Fast-growing technology for small-scale workshops in the fastener industry

China's fastener industry has developed in the mainland and Taiwan for decades, but all have made considerable progress. On the mainland, as an industry, from its formation to the present, it is only 50-60 years old and it is still a very young industry. Fortunately, the author experienced almost its entire process. An industry should have a record of its history. It is reported that the history of the fastener industry in the Mainland has been planned, and it may soon be met with the industry. However, the history is boring after all, it is difficult to have vivid details. The author thus thought to put aside the stereotyped language and tell the story, but actually recorded those meaningful details and fragments as an addendum to the official history for the later critics, both interesting and inspiring. It is a good thing, and it is also an obligation as a witness. This essay will generally be written in chronological order of development, and it should be remembered using one and two.

1. The newcomer The writer was a student of the mid-50s, who was graduated from a professional college and was assigned by the state to a certain unit to work and gain job opportunities. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, graduates from colleges and universities have become “national property” and have never had the freedom to choose their own profession. The workers needed are basic for social recruitment (universal students in technical schools are allocated but only a small amount is needed). For primary and secondary students, whether graduated or not, as long as they are of appropriate age (15 or over 16 years old), they can be recruited. The factory, starting their career as a master apprentice, has the opportunity to choose their own profession. There is such a thing that a college student who is assigned to a foreign university does not adapt to the various localities. So he ran back to his hometown, but he couldn’t work or not. Then when the workers went, they mistakenly Workers' identities should be recruited into a small fastener factory. When the factory manager saw it, he turned out to be a graduate of a professional college. Baby, ah, it was a dry technology, and he became a "technical cadre."

Since that year, student allocations have been tilted toward small businesses (prior to major state-owned and medium-sized companies), but such small companies must have the “national” component to become a member. “Non-state” is a distinction. To Cobain's. Since then, graduates from a large number of colleges and universities nationwide have begun to be assigned to many small businesses, including public-private partnerships, street-level offices, and cooperatives. In short, they have brought the “state” component and the country can deliver talents in the past. The company to which the author was assigned is a public-private joint venture. With 200 people, it is considered to be the largest of small and medium enterprises. In the late 1950s, Keban students entered the company for the first time, reaching as many as four. Previously, the company had never had a technical person who was a professional in the class. The only one who could draw simple drawings was honorably called "xx technician." Workers are mainly blacksmith masters of small workshops before public-private partnerships and newly recruited middle and elementary school students. At this point, the domestic professional fastener manufacturers, the vast majority of such small businesses. Even so, this factory located in Wuhan is also known as the largest professional screw company in the region, which shows that the technical status of such companies is a sign.

I am assigned to the factory by a municipal bureau in charge of the enterprise. At the beginning of the factory visit, the factory manager personally received a small factory with 200 employees. The factory manager had as many as 4 to 5 people and shook hands, warmly welcomed and honored, and felt the desire and attention of the company to me. It was later learned that the director of the company is a feature of public-private partnerships. The public (nationals) and private parties (owners of major private companies before the joint venture) have their own positions. The original owner of the company’s private owner is actually very small. The boss is mostly the master of the original workshop. The largest of the owners is a skilled craftsman. The director of the public company is mostly a change of force, and the director of the private company has become a substantial general manager and general manager. This situation has been maintained until the “anti-rightists” have basically come to an end. After the “anti-rightists”, private factory managers have been removed from the plant manager's hat in various names and went to work at the grassroots level. The factory then turned into a state-owned enterprise. .

Second, the factory in the downtown area This factory is located in one of the big cities in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River - Wuhan, Hankou downtown (this situation was very common in the country at the time, such as Shanghai's many screws, screws, rivets factory, in the downtown alley In Beijing, a factory in Beijing used the temples near the Drum Tower as a factory, and they were all self-produced. It was not planning until the 1960s-70s. A few small factories are scattered in a small street. The distance from the old and bustling “Zhongshan Avenue” workshop is only about one or two hundred meters in the straightest distance, and only ten meters or so in the nearest. From the factory to the famous Jianghan Road in Hankou, but also the distance to the two bus stations. The neighbourhoods of the factory are shops such as grocery stores and teahouses. The jingling of the jingle produced by the factory, the cries of the merchants, and the storytelling of the teahouses echo each other. This is the scene of all the “street factories” (in Shanghai called the Lane Lane Factory).

