When the Army is conducting bidding and procurement, it often relies on its own procurement volume to squeeze the profits of enterprises to the extreme. Many defense companies do not like the Army.
After the cooperation was completed, it seemed that the order was huge, but it did not make much money.
And the Army has a lot of trouble.
Therefore, under the same circumstances, these defense companies would rather cooperate with the Navy and Guards than with the poor guys in the Army.
For example, in terms of steam engines, the Army actually has many plans for steam engines and ships, but when purchasing steam engines, the prices are very low. Among the three major steam engine manufacturers, Guangzhou Machinery Company simply ignored them. Only Dangtu Machinery Company and Tianjin Machinery Company. To survive, you have to hold your nose and cooperate with the army!
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As for the navy, it is much more generous.
A set of steam engines cost more than 200,000 Chu Yuan, and the Navy would not even haggle!
army?
Damn, the price is only a thousand pieces of Chu Yuan. The steam engines used on small river transport ships will be haggling with you for months, and then they say there is a problem with this, and there is a problem with that... Sometimes they even sign the contract. I still dislike this and that...
It's like an iron rooster going to a brothel, taking out three or five copper coins to find a young lady, but he is not satisfied with the aunt arranged for him, and insists on finding an oiran... Damn, it's just these copper coins, who gave you the courage!
The most disgusting thing is that they will do it again next time!
Tianjin Machinery Company did not want to go to the Army to sell its high-performance steam engine this time... even though it knew that the Army also needed a lot of small ship-based steam engines.
But when doing business with the Army, it’s not easy to make money and talk nonsense. In front of the navy’s tycoons, the Army can only take a back seat...
Only rich people like the Navy are worthy of this kind of top-notch performance. The Army... will only drool and insist on asking you to lower the price. If you don't lower the price or lower the price, you will curse...
Tianjin Machinery Company has suffered a lot of injustice in the past few years, so it no longer serves the army's iron roosters.
Anyway, the potential market for this kind of high-performance small steam engine is very large. This kind of small multi-expansion steam engine is a whole series, covering the land self-propelled transportation market, that is, tractors, steam transport vehicles, and then to the train market and ship-borne civilian applications. Market, military market.
A complete series will be formed in the future. Once the situation is opened, there is no need to worry about insufficient orders.
The reason why a series can be formed is related to the R&D system of Tianjin Machinery Company. What they develop is not a single steam engine, but a new generation of steam engine core machine with new technology as the core, and then adapts it according to the core machine. Equipped with research and development, such as increasing or reducing size, adjusting cylinder diameter, volume, steam pressure to expand or reduce power, and adjusting energy consumption levels, service life, etc.
Eventually, a situation of one machine with multiple models was formed.
Today's high-performance small steam engine, the core machine, has many subdivided models. There are three subdivided models specially developed for Tangshan Machinery Company. Steam engines with different horsepower will be used in two different specifications of Tangshan Machinery Company. tractor.
Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company also has two adapted models.
For their own markets and because their respective tractor technical routes are different, these two agricultural machinery companies have different size requirements and layout of steam engines, so they can only do it separately.
Sun Qi, on the other hand, found several other steam engine R&D manufacturers in the south. These manufacturers did not have such a big appetite. Instead of customizing, they chose to purchase universal models.
In addition, Tianjin Machinery Company is also preparing to develop and improve a steam engine as a train steam engine based on this small core machine, in order to prepare to cooperate with the Tianjin Railway Equipment Company next door to launch their new locomotive, so that it can cooperate with Guangzhou Train Equipment, a subsidiary of Guangzhou Machinery Company. Manufacturing companies compete.
The composition of Tianjin Train Equipment Company is relatively complex. Its shareholders include local official investment in Tianjin, investment from Lishi Steel Company, investment from Tianjin Machinery Company, Tianjin Iron and Steel Company, Liaodong Iron and Steel Company, and Liaohe Machinery Company.
This is a joint-stock company jointly established by multiple investors. It was originally established with only one purpose, which was to break the Guangzhou Machinery Company's monopoly in the train field.
The Imperial Railway Corporation is obviously not willing to be controlled by a supplier like Guangzhou Machinery Company, although in recent years Guangzhou Machinery Company has gradually given up its carriage manufacturing business and only focused on the locomotive manufacturing field.
But for such a huge empire and such a huge railway network, there is only one locomotive supplier like Guangzhou Machinery Company, which is obviously very dangerous.
To put it bluntly, if any problem occurs in the train manufacturing factory affiliated to the Guangzhou Machinery Company, the operation of the empire's huge railway network will be greatly affected.
