Luo Zhixue has actually been studying rifled artillery for a long time, but this thing is more difficult to work with than a steam engine!
It's not a matter of design... Again, it's actually not difficult to design this thing, especially after Luo Zhixue, Luo Zhixue in later generations has eaten pork even if he has never seen a pig running, even if he doesn't know what a pig looks like. , but he definitely knows what pork looks like.
He also has a basic understanding of guns. Most of the guns in later generations are rifled. Well, the exception is the advanced third-generation tank guns and above. The mainstream third-generation tank guns use smoothbore guns. This is In order to better launch armor-piercing projectiles: tail-stabilized discarding sabot armor-piercing projectiles.
The exceptions are Britain and India and a few small countries... They seem to pay more attention to tradition than to adopt smoothbore artillery!
Except for tank guns, the guns of later generations were almost all rifled guns. Even though Luo Zhixue didn't know much about this, he also knew that there were spiral riflings inside the barrel of rifled guns.
After repeated discussions with several engineers with big ideas, the rifling design of the rifled artillery was basically arrived at.
But just because it’s designed doesn’t mean it can be built, and just because it’s been built doesn’t mean it can be used.
This ghost thing has higher requirements for materials and processing than the early Watt steam engine... To carve rifling inside the barrel and make the rifling durable, the barrel material cannot be too soft. If it is too soft, it will be fired once. Then the rifling will be worn away.
Secondly, while you can't be too soft, you can't be too hard... Otherwise, the Da Chu Empire's current miserable processing capabilities cannot be processed... Pig iron is a typical example. Apart from casting, the Da Chu Empire has almost no way to process pig iron. processing.
The carbon content of this thing is too high, the material is too hard and brittle, and the secondary processing after molding is very troublesome.
In addition to the barrel material, there are also requirements for the artillery shell itself... If you have adopted rifled artillery, then you cannot use spherical artillery shells. If you use cylindrical artillery shells, then you need to design the shape of the artillery shell, which also takes into account the design of the air Dynamics section.
Then the design came out. The processing accuracy of your cannonball must be very high, so that the cannonball and the cannon bore can fit together as much as possible, the gap can be reduced, and the cannonball can stick to the rifling and rotate out of the bore...
This series of technical difficulties ultimately leads to one problem: materials!
This is also the most common and biggest problem that the Chu Empire has encountered since it developed its industry. Material problems have plagued the industrial sector of the Chu Empire almost all the time. Because the materials cannot meet the requirements, many projects that seem to have good prospects have Industrial design cannot be realized.
The previous steam engine had been in use for more than ten years, but it had always been stuck with material issues.
The rifled artillery has also been predicted for several years, but it is also stuck by material problems.
Finally, the Da Chu Empire has not solved a very important ammunition problem so far, and that is the collision fuse.
So far, the series of howitzer shells used by the Chu army still use wooden fuzes. This is a timed fuze, and the detonation time depends on the length of the fuze.
In the past two years, the Ammunition Research Institute under the Ministry of Industry has developed a metal disc fuze, but it is still a timing fuze, but its reliability and accuracy are stronger than that of a wooden fuze.
The Chu army, especially the navy, has always wanted to develop a collision fuse so that the artillery shell will explode after hitting the target.
This can not only effectively reduce the rate of dud bombs, but also provide the navy's naval guns with a bomb weight that can penetrate the armor of enemy warships and then explode, that is, armor-piercing explosive bombs!
Unfortunately, this damn thing is also very troublesome to develop.
Many research and designs will eventually be delayed or even stranded due to material problems... This is why the Chu Empire has continued to invest heavily in these years and a large number of talents to conduct various basic research.
Not only the official Royal Institute of Technology, major research institutes directly under the Ministry of Industry and other purely theoretical research institutions, but also major enterprises have invested heavily in this aspect. Hantian Machinery Company is a typical example. In order to develop better Machine tools, in order to produce higher performance cutting tools for machine tools, have always invested a lot in the field of materials.
And this large investment also brought them huge returns!
Hantian Machinery Company's machine tools, especially cutting drills and other machine tool technologies that require cutting tools, are far ahead of other domestic machinery companies.
