Chapter 103: Ship repairs
Translated by me, edited by drpetro.
Having gotten back home and taken a nice shower, DouDou immediately dug into her warm and cozy bed.
Right now her heart was beating too rapidly. Just then, when she was on Ye Qing’s back, that wide and sturdy back had her deeply drunk. It was just like right after Gaokao, when she and a couple of her friends went to celebrate, and actually had the courage to drink.
Girls feelings are always elegant, but for men, like Ye Qing, it was all down right dirty.
Right now he was driving with only a pair of underwear, yet was actually cheerfully humming away.
His back still retained some residual heat, and the unwashed smell. Carrying her all the way up 4 floors didn’t make Ye Qing tired at all, as carrying her was just like carrying a giant teddy bear.
Feeling great naturally meant enjoying the majestic rainfall outside.
Haha ~
Getting back on to Huanhai Avenue, Ye Qing turned on the Lagonda’s far light to pierce through the rain.
When Ye Qing got back to the Dragon Creek Beach factory, it was already 10 pm.
Unable to fall asleep, Ye Qing straight up dropped down to the underground base, and went to examine the state of construction for the metal smelting center’s central control system.
Under the lighting of the giant search lights, a giant piece of industrial equipment made out of pure steel, and complex mechanical structures, just like a piece of engineering that was guided by aliens, silently stood there underground.
Elbow thick, pure copper electric cables neatly connected to the top of this amazing piece of equipment.
The neatly placed transformers were linked to the sides of the steel hulk that was the smelter. Underneath the smelter was a set of shockingly powerful centrifugal facilities.
It could spin the melted metal when it just left the smelter to create astonishing amounts of centrifugal force, thus forcing out all kinds of garbage from the melted metal.
Even the ordinary looking quenching tank wasn’t normal at all.
Quenching was a type of forging technique. It was also one of the most important steps in modern day forging, do by heating the metal to a certain point, then rapidly dropping its temperature with liquid. That way, the austenite inside would change into martensite (or bainite), which would increase the strength and toughness of the metal.
Inside the quenching tank of the metal smelting center were liquids provided by the Monster Factory. Ye Qing could also purchase different kinds of quenching liquids in accordance to the different metals that he was going to smelt.
Moreover, the whole process was completely automated. This was definitely the most perfect quenching in the entire world.
Ye Qing walked to one of the master artisans that was responsible for installing the electric wiring, and asked: “How long until it’s operational?”
“At the latest, tomorrow night, boss. It’s just that we don’t have the electricity to support it, so even if it’s completed it still won’t be able to work.”
“The power supply bureau will be over to upgrade the electrical wiring tomorrow. They should be completed by nightfall.” Ye Qing nodded. It seemed like he would need to buy another load of raw steel, nickel, and some other metals, to try smelting the nickel-titanium memory alloy.
When the smelting center was completed, it only needed one person watching it, so it wouldn’t affect the production of the mechanical engineered chairs at all.
Furthermore, with no products needing it right now, Ye Qing could also first make some and leave them in storage for later.
The next day, the sky was clear as far as the eye could see, and the air had a hint of freshness.
Ye Qing got up really early, went to the local industrial metals market, and swiped clean all of its 4000 tons of raw steel, 200 tons of nickel, and a “small” amount of cadmium.
The price of the nickel was kind of expensive; ~60k a ton.
All the profits from the mechanical engineered chairs, without collecting any interest, were immediately spent.
The good thing was that the main component of the memory metal, titanium, existed under the secret base in both high purity and quantity, saving Ye Qing literally tons of money.
While on the way back, Ye Qing got a call with the caller ID [Huaxing head].
Ye Qing slowed down the car, and answered with his shoulder holding the phone: “Chairman Li, what can I help you with today?”
“Haha ~ Xiao Ye.” Li Huaxing full heartedly commented: “The mechanical engineered chair you brought over is leaving me completely speechless.”
“Just the massage functionality alone has out striped my old Yert LMS massage chair by decades.”
“If even someone like you, Chairman Li, is satisfied with the mechanical engineered chair, then others will definitely enjoy it more.” Ye Qing laughingly answered, then waited for what was to come.
Someone who was as busy as Li Huaxing definitely wouldn’t call randomly to just chat about life.
“It’s like this…… I might need to trouble you again Xiao Ye.”
“This morning a friend of mine contacted me, he’s in the produce import export business. A cargo ship filled with fruits and vegetables left its harbour in Korea. However, without even traveling several dozen nautical miles, the ship had an accident.”