Therefore, although the railway company is restricted by its senior management, it cannot directly invest in the construction of railway-related equipment to avoid problems caused by self-production and self-sales. It can only purchase through external bidding.
But only when there are more suppliers can they purchase from other countries!
In this way, Tianjin Train Equipment Company came into being. As soon as the company was established, the railway company had already placed a batch of pre-orders to support it, even though their locomotives were not very good because they used steam engines from Tianjin Machinery Company. land, but the railway company still places orders for purchase.
It’s for support!
In fact, in addition to Tianjin Train Equipment Company, there is another train equipment manufacturing company supported by the railway company, namely Dangtu Train Equipment Company. They use steam engines from Dangtu Machinery Company.
It is worth noting that these three major train equipment companies basically rely on the three major steam engine manufacturers.
To a certain extent, this is actually the competition between the three major steam engine manufacturers.
As for railway companies, they need competition from multiple train equipment manufacturing companies to maintain their superior status while continuing to drive down procurement costs.
Several years have passed for Guangzhou Machinery Company's Type 21 series locomotives, and the output has become larger and larger. However, the price has not been reduced, but has been raised on various excuses such as rising raw material prices and increased investment in technology research and development.
This situation must be curbed!
This is why the performance of the locomotives produced by Tianjin Train Equipment Company and Dangtu Train Equipment Company was not very good, but the Railway Corporation still purchased some of them, just to support them.
In fact, in the future, if Tianjin Machinery Company's double-expansion steam engine succeeds and the performance of the locomotives it produces is greatly improved, although the Railway Corporation will turn to purchasing more locomotives for Tianjin train equipment, it will also not Give up support for Guangzhou Train Equipment Company and Dangtu Train Equipment Company.
The three train equipment companies compete with each other. This is the situation that the Railway Corporation hopes to see.
This mode of operation is actually the choice of many very large enterprises and even the military. When the navy purchases warships, although it will tend to favor shipyards and subsystem suppliers with stronger technical capabilities, it will also give orders to those with average technology. orders from shipyards and subsystem suppliers.
For example, the Navy has completely stopped manufacturing pure sail battleships in recent years and has switched to the construction of motor-sail battleships. Logically speaking, Guangzhou Shipyard has the most advanced technology in motor-sail battleships, and the most advanced ship-based steam engine technology. Guangzhou Machinery Company.
However, in addition to only using the above two suppliers for new battleships, the Navy has also placed orders for a considerable number of cruisers, frigates, motorboats, and a large number of auxiliary battleships from other shipyards. For example, in recent years, the technology has not kept up with the times. The progressive Songjiang Naval Shipyard, Qingdao Naval Shipyard, Northeast Gaizhou Shipyard, as well as the private Lishi Shipyard and Luohua Shipyard.
In addition to the above-mentioned first-rate shipyards, many second-rate shipyards are also able to obtain orders for some offshore, inland river, and auxiliary warships from the military.
The Navy will not engage in a one-stop procurement strategy, nor will it engage in a one-size-fits-all strategy. Instead, it will support the lagging Cheng family while ensuring its technological and cost advantages.
The same is true for the Army. The Army's large orders have always been divided into orders, because the Dachu Empire currently has seven major weapons companies. Although these weapons companies are directly under the Ministry of Industry, their technologies are advanced. It also lags behind, and at the same time, the product line is also focused.
When the Army purchases, it will purchase according to the different focuses of each company's product lines and support strategies.
The Army places orders with different arsenals through a variety of subdivided models of firearms and artillery, ultimately maintaining the operation of the entire national defense system and stimulating competition among them.
However, in order to unify logistics, it is also to support arsenals with backward technology.
The military also has a special policy, which is the forced OEM model. That is, after a certain arsenal wins the bid for weapons, if its own production capacity is insufficient, it needs to authorize other arsenals to provide OEM services.
Of course, the arsenal can still receive patent licensing fees.
For example, today's latest flash cap percussion rifles, due to the continuous advancement of technology, no longer need to specifically distinguish between various northern versions and tropical versions, because the standard version already has many performance requirements such as cold resistance and salt resistance. In order to simplify logistics, To further improve combat capabilities, the Army will purchase only one standard rifle.
The original winning bid was Hantian Arsenal's Model 21 percussion rifle. However, with the intervention of the military, Hantian Arsenal transferred all the patents for this rifle to other arsenals by transferring paid patents. Other arsenals can also produce this rifle, but each time they produce such a rifle, they need to pay a certain patent fee to Hantian Arsenal.
This is true for muskets, and so is artillery.
Of course, if you just get military support orders and force OEM, you will only starve to death. If you want to develop further, you must come up with good things that can really impress the military.
