After the optimal shape of the infantry armor plate was determined, the basis for testing the cold forging technology was also established.

The principle of cold forging nail technology is not difficult, it is just that the nail is beaten hundreds of thousands of times without heating to make it thinner and harder.

However, the reason why large-scale production of cold-forged armor pieces has not been started before is because it was found that the yield rate of the cold forging process is too low. Only one or two successful pieces can be obtained after ten pieces of armor are shot, and all the others are damaged.

This means that for every set of cold-forged armor produced, seven or eight sets of ordinary armor are destroyed.

After a craftsman accumulates rich experience, the yield will be higher, and the cost of cold forging armor will be significantly reduced. However, a craftsman accumulates experience from scratch, until he successfully explores the cold forging method, and then successfully masters cold forging.

Forging work, before this step, assuming that it takes a year to train a cold forging armor craftsman, in this year, tens of thousands of armor pieces will be spent to train this person.

The cost of cold forging armor is too high, and the cost of personnel training is also too high. This is why Li Mengxi has not even started training craftsmen.

Li Mengxi was waiting for the time to mature and planned to use testing methods to replace the craftsmen's personal experience accumulation with a large number of tests.

The essence of cold forging armor forging technology is method. Since it belongs to [method], there is no essential difference from studying papermaking methods and gunpowder ratios.

The art of cold forging, at a glance, is nothing more than taking a hammer and clanging it up and down, inside and out, and the place to explore is right here. It is clanging up and down, inside and out.

Hitting, then, should we hit horizontally or vertically first, should we hit one side first, or should we hit it from the front and then from the back. Among these, there is always a most efficient way of forging.

This most efficient forging strategy is something that the craftsmen have figured out after accumulating experience.

For craftsmen to accumulate experience, it takes a long time and a lot of materials. What Li Mengxi wants to do is to use testing methods to directly find the most efficient strategy, directly replacing the process of craftsmen exploring experience.

A massive testing program began.

This test does not test actual objects, test [methods], and test strategies.

Li Mengxi set up his craftsman's camp to cast armor pieces one inch wide, four inches long, and two inches nine, using the same furnace of molten iron to cast tens of thousands of armor pieces of the same specifications at one time.

Then, because cold forging is different from hot forging, the nail pieces are soft during hot forging and a small hammer is enough to tap, while cold forging requires a larger force, so the forging hammers required for hot forging and cold forging are different.

Using the controlled variable method to analyze, ask, how many variables are there in the cold forging process?

The answer is, forging strength, forging frequency, and forging strategy.

Regarding the strength of the forging, it depends on whether you can forge faster if you lift the hammer high, or if you use a small amount of force to forge accurately.

Regarding the frequency of forging, which one is faster with a strong and slow hammer, or a fast hammer with a small force?

Regarding the strategy of forging, should you hit faster horizontally or vertically? Should you hit faster from left to right or from top to bottom? Should you focus on one side first to hit faster?

The positive and negative sides can be fought quickly. This is the strategy of forging.

In view of the fact that power is difficult to quantify and frequency is difficult to monitor, the only way is to test the forging strategy first.

Li Mengxi summoned three hundred blacksmiths, and each of them was given a round-headed hammer of the same size and the same armor plate.

Then, for the first strategy test, one hundred and fifty people were asked to forge horizontally from left to right. Another hundred and fifty people were asked to forge from top to bottom and vertically.

In order to ensure that everyone came as required, Li Mengxi specially assigned 300 soldiers, each of whom watched one person to ensure that everyone came as required.

For two days in a row, the blacksmiths were hammering with small hammers. Two groups of people were beating from left to right, and the other were beating from top to bottom. They used completely different and monotonous forging methods to compare.

Which forging method is more efficient?

Two days later, the forging stopped, and the two waves of people handed over their forged armor pieces.

Li Mengxi got two baskets of armor pieces. When he wanted to compare which of the two forging methods was better, he picked up an armor piece from the left basket and another armor piece from the right basket. He looked at the left and right

Take a look, stack them together, lay them flat and look at them, no matter how you look at them, you can't see any difference.

It’s so bad, how to measure the forging effect.

The first thing Li Mengxi thought of was to put two kinds of armor pieces on the guillotine and use a big ax to drop them to test the strength of the two kinds of armor pieces.

However, the measurement accuracy of the guillotine is not enough. The guillotine can measure the strength of different steel materials and the strength of armor plates with different carbon contents. The guillotine can even measure the strength of the carbon content. However, this accuracy is fundamental for measuring cold forging data.

Not enough. The difference in intensity between more and fewer blows is so subtle that the guillotine cannot detect it at all.

If you think about it, you should know that the two forging methods have the same forging time, the armor pieces are exactly the same, and the forging hammers are also the same, but one is for horizontal and the other is for vertical. The difference between these two methods is,

I guess there is nothing you can do with a laser instrument.

The accuracy is not enough, the accuracy is not enough at all. This is like when testing a tool, the measuring tool in your hand is only a brick. A super sharp tool can chop the brick into pieces with one knife. A less sharp tool can also chop the brick into pieces with one knife. The measurement accuracy of the brick

Too bad, there is no way to accurately distinguish the sharpness of the two knives.

The current problem is that even with laser instruments, there is no way to measure it.

It is even more impossible to measure using the old strength measurement method.

This is no longer a problem that technology can solve, and other methods must be found.

