The weather is getting colder, and it is almost two months before the New Year. The New Year Festival is the most important festival in China in tradition and a day for family celebration. According to the principle, it should be happy and lively, but Zhu Cijiu is not happy at all now.

The peasant uprising in Shaanxi is still continuing. Yang He is still very responsible for the recruitment and pacification work. He has recruited many rebels, but his speed of recruitment cannot keep up with the increase of the rebels. Generally, he recruits one rebel, two or three new ones will appear, mainly because he has no money. When people face a simple multiple-choice question such as rebellion or starve to death, most people will choose to rebel. Therefore, the situation in Shaanxi has not only not improved, but also has a trend of getting worse.

This trick doesn't work, so we have to prepare for suppression. In order to save money, Zhu Cijiu chose to arm the army with a flintlock rifle and then wipe out the rebel army. However, the production of this flintlock rifle encountered problems and could not recruit people. A large military factory that could accommodate at least tens of thousands of people was built, but in the end, only a thousand people were recruited, and they were all white dicks. They also needed to start from the basics. How could this output be increased?

Speaking of this output, Zhu Cijing has a solution, because he was a process engineer in his previous life, and a reasonable process flow can increase the output. Zhu Cijing thought about it and wanted to significantly increase the output, so he had to increase the type of machine tool.

He still had many machine tools in his mind, but it wasn't that he was unwilling to do it, but at the processing level at that time, it was too troublesome to make these machine tools.

For example, the structure of a milling machine is not complicated. Just vertically set the drill, then replace the drill bit with a milling cutter, and then make a platform for fixing parts. Nothing else is very difficult to do, but this milling cutter is a big problem. At the processing level in the Ming Dynasty, it is not very difficult to make a milling cutter.

The hair of the milling cutter is not very difficult to make. It can be turned out using a lathe before quenching. The key is that the edge of the milling cutter must be processed on a disc. In the Ming Dynasty, when there is no metal cutting equipment, the difficulty can be imagined.

Bi Maokang came up with a solution, which was to grind it. There were no metal cutting equipment in the Ming Dynasty, but there were still many natural whetstones. Anyway, those stonemasons could not participate in military production, so it would be better to let them use whetstone to slowly sharpen the milling cutter's blade.

Zhu Cijiu gave him the drawings of the milling cutter, and the cold sweat on his forehead immediately emerged. With such a complicated blade, a stonemason would not have to grind it for a month before he could polish it out!

Of course, Zhu Cijing would not let someone grind it for a month. Now, the high-carbon steel material is good for a milling cutter to last for a few days. If you build a ten milling machine, you will not have to arrange hundreds of people to grind the milling cutter specifically, which is too expensive.

The problem of milling cutter processing of whetstones is easy to solve. You can make a simple grinding machine. The piston system is ready-made to process the whetstone into a disc shape and then fix it to the rotating shaft. If you use a simple grinding machine to grind several milling cutters a day, the cost will not be so high.

Zhu Cijing found that there were still many processing methods now, but Bi Maokang and the others knew very well. After discussing this with them, the problem of milling cutters was solved, and it could be done with a milling cutter. Zhu Cijing asked them to make ten pieces in one breath, and basically half of the various strange-shaped parts in the flintlock rifle can be placed on the milling machine for processing, and the output of a milling machine can be increased by at least 30%.

There are also some strange-shaped parts that are flaky, but it is not a big deal to use in modern times. Buy a bunch of thin steel plates and go directly to the punching machine. One person can make thousands of them a day! But there were no standard thin steel plates in the Ming Dynasty, and punching machines also need to be made immediately.

Let’s talk about this punch first. Even if you are processing small parts, you have to lift a gravity wheel of several hundred kilograms and then rush down with a snap to make the thin steel plate on the mold look like you want. It’s okay to make a punch of tens of thousands of parts, so you can just grind it out slowly. The key is that this gravity wheel weighs several hundred kilograms and has to be wheel-shaped. The small lathe can’t withstand such a big deal at all.

There was no choice but to build a large lathe first, and the problem of this punching machine was basically solved.

With a large lathe, the problem of this thin steel plate has also been solved. The steel plate is nothing more than rolled out with a rolling truck, which means that the heated and softened steel block is rolled over from the middle of two huge steel rollers, and the steel block becomes a steel plate. If you want to make a thinner point, you can add several more steel rollers and just roll over it all the way.

With a large lathe, the steel roller can naturally be processed, but the diameter cannot be made too large. If it is too large, the hair cannot be made. Fortunately, the amount of thin steel plate is not large, so it is enough to make a few steel rollers with a width of half a meter. In this way, the steel plate made by a rolling mill for one day cannot be used in a month, which is a serious overcapacity.

Zhu Cijing couldn't take care of so much. If you don't have ready-made steel plates, you can only process them by yourself. It's nothing to make more steel plates, and you can use them in many places. But no one knows that there are such good things to sell. If everyone knows that there are good steel plates to sell, it will be in short supply immediately.

Once the punching machine and rolling mill are made, the output of this flintlock will increase by 30%. Of course, this is already the limit, and there is no need to make other machine tools. Some parts are too complicated and I don’t know how much time it takes to make it. Moreover, it does not help the production of the flintlock gun, and it is just a waste of time.

It took more than a month to do so. Zhu Cijing and Bi Maokang and others discussed fitting simple milling machines, grinding machines, rolling machines and punching machines. More than a thousand novices could almost get started. The New Year Festival is coming soon. Zhu Cijing simply issued an order to everyone take a good rest and start producing flintlock rifles after the New Year.

In a blink of an eye, the first year of Chongzheng passed like this. After the ups and downs of this year, Zhu Cijing finally realized the hard work of becoming an emperor, and at the same time strengthened his determination to develop military industry.

The invasion of the Later Jin Dynasty and the peasant uprising in the northwest made him understand one truth, that is, only with absolute force can one have absolute voice. Why did the Later Jin Dynasty attack Liaodong again and again without regard to the Ming Dynasty's warnings was because their current force was stronger than that of the Ming Dynasty. Why did the peasants in the northwest dare to put down their hoes and revolt because the Ming Dynasty had no extra army to suppress them.

If there could be hundreds of thousands of quasi-modern army equipped with new flintlock rifles and sufficient artillery, you would let the peasants rebel and they would not dare to rebel. If you ask the Later Jin to attack you, they would not dare to attack you. In the face of advanced gunpowder weapons, the peasants who put down their hoes would be the moving target, and the cavalry of the Later Jin was just a faster target. Is it purely for them to fight with cold weapons and the Ming army equipped with advanced hot weapons? Who is so stupid?
Chapter completed!