While the work on the canals and turbines was in progress, the brick-and-timber factory buildings were also under intensive construction. The factory building uses a very mature wooden structure truss house in Lingao. The overall frame of the house is a prefabricated part processed by a sawmill according to the design drawings, which is sent to the construction site for splicing and installation. A skilled and well-staffed installation team The frame of the house can be put up in less than a week. Then the masons used red bricks to build the wall. If the fire resistance of the factory building had not been taken into consideration, the wooden keel wall could have been used directly to build the website. The cost can be lower.
The biggest advantage of a truss structure house is that it can build a large-span barrier-free factory building without too many beams and columns for support, which is crucial for workshops that need to lay out machines. After the construction of the factory was completed, a new group of workers was hired to assemble the equipment.
The machine was shipped to Nansha in boxes, unloaded carefully, and sent to the factory for unpacking and assembly. The villagers looked at these workers curiously - they were different from the previous construction workers who mostly spoke Cantonese vernacular. Almost all of them spoke "Australian Mandarin". Although they wear similar work clothes and have "kun hair", these people are stronger and exude a "different" temperament. Some people say that these machine installers are all "Chen Kun" , older than the "Xin Kun" who dug canals and built houses.
"Chen Kun" assembled the machinery and equipment faster, and by the end of June, all the machinery and equipment had been installed. On this day, Zou Feng conducted the first turbine test. After the gate is opened, the river water flows into the diversion canal and starts to rotate the water wheel. Gradually, the water wheel reached operating speed, the power transmission system began to operate normally, the sky shaft rotated rapidly, and the entire factory began to tremble slightly. Some people hurriedly ran out of the house, but the internship team remained motionless in the factory, carefully observing the rotation of the axis.
At Zou Feng's signal, the workers pulled the connecting rods in turn. Connect the drive belt to the equipment, and the equipment starts to idle, making a deafening sound. The girls carefully watched the operation of the equipment and recorded it in their notebooks at any time.
Chen Lin couldn't understand this, but from the expressions of Zou Feng and the girls, he could probably tell that it was running well, and he breathed a sigh of relief. From the beginning to now, tens of thousands of taels of silver have been spent. Although most of it was Uncle Wu's money, his own family was also involved after all. If it really ruined the situation, the Chen family would be disgraced.
The test results are generally satisfactory, and the next step is the trial production stage. Chen Ding purchased a lot of cotton from Sixiang and transported it to the factory.
In the old time and space, before cotton was transported to the textile factory, the cotton gin process had basically been carried out at the place of production and the cotton seeds were cleaned. However, in this time and space, only the Senate has cotton gins. In order to improve efficiency, this process was moved to the factory.
After the cotton seeds are removed by the cotton gin, the cotton is sent to the "blowroom". The blow-cleaning workshop is not indoors because the work is dusty, so the blow-cleaning is done in a large reed mat shed built on the open ground. Since the power of the water turbine is not enough to drive the flower blower, this process is carried out purely by hand. The cotton is placed on a wooden frame, and workers use bamboo sticks to beat it to remove impurities such as branches, leaves, insects, and soil mixed in the cotton. The process of blow cleaning does not require skills and does not require high physical strength. During the British Industrial Revolution, most women were engaged in it. Here, Anjiu also requested that more women be hired to do this work.
"It's okay for women to do the spinning and weaving work. It's a laborious job." Chen Lin found it incredible.
"Who said women can't do strenuous work?" An Jiu said, "Besides, this work is not too strenuous."
Chen Lin thought to himself that it was not a lot of effort, but he didn't dare to argue with this "chief's student", so he just obeyed.
The cleaned cotton is mixed together and the first process begins: carding.
No matter what process or equipment is used. The basic processes of cotton spinning are four: carding, drawing, roughing, and worsted spinning.
"Start feeding!" Li Tang shouted and started operating the smoothing machine. The first batch of workers recruited gathered around her and watched her operations.
She feeds the carded cotton into the carding machine, and the cotton passes through layers of staggered metal rake teeth on the machine to separate the tangled cotton fibers and card them side by side.
"You see, after carding, the fibers of cotton are roughly parallel." She pointed to the products coming out of the machine. The cotton has become loose strips, which are called "card strips" in the jargon. ".
Li Tang skillfully picked up the slivers and loaded them into the draw frame in groups, and the rollers pressed them together. This is the so-called drawing process. The purpose of the drawing process is to enhance the strength of the sliver. This process will be repeated several times. The specific times and the number of drawings are determined by the raw materials and production process conditions.
The sliver after drawing is put into a rotating container called a "twisting tank" for "weak twisting". During the weak twisting process, the roving machine rollers stretch the sliver, and the sliver is thinner than after drawing. Dozens or even hundreds of times, this is roving.