Li Mengxi held his chin and furrowed his brows and fell into deep thought for a long time. He was thinking about what the quality of cold forging had to do with. Apart from the defensive power, the defensive power could not be measured.

Recalling the process of cold forging technology, cold forging involves hammering a thick piece of armor thousands of times until it is two-thirds thinner than the original...

Inspiration came suddenly.

(Yes!) Li Mengxi’s eyes lit up. He thought of the measurement method, volume!

This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! If you ask, what is the quality of forging, the answer is that the thinner the nail plate is, the better.

So, to compare the pros and cons of the two forging methods, it depends on which one of the nails forged by the two methods is thinner. The thinner one has a tighter structure and at the same time, its volume must be smaller.

.

Data that cannot be measured by laser can be measured using the volume measurement method.

If the difference in the thickness of a single nail piece between the two forging methods is only 0.001, then there is no way to compare or measure a single nail piece. However, if you put thousands of nail pieces together

If put together, then each nail plate has a very subtle difference of 0.001. When the differences of tens of thousands of nail plates are accumulated, they will be amplified enough to be measured.

Therefore, using the volume measurement method, the extremely subtle differences between the two forging methods can be compared.

Li Mengxi immediately set out to make a container. The requirement was to make two slender tubes with the same thickness, which could hold thousands of armor pieces.

The craftsmen took over the task and worked overtime to make the long tube.

The long tube is made of iron. The mouths of the two bowls are exactly the same in size. They are as long as a pillar.

Li Mengxi checked the two iron cylinders. They were sufficient, but they had no scale and were not transparent, making them too troublesome to use.

Li Mengxi first filled the iron cylinder with water and weighed its volume. The two iron cylinders had the same volume.

Then, add the same amount of water into the two iron cylinders. After adding the water, throw the nail pieces in again.

In the iron tube on the left, forged armor pieces are thrown horizontally, and in the iron tube on the right, forged armor pieces are thrown vertically.

After throwing 2,700 pieces of armor into each of the two iron cylinders, the test was successful. The water level in the two iron cylinders was obviously unusually high.

As a final comparison, after the armor pieces were forged horizontally and installed in the tube, the water level spread was about half a bowl of water lower than the water level in the other way.

Half a bowl of water is only 300 milliliters by visual inspection.

Comparing 2,700 nail plates, 300 milliliters, each nail plate occupies a volume of 0.1 ml. In other words, the difference in the volume of the thinning of the nail plates between the two forging methods is only a mere 0.1 ml on average. The nail plates are so small.

A big piece, this mere 0.1 ml volume is spread evenly over the entire nail plate. Even the laser cannot tell the difference. Even the laser can really detect the difference. However, it is such a subtle difference, which is so subtle that even high-precision instruments cannot detect it.

, put it into the water, and the test came out clearly.

The comparison is obvious. Forging horizontally is more efficient. As for the reason, I don’t know, but the data is like this.

The first point of the forging strategy, the test is completed.

Next, it is known that for pure single-sided forging, horizontal forging is more efficient than vertical forging. Then suppose that for mixed forging, it is struck once horizontally and then vertically, or it is struck several times horizontally first.

Hit it vertically several times to see which forging method is more efficient.

The second step of the forging strategy is to test mixed forging.

This time, the three hundred craftsmen were divided into three waves. One hundred people were simply beaten horizontally; one hundred people were beaten horizontally, once vertically, then horizontally, and again vertically; the third wave was beaten five times horizontally.

Hit it vertically five times, then horizontally five times, and then vertically five times.

It's still armor pieces cast from the same mold with exactly the same specifications, it's still the same size hammer, and it's still the same forging method that each soldier keeps an eye on and strictly supervises each person.

Two days later, three waves of people handed in their armor plates.

According to the same method, use the same iron cylinder to fill the same amount of water, and then put the nail pieces forged by three different forging methods into three iron cylinders, and judge the total volume of the nail pieces based on the amount of water overflowing.

Then based on the total volume of the nail pieces, determine which part of the nail pieces has the smallest volume, thereby determining which nail piece has become thinner, and thus determining the most efficient forging method.

The differences between individual nail flakes are extremely small, but when numerous nail flakes are accumulated together, the tiny differences accumulate enough to be measurable.

After comparison, among the three types of nails, the forging method with the smallest increase in water level is - first hit it horizontally, then hit it vertically, then hit it horizontally, and then hit it vertically.

As for why this forging method is the most efficient, Li Mengxi thinks it may be because the forging is even. I don’t know the specific reason, but the data shows so.

The second step strategy has also been tested. At this point, the single-sided forging test is over.

The third step, when forging, should you focus on one side and only hit one side, or should you hit both the front and back sides? If you need to hit both front and back sides, then finish the front side first and then the back side.

, or alternately hitting forward and backward, I don’t know.

The third step is to forge the strategy. At the beginning of the test, the three hundred craftsmen will be divided into three waves. The first hundred people will only hit the front, and one piece of armor will be hit in half an hour. The second hundred people will hit the front for half an hour.

Then beat the tail side for half an hour; for the third wave of people, beat the front side for a while, and the tail side for a while, until it lasts for an hour.

Still, the same armor pieces with the same specifications, still the same hammer, and still three hundred armored men staring at each one to strictly ensure that the forging process is carried out as required.

Two days later, it was over, and each of the three waves of people turned in their forged armor pieces.
To be continued...