This is also the reason why the seven major weapons companies in the Da Chu Empire have all invested a lot of manpower and material resources in the research of rifled weapons.
Because everyone knows that the future is the era of rifled weapons, whether it is firearms or artillery.
Whoever can take the lead in rifled weapons in the future will be able to seize the opportunity in the future defense market.
It's just not easy.
Everyone knows the principle of rifled weapons. During the flight of the bullet, keeping the rotation constant will help maintain stability and thus improve shooting accuracy.
But the problem is how to make a rifled weapon... Rifling is not something you can just carve a few rifling lines on the barrel of a gun.
There are a lot of technical problems here.
For example, the material requirements for the barrel are very high, so as to ensure that the rifling still exists after high-intensity shooting, instead of the rifling being polished.
A rifle whose rifling is polished by casually adding bullets is worse than a smoothbore rifle.
Therefore, the strength of the inner rifling of the gun barrel must be guaranteed, and this involves the most difficult material field...
Then we need to protect the rifled barrel, at least it can't rust... Smoothbore guns don't care about rust. With daily maintenance, it's actually easy to deal with occasional rust.
But the rifled barrel is not easy to deal with.
This also involves a series of technical difficulties.
Finally, how to make the bullet fit the rifling and make the bullet rotate at high speed when it comes out of the chamber is also a troublesome matter... I have tried to load the bullet directly before, but it was basically useless.
Nowadays, many designers want to create special bullets, that is, to make the bullet itself carry certain convex and concave shapes to fit the specially manufactured rifling. However, in this case, loading will be very difficult, and it will take several minutes to load.
Moreover, the processing cost of bullets and gun chambers is also very high, making it impossible to equip them on a large scale.
This processing cost is high. If you want to make the special bullets match the rifling, the requirements for processing accuracy are very high. Now the Da Chu Empire does not mean that it cannot be processed, but the problem is that this kind of processing accuracy is all for the Da Chu Empire. It's top-notch machining accuracy... but the cost is high.
Therefore, the technical route of special bullets and special rifling was not feasible. Only a small number of firearms were produced as collectibles, and none were actually equipped at all.
The above only talked about a series of technical difficulties for front-loading rifled guns, and we haven’t talked about artillery yet.
In short, with the current level of industrial technology in the Dachu Empire, it is very difficult to produce rifled weapons. It is impossible to design and build them. If you can barely build them, they will be expensive and have no practical value at all.
After this situation was reported to the Emperor Luo Zhixue of the Great Chu Empire, Luo Zhixue also reminded them a little bit not to make any messy designs, which are time-consuming and labor-intensive, and just make a standard rifled barrel. As for how to make the barrel and bullet It fits well and does not leak. Just make a small hole in the bullet position and insert a cork into the small hole. When shooting like this, the cork in the position will be squeezed out by the high chamber pressure. , so that it can be sealed without air leakage and can also conform to the rifling.
The design plan mentioned by Luo Zhixue was actually the Mini rifle often used in many time travels in later generations. Originally, Luo Zhixue thought that with this plan, a Mini rifle could be produced quickly.
Unexpectedly, the group of technical experts under my command fell silent after carefully looking at it.
When asked again, the technical experts said: The plan proposed by His Majesty is naturally a good plan, very, very good, which shocked the ministers and others...
but……
We can’t make it!
This thing has too high requirements for processing accuracy. The gap between the bullet and the barrel must be accurately controlled within a very small range.
In fact, this gap has nothing to do with the size. A larger gap or a smaller gap just affects the muzzle velocity. The accuracy is just that. If the gap is large, it will not lead to poor performance...
The real problem is that no matter how large the gap is, there must be a limit, otherwise the bullet will not be able to catch the rifling.
To ensure this minimum, you have to ensure that every gun and every bullet is of such a strict standard size, so that the bullets can be used universally on the battlefield.
Historically, the British P53 Mini rifle had a clearance of 0.01 inch, while the stamped bullet had an error of 0.001 inch.
Only in this way can the bullet be universal and have the value of large-scale equipment. If this is not possible, then you can only manufacture a batch of exclusive bullets for each rifle.
That was a disaster.
Why are the major weapons manufacturers in the Dachu Empire still unable to produce rifled weapons after several years of research... In fact, it is limited by this problem. As for the design... To be honest, the technicians are not stupid, and they have designed many kinds of weapons. Similar design scheme.
Because after knowing the principle of rifled weapons and having a systematic research and development system, there will be many technicians pondering various design plans all day long. With so many designers and so many design plans, there will always be reliable hits. of the design plan.
But again... you can design it, or you can build one or two prototype guns in the laboratory, and the test performance will be very good!
But you just can't do large-scale mass production...because after large-scale processing, it is difficult to control such small errors.