The industrial cutting tools of Hantian Machinery Company are definitely No. 1 in the country, which has also brought them a huge market.
Not only is there a market, but there is also profit!
When you have a product that is far superior to your competitors, and customers are extremely hungry for it. Then you can sell it very expensively... Well, that is to say, it gives more so-called added value...
They dare to sell a large, high-end boring machine that is the most advanced and can be used to process large parts such as steam engine cylinders and gun barrels with very high precision. They dare to sell it for more than 80,000 Chu Yuan without discount... which is almost the same as the price of a frigate.
What kind of concept is this? It’s probably similar to a machine tool sold for hundreds of millions in later generations!
But his customers, such as Daye Heavy Machinery Company, Zhenjiang Heavy Machinery Company, and major weapons companies, are still queuing up to buy... The orders have been queued up for several years.
The most important thing is that Hantian Machinery Company also engages in package sales...
Do you want to buy our high-end machine tools? Yes, although there is no stock in the warehouse now, we will have a machine returned by other customers next month. However, this machine is a matching order with other machine tools. If you want, you can package it together and take it away.
What, buy it alone? This is a complete order, not just a purchase!
If you want to buy it individually, you can place a new order, but let me tell you, our orders are now scheduled for three years later... It is conservatively estimated that your new order will not arrive until three years later.
That's right, Hantian Machinery Company uses various names to engage in bundled sales, which leaves a lot of customers speechless and even makes some of its competitors furious.
Hantian Machinery Company's main competitor in the field of machine tools, Wuhu Machine Tool Company, has complained to the top executives of the Ministry of Industry several times, saying that Hantian Machinery Company is too careless. After eating high-end meat, it actually wants to take the Chinese company with it. The low-end meat is also served in one pot.
If this continues, the empire's machine tool R&D and production industry will become the sole proprietor of Hantian Machinery, and other companies will be completely dead.
In this regard, the top management of the Ministry of Industry is actually helpless... Although the Ministry of Industry is directly under the management of Hantian Machinery Company, their Ministry of Industry has always ignored this kind of normal corporate competition.
Hantian Machinery Company has invested so much money in the past many years. In order to raise research and development funds, a company that specializes in machine tools suddenly turned into a well-known cookware and kitchenware company in the private sector and even around the world...
They have worked so hard to come up with some new materials and new technologies, and then come up with a new generation of high-end machine tools. If the Ministry of Industry does not let people eat meat, thousands of people at Hantian Machinery will go crazy.
In addition, other machine tool companies are indeed not up to par... Wuhu Machine Tool Company is also the second largest machine tool company in the country. It was established not much later than Hantian Machinery. The early personnel were even transferred from Hantian Machinery Company.
These two families are actually one family.
After the separation, the eldest son Hantian Machinery worked hard and raised funds for research and development through the development of civilian industries, while Wuhu Machine Tool Company rested on its laurels. In the past ten years, Wuhu Machine Tool Company has become quite large, and its employees The benefits are pretty good, but the R&D investment is very limited...
Several general managers have little interest in technology research and development. They only focus on taking the mature route for sales and simply expanding the scale of production. They are still in the same line. Each one is more willing to use the company's money as welfare to win people's hearts...
However, the investment in technology research and development is very limited... No, now it has tasted the consequences, and it has been defeated by Hantian Machinery Company in one fell swoop.
What should the second son do if he fails to live up to expectations?
You can still do this, cold salad... You said it is the second largest machine tool company in the country, related to the country's people's livelihood... I'm sorry, the Ministry of Industry has three sons, four sons, and five sons in the machine tool industry... And then there are at least ten more Several godsons and some large machinery companies are more or less involved in the machine tool industry.
Without a second son, the other sons can take over.
It's not that it won't work without it.
You said that this enterprise is large and its closure would have a bad impact... Are you kidding the country? There are many enterprises under the Ministry of Industry, and most of them are large or even extra-large enterprises.
If a mere machine tool company goes bankrupt, it will go bankrupt... Even if it is to avoid negative impacts, other related companies can be organized to be split and reorganized, and the equipment and technical personnel will not be lost too much.
