Chapter 105: So which one?
Translated by me, edited by drpetro.
Under Kim Hunhil and several sailors’ strange looking eyes, the master artisan pulled out a hammer from his toolbag.
Don’t look down on that hammer, as it was also of uncommon quality.
After several hits, the master artisan already knew what was going on, then took out a metal probe, and poked at the crack on top of the power shaft.
Then the master artisan took out a couple of different glass bottles, each filled with different colours of powder.
This was powdered metal, steel powder, chromium powder, powdered silica, and nickel powder. Last time, when Ye Qing went to shop at the metal exchange market, he also brought back a bunch of metal powders. These metal powders are really cheap, as they are common ingredients used in modern powder metallurgy.
The master artisan taking out those powders, naturally meant he planned on using powder metallurgy to repair the shaft.
It was just that the chief and all the sailors present, were all professionals of the trade, especially the chief, who had some mechanical background to begin with.
He felt like this was completely bullshit. Only with a couple of pokes from a probe, and they were already starting to mix powders. There wasn’t even any questions on what materials the shaft was made out of, nor were any steps taken to examine how deep the damages were.
Seeing the master artisan mixing the metal powders, the chief and all the other sailors nearly fainted.
This guy……
Actually only used a spoon. He didn’t even bothering to prepare a must have scale.
Any kind of alloy must have their different metal proportions be accurate to two decimal points. It was just like brewing medicine, the more precise the proportions were, the more effective the resulting medicine would be.
Using a spoon to measure, from those sailors’ point of view, wasn’t different from just randomly guessing the weight with a grab at all.
They all burst out laughing at the master artisan who was still measuring, shaking and mixing the powders, but it all came to an abrupt end.
If you wanted to have the powder fuse with the shaft after the melting, then the two metals needed to be of the same proportions. When the proportions were the same, then the colours of the two metals naturally needed to be the same
Inside the glass vessel, the final mixed metal product, no matter how hard they looked, they weren’t able to find a single difference in colour from the shaft.
But only using colours to figure out the proportions was a very unscientific and unconvincing move
However, the old man in front of them, without any hesitation and thought, it was as if he had done it thousands of times already. Finishing everything with just a measuring spoon, mixed out the exact proportions of the shaft metal; not 1% more or 1% less.
That was a move that was both extremely unbelievable, and broke all their knowledge of the industry.
The most unscientific part was still at the end. Normally using powder metallurgy to fix flaws required the powder to be blasted on, then using high heat to melt it so that it binds onto the base.
The master artisan didn’t blast on the metal powder. Rather, he slowly operated the solid state laser welder’s welding arm to over the crack, then aim at the crack on the power shaft with its diamond like laser focus lenses.
When the orange protectors dropped down, to signal its operational status, Ye Qing put on his pair of cool sunglasses.
Right now, Kim Hunhil and the other sailors had already been shocked into mutes, because the welder that they thought was of ordinary quality, used real actions to separate itself from the norm.
As the master artisan increased the power level to the laser, the light coming from high powered laser, although there was a layer of protectors in place, it still covered the room in a complete layer of orange.
What kind of terrifying laser power was this?
Finding the orange light in the room not that dazzling, several people turned their eyes for a look.
A beam of light that was as thick as a pen moved around within the orange protectors with extremely quick speeds.
*Zizi* *Zizi*
Sounds of metal being penetrated when coming into contact with the high temperature beam sounded off in everyone’s ears.
Two minutes later, the laser finished moving, and the protectors were lifted.
Everyone could see that the originally deep crack on the power shaft had already been turned into a very rectangular shaped hole, which has been filled with piping hot liquid like metals.
Several seconds later, the residual heat from the metal dispersed and it returned back to its original colours.
Apart from Ye Qing, everyone else was completely dumbstruck.
Because they found that this crack had not only become shallower, but also broader.
The terrifying temperatures generated by the laser had melted the metal powder into liquid, which slowly seeped into the bottom of the crack.
While filling in this crack, it also conveniently melted the randomly shaped crack into a very squared rectangular shape.
It was also this which left Kim Hunhil’s mouth gaping wide out of shock; wide enough to to fit in 10 whole eggs. They had all handled laser welders before, so they were all familiar with its concept of heating the metal to their melting point, then when they cooled off, naturally they were fused together.
Except it was just that this heating was limited, and also very uncontrollable.
The laser welder in front of them had literally shattered their scientific knowledge. Kim Hunhil also knew that the longer he stayed shocked, the more face he’d lose.
Except he couldn’t control his body at all. Going from ridicule, to doubt, and finally to shock. Kim Hunhil had completely become a dumbass bull, being led away by the snout by the master artisan and the laser welder.
All of their expression changes were seen in full by Ye Qing.
To be fair, the more one knew, the more shock and disbelief they would feel of the master artisan and the tools from the Monster Factory.
The master artisan, not too slow, and not too fast, poured the rest of the already mixed metal powder into the pool of liquid metal that was the crack.
Originally nearly 6 centimeters deep, now it was only a single centimeter deep.
After pouring in some of the remaining powdered metal, he turned the laser back on, and used the high temperature laser to turn the metal powder into a thin layer of melted metal. When it cooled down, the steps were repeated again and again.
