely amazing! Even if it was done, it would not be practical!

Besides, if it is really hard friction, as long as the machine runs for half an hour, the gap will be so large that the steam will be sprayed out directly... After all, friction is depleted!

There is actually a certain gap between the real cylinder and the piston. As for the seal, three sealing rings are installed on the piston to solve the problem.

Naturally, this sealing ring also has to be made of leather material.

In the test of seal rings, Xiao Heng tried to increase and reduce the number of seal rings, and found that if there are less than three, air leakage is prone to affect the power, while more than three seal rings will cause friction to increase, and finally the temperature of the seal ring rises too quickly, resulting in additional wear.

Between the cylinder and the piston is grease... On the one hand, the oil film can increase lubrication and reduce wear on the inner wall of the cylinder, and on the other hand, it can also provide a certain sealing ability.

In this way, when steam is injected into the cylinder, the piston is pushed forward and finally pushes the millstone to rotate. When the piston reaches its limit, it will touch the mechanism, and the air inlet closes the exhaust port and opens... As the flywheel rotates inertia, the piston is pushed back to its original position, and the water vapor inside is directly discharged as the exhaust hole is opened.

When the piston returns to its original location, it will still touch the mechanism. At this time, the air inlet is opened and the exhaust is closed... In this way, the whole system will be driven.

In fact, if you want to do better, the steam discharged directly can still be recycled. But now Xiao Heng just wants to solve the problem first and then optimize it to improve efficiency.

After Xiao Heng finished his meal, the entire system had been running for more than 4 hours, and he had been performing well at this time without any problems.

"Okay, okay, you guys are fine... no need to grind it anymore." Xiao Heng stood up and clapped his hands, signaling the servants to look over, "Thank you all, I'll be here first today. If I need it tomorrow, I'll go find you."

The servants saluted and then packed up their things and left with buckets of soy milk and bags of soybean dregs.

Xiao Heng and Wang Tiechhui first put out the fire, then lowered the pressure of the high-pressure boiler... After waiting for a long time, the high-pressure boiler was cooled to the point where it could be contacted by hand.

"How much distilled water is consumed in total?" Xiao Heng asked.

If ordinary river water is used in this boiler, a large amount of scale will soon accumulate in the boiler wall, which will eventually affect the combustion efficiency of the entire system.

"About... about three barrels." Wang Tiehai patted the wooden barrel next to him.

"Three barrels in four hours... This consumption is a bit too high." Xiao Heng frowned slightly.

Although the distilled water is available as long as the boiler is opened, Xiao Heng and his three bathhouse boilers produce a large amount of distilled water every day. Some of them are consumed as high-end brewing water, and the remaining amount is still a lot. Such a small steam engine is simply useless.

However, if it is used on a large scale or in places where there is no supply, such as ships, the consumption will be a bit too high.

"It really doesn't work... I can only use river water. At worst, I can clean it once in a while, just like the boiler in the bathhouse." Wang Tiechui said.

"Well, that's all." Xiao Heng nodded and came to the engine, "Come on, help me take it apart and see the wear."

"good."

The two of them first removed the heavy flywheel and then removed the piston.

"Hiss... the wear is a bit big!" Xiao Heng was surprised when he saw the worn noodles, but the wear part was a little different from what he expected.

He had thought that the most worn part should be the seal ring on the piston, but in fact the most worn part is the part connecting the piston and the connecting rod - although this part has been oiled and polished, when this part is hard friction!

The most severe wear part is the part connecting the connecting rod and the crankshaft, and some of the areas have obvious wear marks.

In fact, this is no wonder. After all, these two parts are the most direct part of bearing capacity, and the production of special steel on Xiao Heng and others has always been a problem.

After all, heat treatment is not omnipotent, and no matter how well the heat treatment is done, it cannot overcome the performance defects of the material itself.

Xiao Heng and his team's current heat treatment technology is very mature, and various temperature controls are better, but even so, the water truck still has a certain gear teeth broken from time to time.

The wear on this connecting rod is similar to that of the gears. Although heat treatment can improve some material performance, Xiao Heng expects that there will be no improvement in this part of the product...

In fact, the biggest problem is not the wear of the connecting rod, but the wear of the crankshaft!

The manufacturing of the connecting rod itself is actually not difficult, but the processing of the crankshaft is somewhat technically difficult. Its own requirements for accuracy are relatively high. The yield rate of ordinary workers is extremely low, and only the yield rate of the master can be seen.

If this problem is not solved, there will be obstacles to the large-scale use of steam engines.

"Young Master?" Wang Tiechui saw Xiao Heng holding the crankshaft in a daze, and couldn't help but ask tentatively.

"It's okay... I remember that the crankshaft and connecting rod were not heat treated, right?" Xiao Heng asked.

"This... was not done." Wang Tiechhui scratched his head.

"Don't be nervous, it's not your problem, it's me that I didn't expect." Xiao Heng smiled, his expression softened, "When you look back and rebuild the connecting rod and crankshaft, it's a heat treatment for them..."

Halfway through speaking, Xiao Heng paused again.

Wang Tiech looked at him without disturbing him. After a long time, Xiao Heng sighed and said, "Let's do it first, and I'll see how to improve the strength of the steel."

Xiao Heng was moved at this time and wanted to buy some rare metal powder from modern times to improve the strength of the steel... However, how to smel the special alloy also requires some raw materials to be consumed. If the materials are not understood and consumed, it will be a loss to the wife and the soldiers, so Xiao Heng is still a little hesitant.

"Okay." Wang Tiechu nodded and agreed.

After leaving, Xiao Heng lay in bed for information all afternoon. How to reduce wear is probably the routine that Xiao Heng thought, and he performed a certain amount of quenching and tempering to improve performance.

In addition, he also saw a new material component - bronze bearing shell.

The so-called bearing shell is a part of the material that fixes the crankshaft and does not rotate with the first period. With bronze bearing shells, the wear of the bearing can be reduced, which is also a good improvement.

But the most important issue, Xiao Heng has not made any progress for a long time. Online information shows that the engine crankshaft generally uses forged steel and ductile iron, and Xiao Heng doesn't need to consider this ductile iron at present because he has no conditions to produce it!

Wrought iron is not "forged iron", but the abbreviation of "forged cast iron". It is also a special cast iron itself, and finally it can achieve high enough performance through a series of treatments.

This is feasible, even if the production efficiency is definitely not high... After all, Xiao Heng does not have as good industrial environment as modern.

"Forget it... If it really doesn't work, just do this forged cast iron." Xiao Heng sighed helplessly.

Many materials used in modern times were simply difficult to find in ancient times. Even if they could be found, the complex processing technology also prevented Xiao Heng from promoting technological progress.

When Xiao Heng was still in modern times, he used many things when they were used, and bought new ones when they broke... But he never thought about how these things were made, and how difficult the manufacturing process was.

It has to be said that the development of industrial civilization is really accumulated bit by bit by bit by bit by bit by bit by bit by bit by bit by bit. Every small improvement either reduces cost, improves efficiency, and then improves performance... The intelligence of countless people gathers together, which leads to modern scientific progress.

So education is really the top priority, and industry is really not something that can be played by one hand.

Xiao Heng felt a little difficult when he came to the electric car before, but now facing the materials of the connecting rod and crankshaft... This is the biggest difficulty he has encountered so far.

Looking back, Xiao Heng checked the steam mechanism during the Industrial Revolution and tried to get some inspiration from it... Then he discovered something strange - a firewood-burning car.

Burn wood!?

car!?

Is this possible?

Xiao Heng clicked in curiously...
Chapter completed!