Chapter 62: The giant mechanical hand
Translated by me, edited by drpetro.
To be perfectly honest, Ye Qing’s Monster Factory only had one real product — The rapid metal engraver.
The scooters were only an assembly product for his dad’s old factory, so now there was a question.
To expand and strengthen a factory by only selling a single product was the biggest joke ever.
Hence Ye Qing needed to figure out of the three new black techs, which one was easiest to make and will have wide reaches once it’s made.
[Titanium memory alloy] so far looked super easy. All it needed was to first build a metal smelting center, but the smelting center was just too difficult to build.
Ye Qing was prepared to wait until the raging miners had expanded the cavern to a certain extent, and build the smelting center hidden in the cave and away from prying eyes.
Ye Qing opened up the last blueprint and carefully examined the artificial mechanical limb.
When he was still in university, one of his profs said, mechanical movement was one of the easiest topics in the mechanical world, yet it was also one of the most complex.
Single joint mechanical movement was super easy, to the point that a piece of magnet can easily do it. However, if looking to synchronize multiple mechanical movements and perfect it, then the difficulty was through the roof.
Lathes were the perfect example. Back when the five axle CNC lathes was ruling the sky on the international scene, domestically we were still stuck with the three axles to get things done, as for the five axles, they were just like divine tool that you could only dream of.
The helper arm on the five axle lathe looked very much like a human arm. It could accomplish various degrees of accurate processing, yet it didn’t have a palm or an arm.
A hand has 14 finger bones, and 5 palm bones.
What does the five axle CNC lathes have?
Only a drill bit.
From this you could understand the difficulties involved in wanting to completely mimic human hand movements.
Yes, it was all the precision’s fault.
Without precision, all the artificial mechanic arms could do, so far, is destroy. Hoping on these things to perform long distance surgery was like cutting open someone’s stomach to remove the appendix, but instead cutting out the intestines. Then when it was time to sew up, instead of sewing up the cut, it stitches up the belly button.
Even with all those downsides, Ye Qing still had great expectations for mechanical limbs. If this actually got researched, then don’t mention the medical world, just the application within the transplant sector would be a complete jackpot.
A single excavator that could be as nimble as human arms, could easily out dig out three normal excavators. [ED: That a bit of an exaggeration, author.] [TL: Straight up foreshadowing.]
In dangerous situations, with the ability to control robots whose arms were as nimble as humans, don’t mention using them to deactivate bombs, they could even shoot down aircrafts.
The problems with cars having a super difficult time getting up and down mountains would also be solved. Just add four arms onto the car, and it becomes a climbing cheetah. If that’s still not enough, then add four more and it becomes a spider.
So far there are three ways to make mechanical arms move: pneumatics, fluids, and electric.
Pneumatics were the simplest, fluids had the biggest strength, and electric had the highest precision.
This was an electric and fluid powered mechanical blueprint, as it completely combined the advantages of both electric and fluid systems.
The blueprint was extremely detailed. Just with some enlargements, it was possible to see any parts’ structure and sketches.
Even if it was within the servo machine, there were countless coils of solenoids, which were suppose to increase the electric resistance within the control system.
After examining it for more than ten minutes, Ye Qing’s mind was literally blown and fried. Just the servo machine and hydraulic fluids within the electric fluid drive had already completely stumped Ye Qing.
Uhhhhh……
Let’s go examine the ionized environmental purifier for now.
The ionized environmental purifier, from the looks of it, could either be a negative ion air purifier, or an upgraded version of the electrostatic precipitators.
Those two types of equipment Ye Qing was quite familiar with. Lots of factories had electrostatic precipitators installed.
Their working principle was very simple, through the release of ions, they cause oxygen or dust in the air to create static electricity. Through mutual absorption they increase in mass and drop out of the air. Then they are absorbed onto a piece of metal plate with an opposite electrode.
Then, after careful examination, Ye Qing found himself to have seriously underestimated all these new black techs.
The ionized environmental purifier, not only could it work in the air, it could still fire off special ions in accordance to the character of the surrounding pollutants even if it was put in the water. This would cause the pollutants to become electrolyzed, and mutually attract each other towards where the machine was.
The ion transmitter was the central core of the machine. Yet with just a glance of the structural design, Ye Qing already gave up. Because that thing’s complexity was on par with that of a particle accelerator.
It was just better to further research the not so much simpler mechanical limbs. At least much of the hydraulics and hydraulic fluids could be replaced with existing ones. As for those beyond human precision parts, they could also be made by the master artisans.