This is the problem that plagues the defense industry of the Dachu Empire.
Mini rifles are different from smoothbore rifles. If this thing wants to be mass-produced, the requirements for basic industry are too high.
You have to make sure that you manufacture 100,000 or even a million rifles so that they are all within the clearance range of 0.01 inches. You have to make tens of millions or more rounds of bullets produced, and their tolerances are within 0.01 inches. Within zero point zero one inch.
This is very difficult to do.
By the way, when the level of industrial technology reaches this level, there is actually no need to buy Mini rifles. You can directly launch some early models of breech-loading rifles...
The technical difficulty of the two is basically at the same level. Even the technical level of some early breech-loading rifles using paper shell bullets is not as high as the P53. For example, the German Dresser rifle, which was invented in 1841 It has been finalized, but the processing accuracy is not as good as the old British Mini Rifle P53.
The Type 21 series percussion rifles currently being mass-produced in the Dachu Empire are far from reaching this processing accuracy... As for why you think the current Type 21 flash cap percussion rifles can be used well. ’s... That’s because people don’t have such high requirements for accuracy!
The processing accuracy of the barrel of the Dachu Empire's 21-year flash cap percussion rifle is actually not high, and the clearance is only about 0.05 inches. Of course, the size of the bullet is not actually very standard, and the error is extremely large. Big...soldiers on the front lines could make their own lead bullets from molds.
In essence, there is no difference between the barrel and bullets of the 21-year-old percussion rifle and the 13-year-old flintlock rifle from more than ten years ago.
This is why the production cost of flash cap percussion rifles can be mass-produced and equipped, and it is also why the old Thirteen-year-old series of flintlock rifles can be modified.
Because only the firing mechanism is different between the two, there is not much difference in other aspects. The technology is very mature and the cost is very low.
But if you want to make a rifled rifle now, whether it is a Mini rifle or not, then the requirements for barrel materials and processing accuracy will immediately rise to a very high level, which is currently not possible in the Dachu Empire.
When Luo Zhixue learned about these technical problems, he was not too disappointed. Anyway, the current flash cap percussion rifle is at least two generations ahead of surrounding enemies and European counterparts. This Mini rifle will not be available for a while. fine.
Since the basic technology is not up to par, the processing accuracy does not meet the requirements, and large-scale mass production and equipment cannot be achieved, then we should wait slowly until the processing level reaches the requirements before large-scale mass production and equipment.
But before that, some can be produced on a small scale for collection, hunting, and use in special operations.
After having this idea, Luo Zhixue ordered the Dangtu Arsenal next door to get a batch of Mini rifles to try out first.
Large-scale mass production is not feasible, but small-scale laboratory production is possible. The cost is expensive, and Luo Zhixue is not short of this little money. It doesn't matter even if it costs hundreds of Chu yuan. It doesn't take much anyway, just make a few hundred. That's it.
Looking back, Luo Zhixue took a few for his own collection, which will be used for subsequent hunting. The remaining few hundred can be equipped with the special forces of the Guards, and he can first explore and test various training methods and tactical applications of muzzle-loading rifled rifles to prepare for the future. Prepare for large-scale installation of rifled rifles.
No matter when rifled rifles can be equipped on a large scale, the test troops should be launched first!
This is not the first time Luo Zhixue has engaged in such an experimental small-scale force. In fact, he has done similar things many times.
For example, last year, he ordered the establishment of a hot-air balloon flying team in the Guards. Luo Zhixue originally wanted to build an airship, but he couldn't build an airship, so he had to make do with hot-air balloons first.
The team is equipped with some hot air balloons in order to carry out reconnaissance and bombing missions...
The imagination is beautiful, but the reality is cruel. Not to mention performing missions during wartime. Sometimes they conduct training flights in peacetime. They originally planned to fly along a fixed route, but they deviated from their destination by hundreds of thousands of miles while flying.
Even if they installed a human-powered propeller on the hot air balloon... in order to obtain the ability to move horizontally, it would still be blown away by the wind.
The biggest role of this hot air balloon flight team is to perform hot air balloon flight performances for the public during holidays...
Well, it can only be in windless weather, because if the wind is strong enough, they will be blown away by the wind... The little push force generated by the human propeller is only a little bit stronger than nothing!
However, although the hot air balloon flight team is terrible, it is still a new thing. Every time it performs a flight, it can attract a lot of people to watch.
Speaking of which, although the Dachu Empire does not yet have an air force, the air force demonstration flying team has been set up first and has won the love of many people. On some holidays and when the weather is calm, many people are happy to watch it. Performance by the hot air balloon team.
This can be considered an unexpected gain.