This attitude of the Ministry of Industry is not specifically directed at Wuhu Machine Tool Company, but towards most of its companies. Except for a very few companies that are truly irreplaceable and cannot go bankrupt, most of their subordinate companies are actually Can be replaced.
Because the Ministry of Industry never puts eggs in one basket!
There are five biological sons and a dozen godsons in the machine tool industry... The same is true in other industries. Even in the new steam engine industry, the Ministry of Industry has brought out three sons. After seeing the rapid development of the steam engine industry, the Ministry of Industry Plans have been made to further liberalize the patent authorization of steam engines and select a number of powerful companies for the production and research and development of steam engines.
Wuhu Machine Tool Company, which had no intention of making progress and had lacked investment in technology research and development for many years, was wiped out by Hantian Machinery Company in one fell swoop. Its market share shrank significantly, and the top executives of the Ministry of Industry refused to save it.
After struggling for two years, Wuhu Machine Tool Company became increasingly difficult to operate and soon became insolvent.
In August of the 18th year of Chengshun, Wuhu Machine Tool Company, which had reached its end, officially declared bankruptcy and reorganization!
By the way, except for the last general office who came to clean up the mess and came from the Inspectorate, more than half of the previous general offices and co-organizers and other senior executives have been imprisoned... These people have not been imprisoned in the past few years. Less corruption.
The second-to-last general manager had only been in office for two years and already made more than 100,000 yuan!
This is not more than 100,000 U.S. dollars from later generations, but more than 100,000 Chu Yuan in the 17th century. How much more can this money be used to sell a thousand-ton first-class cruiser!
After he was arrested for being so courageous, Luo Zhixue personally gave instructions and rewarded him with the royal favor of being executed!
Not to mention the unfortunate fate of these corrupt elements, Wuhu Machine Tool Company, which is in the process of bankruptcy and reorganization, is already insolvent, has backward technology, and has almost no market competitiveness of its products.
In this case, the Ministry of Industry doesn't even bother to spend money to save it... It would be excellent to invest the same funds in the Third Son Tongzhou Machine Tool Company or the Fourth Son Liaoyang Machine Tool Company. There is no need to throw it into the quagmire of Wuhu Machine Tool Company. .
So, the strategy was finally decided: break it up and sell it, and use the proceeds to cover the financial bank's own debt... Wuhu Machine Tool Company still has a loan of more than 800,000 yuan to repay.
And it is seriously insolvent. According to conventional statistics, the company's assets are not more than 800,000 Chu Yuan!
The general office of Renren Finance Bank's Anlu Branch has already said that this company should not have issued loans three years ago, but in the past you were the ones who cried out and gave us various guarantees to make us lend money... Now the company is finished Well, if you can't exchange for the money, then don't blame us for being rude and go directly to the guarantee companies.
The finance bank and your company from the Ministry of Industry are not the same system. The finance bank directly belongs to the Finance Department, which directly manages the bank, while many industrial enterprises belong to the Ministry of Industry.
The two systems are not the same, and in most cases it is the companies from the Ministry of Industry that seek help from the financial bank, so the financial bank does not give face to the people from the Ministry of Industry at all.
If the money is not enough... they will go directly to the companies that provide guarantees, such as Huainan Mining Company. Don't blame us if a big hole is dug when the time comes.
More than 800,000 Chu Yuan's money is not a small amount. Even if the boss of the Ministry of Industry tries to clear it up, it won't work. This money must be paid back!
Fortunately, Wuhu Machine Tool Company developed early enough and is large enough. Many branches are still very valuable. Some early patent authorizations are also relatively valuable. In addition, some researchers are also valuable.
In order to repay the debt and fill this big hole, the top management of the Ministry of Industry decided after discussion to die early and live early: to directly split and sell Wuhu Machinery Company!
And welcome people from all walks of life in China to actively participate!
This news made many people make their own calculations.
There are old competitors like Hantian Machinery Company, as well as Tongzhou Machine Tool Company and Liaoyang Machine Tool Company, which are lagging behind in the industry.
In addition, there are some cross-industry companies. For example, Huainan Mining Company is very interested in a smelting branch of Wuhu Machine Tool Company.