15 minutes later, the last layer of powder metal was fused with the power shaft.
What appeared in front of them was a power shaft that would only display its blemishes of having been repaired when you take a close enough look at it.
But those blemishes, were very quickly wiped out by the master artisan with the high powered grinder. Turning into a piece of metal that even if God were to come, he still wouldn’t be able to find any signs.
“Impossibru!! This is impossibru!!” A sailor cried out in Korean as if he had seen a real life ghost: “How are you guys able to fix this, when even Hyundai couldn’t do it?”
“Its structural strength is definitely questionable, definitely!”
Ye Qing didn’t understand Korean, but Liu Yuanzheng did. Right now he was just like having won a 5 million jackpot, as he translated everything to Ye Qing word by word.
“How do you know if something that others say is impossible, is actually impossible to the rest of the world?” Ye Qing strangle asked: “Guess you definitely haven’t heard of the saying technology is there to be surpassed.”
“Won’t you know when you’ve started the engines?” The master artisan laughed. It was only a normal piece of alloy shaft. If with his skills and the uncommon laser welder were still not enough to fix this, then how could they be called the Monster Factory?
Kim Hunhil’s face was filled with embarrassment. He had already made a fool of himself, yet who would’ve thought that his co-workers still didn’t believe the reality in front of them. The Chinese people in front of them were clearly in possession of some revolutionary technique and technology.
That godlike technique, and that era defining laser welder, completely shattered his image of the poverty ridden country.
And the start of the engines after completely sealed that point.
Messaging the control tower to retract the anchor.
The 15,000 horsepower diesel engine, under his command, began to emit those antique train like Chu ~ Chu ~ sounds. Under the movement of the gears, the two power shafts also began to turn.
The entire engine compartment felt a sway, indicating that the ship was moving.
Kim Hunhil and the sailors excitingly stared at the just repaired left shaft the moment the engine started, as that was the moment that the shaft bore the most torque.
No anomalies could be found.
Kim Hunhil informed the control tower to increase speeds.
The 15,000 horsepower diesel engine slowly began to pick up speed. Two minutes later, the engine had reached maximum RPM, and the sound of the propellers cutting through the water could be clearly heard in the engine room.
The sailors almost all jumped up and high fived each other.
The power shaft showing no signs of problems, even while working under the most stressful conditions, meant that the shaft had been completely fixed.
That means that they didn’t need head back to port, spend a ton of money to transfer the containers onto another ship, and also didn’t need to wait for at least a week for the arrival of a new and expensive power shaft from Hyundai Heavy Industries.
Letting the control room decrease the speed, Chief mechanic Kim Hunhil, with several sailors in tow, hesitantly approached Ye Qing to express their thanks and gratitude.
It was just that Ye Qing, contrary to popular belief, drenched them with a cold shower.
“Whao!! We’ve only done half of the repairs!”
“Half?” Kim Hunhil and the sailors’ expressions were as if they were plunged into the arctic ocean.
Wasn’t the power shaft already working fine?
How could it be just half?
“We haven’t done any motion adjustment.” The master artisan worriedly said: “That whole centimeter wide gap means that the shaft’s straightness has also been moved by at least a whole centimeter.”
“I have fixed the shaft, to the point where it’s no different to the right one, but the straightness of the shaft will have an error of at least one centimeter. So isn’t it a complete joke to say that it’s fixed? If this were at any manufacturing factory, a centimeter error is more than enough to get you shot!”
The shaft splitting, naturally meant a change in its precision levels.
Kim Hunhil understood that point. It was just that to correct the shaft’s straightness, they needed to remove it, then put it onto specialized equipment to fix, which, of course, came at a very very high price tag.
Errors naturally meant a rise in the rate of wear and tear. Although the wear and tear of low speed power shafts were very trivial and low, but with a one centimeter error there, as long as it wasn’t fixed, no one was allowed to relax.
Kim Hunhil originally wanted to wait until the ship entered its scheduled maintenance period before performing readjustments, or to swap in a new shaft.
But if this master here was able to do the readjustments here……
The master artisan had them lower the speed of the power shaft a bit more. Then with a hand on the surface of the shaft, and just like a senior monk stroking the head of a believer, felt out all of the shaft with it.
Meanwhile, the other hand, with a permanent marker, swiftly jotted down several arcs.
When the shaft came to a complete stop, several sailors braving the embarrassment, went up and took a look at those markers.
A one centimeter error, under their slow stroke, of course could be felt. But it was still only felt, if they were told to fix it, then they may as well go commit suicide.
The master artisan, with the uncommon grinder in hand, put on a display of being eager to get to work.
Meanwhile, Kim Hunhil and the sailors all widened their eyes in preparation for the miracle the master was about to perform.
They had all been completely subdued by the master artisan, without a sliver of doubt, that he could, with his hands only, remove this straightness error and restore the shaft to reasonable bounds.
After all, those top tier processing master could tell the difference of 0.03 millimeters with their hands alone. As for the master in front of them, he was definitely a lot stronger.
“This motion adjustment can be done is 3 ways.” The master artisan picked away at his nose: “Normal readjustment, superior readjustments, and perfection readjustments.”
“So which one would you guys like?”
