Major Heavy Industry: Starting with a Fake Marriage

Chapter 126 Not to Be Left Behind

The next morning, Jiang Cheng arrived at the lab and found Xiao Ma already there. He was squatting in front of the control cabinet, a thick book open before him, titled "C Programming Language." The pages were worn and tattered, the edges curled up, some sections marked with highlighter, and small notes stuck to the pages with the word "Caution" written on them. A bookstore stamp was affixed to the title page, the words on it faded and illegible.

"Little Ma, you're up so early?"

Xiao Ma looked up, his eyes showing dark circles. "I didn't sleep much last night. The program framework is finished, and I'm debugging it today. Master Jiang, could you please take a look at the surface data of the blades? I need to generate the spraying trajectory based on the surface. The data needs to be accurate to three decimal places; even a slight difference won't work. If it's even a little off, the spray gun angle will be off, and the coating thickness will be uneven."

Jiang Cheng took a stack of drawings from the drawer and spread them on the table. The drawings were three-view drawings of a blade, with the coordinates of key sections marked. The coordinates were marked in pencil, the handwriting small but clear. Xiao Ma took out a ruler and calculator and began measuring on the drawings.

"No need to measure. The data is here." Jiang Cheng tore a piece of paper from his notebook, which was filled with coordinate points. "This is what I surveyed before. The blade is divided into five areas, and each area has eight control points. I've marked the coordinates of all the control points. I measured each point three times and took the average value. See if you can use it."

Xiao Ma took it, glanced at it, and his eyes lit up. "Master Jiang, you even made this?"

"We have to do it. Without data, you can't write the program."

Xiao Ma nodded and entered the coordinates one by one into the computer. The computer was provided by the research institute; it was a Great Wall 0520 with a small monitor and a blinking cursor. He typed quickly, his fingers dancing across the keycaps, making crisp sounds, like someone playing a simple tune. After entering one point, he pressed Enter, then entered the next point and pressed Enter again.

Sun Deming stood to the side, watching intently.

"Deming, come take a look." Xiao Ma pointed to the code on the screen. "This line defines a variable, this line is a loop, and this line is a conditional statement. You'll understand it after looking at it a few more times."

Sun Deming leaned closer, staring at the screen with a furrowed brow, but didn't move away. His lips moved, as if he were silently reciting each character on the screen. He asked Xiao Ma, "What does this semicolon mean?" Xiao Ma said, "A semicolon ends a statement; every instruction must end with a semicolon." Sun Deming wrote it down in his notebook.

At lunchtime, Jiang Cheng sat next to Huang Deqing, holding his rice bowl. Huang Deqing ate alone in a corner of the cafeteria.

The bowl contained stir-fried cabbage and sliced ​​pork. He ate slowly, chewing each bite for a long time. The cabbage stalks crunched crisply when he chewed them. After finishing a bite, he put down his chopsticks, took a sip of soup, and then picked up his chopsticks again.

"Master, why are you alone?"

"It's noisy when there are too many people. The young people talk too fast, and I can't keep up. Xiao Ma talks fast, and Sun Deming talks fast too, so it's hard for me to understand them."

Jiang Cheng sat down next to him and started eating. The cafeteria food was still the same: the cabbage was cut too coarsely, and the meat slices were too thin. But he was hungry, and everything tasted good.

"Chengzi, how old is that Xiao Ma?"

"Twenty-three or twenty-four."

"Young. Smart." Huang Deqing picked up a piece of cabbage, put it in his mouth, and asked, "What were you doing when you were his age?"

Jiang Cheng thought for a moment. "I was repairing machines. That year, I carried molten iron ladles in the foundry workshop. I carried them all summer long, and calluses formed on my shoulders. The molten iron ladles were very heavy. It took two people to carry them. If we walked too fast, the molten iron would spill out, and if we walked too slowly, it would waste time. That year, I learned how to walk at a certain speed."

"And now?"

"The machine is still being repaired."

Huang Deqing glanced at him, a slight smile playing on his lips. "Things are different now. Before, we repaired small machines; now we repair large machines. Before, we repaired machines on the ground; now we repair machines in the sky."

Jiang Cheng smiled but didn't reply. He cherished the time he spent joking around with his master.

In the afternoon, Xiao Ma finished writing the program. He connected the control cabinet to the computer, loaded the program, and then started the robotic arm. The robotic arm hummed and moved along the preset trajectory. The spray gun fixing device at the end of the robotic arm moved along the curved surface of the blades at a uniform speed and constant distance. The robotic arm's movements were smooth, without shaking or pausing, as natural as a human arm. Sun Deming watched without blinking.

Jiang Cheng stood to the side, watching the robotic arm's movements. The trajectory matched the preset parameters perfectly, without any deviation. He used a micrometer to measure the distance from the spray gun to the simulated part; each segment was within the tolerance range. The micrometer reading fluctuated, finally settling at 0.105 millimeters. He measured five points, each twice.

"That's fine," he said.

Xiao Ma shut down the program and wiped the sweat from his brow. "Master Jiang, this is just a framework. The actual control program needs to include a feedback system to monitor the coating thickness in real time and dynamically adjust the parameters. That's much more complex. The feedback system requires sensors, and the sensor signals need to be processed in real time. After processing, the speed and angle of the spray gun need to be adjusted immediately. This cycle needs to be completed in milliseconds. What is a millisecond? It's one-thousandth of a second."

"Take it one step at a time. First, get the robotic arm moving, then teach it to make judgments."

Little Ma nodded.

In the days that followed, Jiang Cheng, along with Sun Deming and Xiao Ma, spent countless hours in the lab debugging the robot. Each debugging session involved recording data, analyzing problems, and modifying parameters. The robotic arm's trajectory became increasingly precise, and the coating's uniformity improved significantly. Chief Engineer Chen visited daily, taking several sample pieces for testing each time. The test reports showed increasingly better data each day, and her expression relaxed more and more each day. On the first day, she frowned, reading the report three times before putting it down. On the third day, her brow unfurrowed, and she nodded after reading the report. On the fifth day, she placed the report on the table and said, "Continue." On the seventh day, she said, "Not bad."

That day, she walked into the laboratory with a test report in her hand and stood in front of Jiang Cheng.

"Comrade Jiang Cheng, take a look at this."

Jiang Cheng took it and opened it. There was a photograph on the report, a cross-sectional metallographic image of the coating.

The ceramic layer, transition layer, and metal substrate form a clear, well-defined three-layer structure without any gaps or cracks. Next to it are a line of data: bonding strength of 520 Newtons, coating thickness of 305 micrometers, and porosity of less than 1%.

"This is the best one yet," said Chief Engineer Chen. "It's better than all the previous test pieces. The bonding strength is 30% higher than the standard, and the porosity is 50% lower. These figures are not lagging behind internationally."