In addition to the large enterprises and insiders affiliated to the Ministry of Industry, there is also a lack of private capital.
Although Wuhu Machine Tool Company is insolvent and its technology is lagging behind, it is a large government-run enterprise with a very strong foundation, especially some of its technical talents, which make private enterprises drool.
Foshan Li's Iron Manufacturing Company is one of them, and they have a huge appetite. They want to directly acquire the core assets of Wuhu Machine Tool Company, which is the previous industrial machine tool industry, and thus enter the machine tool industry!
The Li family of Foshan, this small family that could only be considered one of the dozen or so iron-making families in Foshan during the pre-Ming Dynasty, has been out of control since entering the era of the Chu Empire. On several occasions, it has seized the opportunity to take off rapidly based on .
When the Chu army first captured the Foshan area, in order to maintain follow-up operations in the Guangdong, Guangxi and even Yunnan-Guizhou regions, the output of the weapons companies affiliated to the Ministry of Industry of the Chu Empire was also limited, especially because the main factories of the Ministry of Industry at that time were concentrated in the Yangtze River Basin. .
In order to meet the urgent needs, the Ministry of Industry was building various types of factories in the Pearl River Delta region, that is, Guangzhou and surrounding areas, while also recruiting the iron and steel industry in Foshan and placing a large number of weapons orders with them.
Mainly orders for various cold weapons, armors, etc.
During this process, a large number of local iron-making families were too greedy and lacked respect for the Chu Empire. They resorted to substandard goods and passed them off as good ones, and eventually their homes were confiscated...
The Li family, on the other hand, is just doing its job, or in other words, they don't have the courage to engage in shoddy things, and this has also ushered in a large number of weapons orders.
Relying on weapons orders from the military, the Li family ushered in the first wave of development and made a lot of money from the military.
Later, as the Ministry of Industry's factories in Guangzhou were built one after another and weapons orders decreased, Li's Iron Company began to actively transform, or return to its original business: iron products such as cooking utensils and farm tools.
This was another important opportunity they seized. At that time, the Chu Empire was launching an agricultural development plan and provided relatively large support and subsidies to the iron farm tools industry. In addition, the Li family also actively contacted major maritime Arm trading companies and expand export share.
This gave them a second development opportunity!
In this process, they completely packaged and transferred the weapons production business to the Guangdong and Guangxi Arms Company, which was also the only comprehensive arms company in the southern region of the Chu Empire.
After the unification of the Chu Empire, it integrated management of many defense factories, mainly divided by geography and industry, and successively established Hantian Weapons Company, Jiangnan Weapons Company, Shaanxi-Gansu Weapons Company, Hebei Weapons Company, Northeast Weapons Company, Guangdong and Guangxi Weapons Company There are six large comprehensive weapons companies in total, in addition to some large enterprises with dual-use military and civilian purposes, such as Songjiang Naval Shipyard, Guangzhou Shipyard, Qingdao Naval Shipyard, Daye Heavy Machinery Company, Zhenjiang Heavy Machinery Company, etc.
The Guangdong and Guangxi Arms Company has become the largest arms company in the southern region.
Li's Steel packaged and sold their weapons business to the Guangdong and Guangxi Arms Company. In this way... the last private defense enterprise in the Dachu Empire became history, completely withdrawing from the defense market, and then fully turning to the civilian market.
Taking advantage of its advantages in agricultural tools, cooking utensils and the export market, Lee's Iron Company quickly accumulated a large amount of capital and technical personnel, holding a large amount of capital. At the same time, Lee's Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. also got involved in upstream related industries such as mining and smelting. Iron Company, seeing the rapid development of ocean trade, decisively invested heavily in the shipbuilding industry.
After years of development, Li's Shipyard has become the fourth largest shipyard in the Chu Empire. It is also one of the few domestic shipyards capable of producing new ocean-going merchant ships of more than 1,000 tons. Since it was put into production, its shipbuilding orders have never been empty. .
During its rapid development, Lee's Shipyard successively built dry docks and improved shipbuilding-related industries such as sailing, logging, wood processing, and grease. It also acquired three small and medium-sized shipyards in the process, improving the types of shipbuilding. From large-tonnage ocean-going warships and armed merchant ships to offshore vessels and inland river vessels, Lee Shipyard can produce them all.