After a certain number of bobbins wrapped with roving are accumulated, workers carry them to the worsted spinning machine. The worsting machine is actually almost the same as the drawing process, but it is more refined.
The roving is wound around a bobbin, which is placed over a spindle. Each worsted spinning machine drives 72 spindles. There are ten such worsted spinning machines in the entire textile factory.
The roving is turned into fine yarn by the rollers and is finally taken out by the yarn guide hook and wound on the spindle. The twisting and winding are completed by the rotation of the spindle itself. The last twisting is the key step to make the yarn strong, and only when the spindle reaches a certain speed can the yarn be strong enough.
"It's out! It's out!" everyone shouted. This was the first time they had seen such a magical and efficient textile method.
Soon a bobbin of yarn was ready, and Chen Lin picked up the sample given by the Australian and compared it with his own. After taking a closer look, there are still some differences. A layman would not be able to tell the difference, but an expert would know that the Australian ones are obviously better.
This made him a little puzzled. Could it be that there was something wrong with the machine the Australians gave him? Obviously they are all of the same model, could it be said that the ones woven by the Australians using the power of water and fire are better than those made by water?
But this is good enough. Such yarn is probably not available in the whole of China, let alone Guangdong.
With such yarn, why not worry about weaving good cloth!
Unfortunately, the first phase of the Nansha Demonstration Factory does not include a weaving workshop. Cotton yarn is their final product.
Who are these cotton yarns going to be sold to? The nursing homes don't need it - they have their own complete cotton textile business. Fortunately, this is not a problem for Chen Lin. Fengsheng and the looms are not working at full capacity. In addition to several large flower looms, the accompanying waist looms can all be used for weaving. The weavers on these waist looms can Weaving silk and satin can also weave cotton.
Another place to go is to sell the yarn to farmers in Sixiang. Although it is not common, most farmers have looms in their homes. Weaving cloth or silk can also be regarded as a side job. In the past, Fengshenghe, except for a small number of high-end fabrics, mostly adopted a package purchase system for ordinary products, and released silk to each family for weaving. Nowadays, with cotton yarn, the same process can be done. The network is readily available and easy to use.
Local cotton is slightly cheaper than Songjiang, while cotton cloth is more expensive. Therefore, it is still profitable for Chen Lin to use machines to make yarn, but of course the profits are very slim. However, if labor productivity can be greatly improved, the accumulation of small profits will be very considerable.
Traditionally, the spinning process of a piece of cotton cloth is four times as long as the weaving process. In Songjiang, it takes an average of seven days to weave a piece of cloth, and women produce an average of seven kilograms of yarn in a month. It takes 21 hours to clean a piece of cotton, 49 hours to spin and 11 hours to weave. But now the spinning time has been greatly shortened. The original women immediately doubled the speed of cloth production after getting the machine yarn.
After a simple calculation, Chen Lin came to the conclusion that if the supply of cotton is guaranteed and the price is maintained at the current level, with the current production capacity, it will only take five years to recover the entire investment. Coupled with the production capacity after the launch of the second phase... this is not a small profit, it is simply a huge profit.
However, a serious problem immediately faced Chen Lin: the spinning speed was too fast, which was far from enough for the local cotton production. Even if he immediately called on the villagers to plant cotton on a large scale, the harvest would have to wait until autumn.
Also, who will sell such a huge amount of cotton cloth to? Fengsheng and the silks and satins produced by Fengsheng have a place to go - three generations of operation have long formed a fixed sales network. But they had never dealt with the cotton business.
As for cotton, the problem is even bigger. The cotton used for trial production was shipped directly from Guangzhou with the help of Chen Xiaobing. To be honest, Chen Lin didn't even know where he got it. As for the local cotton in Xiangshan, some have been purchased one after another. Once the work officially starts, it will probably not even take a month.
In the evening, he told Li Guo about this matter. Li Guo is older and has a more stable personality. Currently responsible for the administrative management of a textile factory. Naturally, I discussed this matter with her.
"The sales of cloth are not bad. But the source of the cotton has become a big problem."
"How do you plan to solve this problem, sir?" Li Guo asked.
"After much thought, I have a few ideas: First, send people to set up warehouses in nearby towns to collect cotton. The local cotton is harvested in August - but..."
"But what?"
"Local cotton has never been purchased by anyone in the past. It is all spun and woven by farmers themselves. I don't know if I can receive it smoothly."
"As long as the price is right, someone will sell it. After all, spinning is time-consuming. If we can sell flowers directly, wouldn't we be able to save manpower for other things?"
(End of chapter)