Mechanical limbs also included some movement capture equipment. The movement capture equipment wasn’t too difficult to make; completely possible to make with the present technological level.
Wanting to make a sample as soon as possible, Ye Qing called over several master artisans. Together they researched how to create the mechanical limb with the available materials in the workshop.
The mechanical limb was from head to toe a domineering black tech. Just the structural design alone was enough to force mass engineer layoffs.
The difference here was just like when a F-22 Raptor stealth fighter was put up against a WWII era propeller fighter.
The servo motors inside were the definition of being ahead of their time. Having discussed everything with the master artisans, Ye Qing found that, if they were to use existing materials as replacements, then there was no way to make it as small as a human limb. It had to be at least ten times larger.
The hydraulics became much easier to make after enlargement, and stainless steel was more than enough to create the hydraulic parts and chambers. There were also piles of servo and stepper motors available in the workshop; used in for creating other machines.
Having cleared the engineering processes, Ye Qing had the master artisans begin work immediately.
The hydraulics of the mechanical limbs was somewhat like the hydraulic system on an excavator, except a lot more complicated. Ye even opened the Monster Factory app store to buy several more drilling platforms and stainless steel cutters just to raise the work efficiency of the factory.
Yet just when he finished his shopping, his father called.
“Your uncle and Xiao Hu’s going to be in Zhongyun tomorrow at noon. I’ve already booked a room at the Marriott to celebrate.” Ye Jiangning had been extremely happy since getting back on his feet. The ever increasing sales of the electronic scooters had him find back that confidence he had so many years ago.
“Uncle’s gonna come over?” Ye Qing was a bit surprised. His uncle, who lives out of the province, was really hard to meet, but the two families had always been on good terms.
“Yeah, Xiao Hu just got accepted by our University of Zhongyun. So your uncle decided to specifically bring him over for sightseeing.”
The University of Zhongyun where Ye Qing graduated from, ranked in the top twenties within the national university rankings. So naturally it was a good choice.
Xiao Hu’s full name was Xu Xiaohu, and was his uncle’s grandson. When he was little he spent a period of time with Ye Qing, and Ye Qing also quite liked the straight forward attitude of this little nephew of his.
“Oh right……” Ye Jiangning delightedly asked with hints of doubt: “Did you do some advertising on T.V. or something? How come I got a bunch of long distance calls this morning from scooter dealers across the country making purchases. I even gotten calls from towns right on the border.
“No? Don’t you know how much it would cost to do nationwide advertisements?” Ye Qing did some quick calculations and found that even if he sold both factories, he still wouldn’t have enough.
“Strange…… Our scooters are only known within Zhongyun, yet today the orders from across the whole nation totaled up to over 300..”
“Hold on a sec. Another long distance call, probably another scooter dealer looking to order.” The phone immediately went on hold.
Two minutes later, Ye Jiangning finished his call and told Ye Qing: “It really was another out of the province dealer, and he ordered twenty right of the bat.”
“I asked the dealer how he got to know us, and he told me that it was from a couple of youngsters who came looking for the beautifully designed, long mileage, and aluminum cased scooters they saw on the internet.”
“The dealer went looking at the scooter market in Zhongyun and found us.”
“Holy shit, this is strange, I didn’t pay for any advertisements!” Recently Ye Qing didn’t even have time to go online. So could it be that some user made some advertising post on some forum?
But that was unexplainable! If advertising on forum boards could produce that kind of result then where was the need for those owners to invite those stars to be their spokesperson, and pay for what advertisment. All they needed to do was get a bunch of bots and they would be good.
Um…… if the posts weren’t erased that is.
Of course, expanding the sales route for the old factory was a good thing. On Ye Qing’s side, he could definitely keep pumping out more parts. It was just that the old factory needed to hire more people and expand its size again.
Ye Qing could even send over a master artisan as a trainer to train the workers at the old factory.
Before, when Qiao One was reporting what happened at Owen’s, Ye Qing had already found out about the master artisans’ ability to train others.
The master artisans, within the field of mechanical research, was seriously more experienced and qualified than all of those so called mechanical professors that Ye Qing met in university.
Having a master artisan as the trainer for regular workers was all their luck and fortune. Not only would it improve the quality of their work, but also the speed at which they would complete it.
We could try this tomorrow. With the disguise uniforms in hand, there was no need to worry about exposing the monsters.
A peaceful and quiet night.
Just when Ye Qing got up the next morning.
A strange looking thing that looked very much like the mechanical arm of a Terminator sat there on the ground.