“What accident?” Ye Qing strangely asked, if a cargo ship broke down, then shouldn’t it head to a shipyard for repairs?
“An abnormality appeared on that ship’s left propeller shaft. It’s just that when it happened the sailors on duty were slacking off, so when the warnings sounded, they didn’t turn off the engines in time.”
“This propeller shaft might have suffered some internal injuries before. So now due to the abnormality, paired with the enormous torque from the engine, parts of the propeller shaft has spilt.”
“When the propeller shaft splits, under normal conditions, the cargo ship will need tugboats to tow it to a nearby shipyard to exchange shafts.”
“That ship was built in a Korean shipyard, the shaft is also a standardized product of Korea. Ordering a new one requires at least a week, but how can my friend wait that long; he’s anxious to the point of wanting to jump into the open sea.”
“So he found me to help him fix the shaft. However, when my mechanics got on the ship, they found that the shaft had suffered some serious splitting; completely unrepairable.”
“Thus I thought of you and Master Qiao. So can you look on our friendship and ask Master Qiao to come take a look?”
Shaft repairs……
Ye Qing understood why. Before, at Huaxing Heavy Industry, the master artisan used a hammer, and the echo from the hit, to predict whether or not the power shaft of the mining truck had hidden damage.
Now Li Huaxing’s friend was in trouble, and his mechanics didn’t possess the ability or knowledge to repair that power shaft, so he naturally thought of Ye Qing.
Power shafts for modern day cargo ship were extraordinarily complex to manufacture. From its forging, to quenching, roughing, and finishing, they all required the use of various kinds of industrial sized computer assisted machineries.
Huaxing Heavy Industries of course had the ability to manufacture power shafts, but to produce a never before attempted cargo ship power shaft, they would have to spend a long time to readjust the equipment and plan out each step of the manufacturing.
That period of time was definitely longer than just ordering from Korea. Even if a tugboat showed up to tow the ship back to a port and transfer all the produce, that still needed at least two days. Add in the hot and humid temperature right now, then wouldn’t all the produce have rotted?
So they only needed to temporarily fix the power shaft, get the ship to deliver the product, then go for a thorough repair.
Making the shaft was already difficult enough, so repairing it was, of course, even harder.
Rather, it could be said that there was no such thing as repairs for a power shaft. If the damages were only simple scratches or light wear and tear, then it might be possible to repair. However if it was as serious as splitting the shaft, then who can say that they could fix it?
Thus, Ye Qing didn’t straight up answer Li Huaxing, but had him sent over the photos of the split power shaft.
5 minutes later, the photos were sent to Ye Qing’s phone.
Good thing Ye Qing was at the factory right now, so he showed the photos to a master artisan right away and asked whether or not it was fixable.
“Piece of cake. This is 40Cr grade steel, no matter if it’s wire welding, or fusing on alloy powder, I got it all under control.” The master artisan, upon seeing the photos, was completely in disapproval and completely looked down on it: “This kind of low RPM shaft, even the peons can fix them with their eyes closed.”
Li Huaxing was seriously wonderful. When Ye Qing asked him for help, he agreed with no questions asked. So now that he was finding him, Ye Qing naturally couldn’t not help.
So Ye Qing immediately called back saying that he had this repair covered.
Hanging up the call, in less than half an hour, an orange painted carbon fiber 18 seater speed boat docked next to the docks at Dragon Creek Beach.
The boat was clearly the cargo ship’s multipurpose lifeboat. Except right now, apart from a helmsman, there was only a clearly anxious middle aged man.
Apart from the necessary equipment, Ye Qing also brought along a master artisan and a peon.
“Quick quick, get on the boat!” Li Huaxing’s friend Liu Yuanzheng hurriedly wave.
When the peon jumped onto the boat with the equipment, his sudden weight increase on the boat nearly tipped it over.
The helmsman got quite the scare, and cursed at Ye Qing with some ununderstandable Korean.
“Nice Mr. Liu, you’ve even got foreign workers working for you.” Ye Qing joked.
“You’re too kind ~ ” Liu Yuanzheng blushed with shame: “I’m only in the produce trade business. The cargo ship is rented from Korea. They are shipping stuff into the country, so I just hopped on out of convenience.”
“These Koreans were all boasting how good and great their cargo ships were, yet without traveling a couple dozen nautical miles it freaking broke down.”