In the past two years, they have also begun to get involved in the machine tool manufacturing industry.
Today, in the 18th year of Chengshun, the Lee Iron Company has actually evolved into a behemoth. The industries involved include mining, smelting, machinery, shipbuilding, logging and wood processing, sailing, iron farm tools, cooking utensils, A comprehensive enterprise in many industries such as daily hardware.
The total assets have exceeded five million...this is about assets, not market value!
Of course, such a large-scale Lee Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. is no longer a monopoly of the Lee family, but has become a company with relatively dispersed shares. Many companies, financial institutions and even official capital are their shareholders.
The second largest shareholder after the Li family is the Guangzhou Government Finance Department, which holds 8% of the shares.
With such an asset scale, most of the government-run enterprises under the Ministry of Industry have to be defeated. For example, the Songjiang Naval Shipyard is stronger than them in the shipbuilding industry. This shipyard is actually larger in scale and has better technology, but because The business is single, so the shipyard's asset scale is not as large as Lee's Steel.
Lee's Steel, which has developed rapidly, now wants to increase investment in the machinery and equipment industry.
But in the machinery industry, if it's just ordinary mechanical equipment or iron products, then it's nothing. The threshold is not high. Many domestic private capitals are involved and then set up so-called machinery companies.
But if you want to enter some high-end machinery industries, such as the machine tool industry, it is not that easy.
The technical threshold for this industry is too high.
Relying on the support of orders from many of its own subsidiaries, Li's Iron Company also set up a branch to develop and manufacture machine tools, but it was very difficult...the difficulty of machine tool research and development was too high. Even if the machine tools they built were only for walking The low-end route is also very difficult to use. It is very troublesome for our own subsidiaries to use it, and it is even very uneconomical.
However, the management of Li's Steel has always been very ambitious, and they have never been satisfied with working in the low-end market, especially in industries with few technical barriers. They like to make investments that seem to laymen It is an industry that is large, difficult to recoup, and has high barriers to entry.
This was true for the shipbuilding industry back then, and it is the same for the machine tool industry now.
Therefore, they have not given up their investment in the field of machine tools in the past two years, poaching people everywhere to form a technical team.
Now that they heard that Wuhu Machine Tool Company, the second largest company in the country, was going to go bankrupt and reorganized, and that it would be split up and sold, and even its core business would be sold, the management of Li's Iron Company's eyes lit up.
Although Wuhu Machine Tool Company was bankrupted by corrupt officials and lacked investment in technology research and development for many years, which also led to technology falling behind, nevertheless, Wuhu Machine Tool Company was once the second largest machine tool company in the country.
A dead camel is bigger than a horse. If they can take over their core business, that is, the machine tool business, reorganize it, and then spend money on R&D and production, there is still a great possibility that it will be revived. of.
No matter how bad it is, it can still allow Lee Iron Company to truly enter the machine tool industry.
As long as Li's Steel Company is allowed in, it will not be wishful thinking to grab a piece of the machine tool industry's cake with their financial resources and decisive determination.
As a result, Lee's Steel Co., the leading private heavy industry in the country, officially made an offer to acquire the machine tool business of Wuhu Machine Tool Company to the committee responsible for the bankruptcy and reorganization of Wuhu Machine Tool Company!
And the offer was very generous, with an offer of 400,000 yuan to package and acquire the core machine tool business of Wuhu Machine Tool Company, including the corresponding patents, R&D team, production lines and others.
For a time, this acquisition invitation worth at least 400,000 yuan shocked many people in the industry, even the top brass of the Ministry of Industry were alarmed.
After a discussion with the top management of the Ministry of Industry, they directly approved the plan for no other reason than that the money given by Lee Steel was too much...
In addition, the Ministry of Industry is also very optimistic about the strength of Li's Iron. This is a company with money and people and excellent management capabilities. The Ministry of Industry also hopes that the core business of Wuhu Machine Tool Company, that is, the machine tool business, can be established in Li's Iron. In order to maintain a healthy competitive atmosphere in the domestic machine tool industry.