There are only a few single-family houses in the factory. They are scattered all over the neighborhood (all the owners of the original private company). There are cadres who live in the city and return home only on holidays. Most of the masters learned the arts from the nearby countryside before and after liberation. They mostly had children and had children in the countryside. They did not (or could not) return home during the Lunar New Year. Therefore, regardless of marital status, most non-off days are used as homes. There is a canteen in the factory, but also in the same street, the shop floor is a few meters wide across the street. Compared with the level of my school meals, the cafeteria food is quite good, the main esophagus full without quantitative, rice 0.15 yuan per catty, vegetarian 0.03-0.05 yuan per serving, leeks each 0.08-0.15 yuan, on-demand. A person's monthly food costs about 10-20 yuan. Apprentices are paid 18-20 yuan per month. They tend to be prime and have a meal. Some masters are extravagant. Many people, out of habit, often sit and eat on the street after a meal, talking about food with the gods of heaven and the earth. It is also very interesting. It is said that wage reforms were carried out in the previous year, that is, workers were paid according to their level of technical assessment. A 4th-level worker (many of the factory's masters is above 4th level) has a monthly salary of more than 50 yuan, which can be used for household purposes while being used for personal use. Masters of grades 7 and 8 have a salary of 80 to 90, which is regarded as "rich". As the winter approached, the city’s famous clothing stores focused on these “rich” groups and came to customize the tailored clothing for the teachers. On Sundays, the blacksmiths took off their greasy work clothes and put on navy blue coats to watch movies!

According to the price level at that time, the monthly income of 80-90 yuan, indeed counted as wealthy, the director of the public, a military cadres who participated in the anti-Japanese transfer to level 15, the monthly income is only 110 yuan only.

In the urban area at that time, there were few other entertainment venues except the cinema. Another activity of the spare time is to wrestle on not too large a venue, but there are fewer participants and many spectators. Mongolian-style, put on an apron vest, can dry up in the street. It is said that there are people who have won the rank of the region. Two shifts of work, 8 hours a shift, will get stopped after 12 o'clock in the evening, the neighboring residents had to endure the bangs and clangs of the night shift for a long time. At that time, there was no "noise pollution," but it could be done. .

Third, the indigenous technology This small factory made by the merger of small blacksmith workshops is actually a larger workshop. The main products are all kinds of bolts, nuts and forged small parts. According to sample production, there are basically no product drawings, no paper process, and I do not know what the "standard" and "standard parts" are. The blanks of bolts and nuts are all made of hot forged steel. Simple mechanical presses and hammers and hammers are hand forged. All products are heated in coal stoves. After forging, products that do not remove the oxide skin are called "wool bolts" and "wool nuts." Descaled (required by the market), using a process called “Le light” (forging blanks pickling, cold extrusion through hexagonal die holes), removes the hexagonal surface from oxidation and extrudes smooth. In the early and mid-60s, some professional plants in Shanghai have adopted this process in large quantities. Looking at the process flow, technical proverbs, and tool structure, the process technology used in Wuhan is likely to originate from Shanghai. Big). The oxidized skin and flash edge of the bolt shank and nut end face can only be removed by machining. The bolts required to "cut light" throughout the body are mainly hexagonal screws known as "head screws". The thread is inch "Wysh's" (also known as "Wyeth") and is the oldest thread standard in the UK, but the factory At that time, there was no such standard, but the "image" was actually made according to the actual product.) The teeth and cusps of the thread were all required to have a circular arc shape, and the handle must be smooth. Now it is extremely difficult to see the threaded bolt. . This is a legacy of the use of a large number of imperial machinery in the old era. It was still in heavy use at the time due to maintenance and customs. Even the packaging is still using the old rules, counting theory "hit", each "hit" 12 pieces, every 12 "hit" is a "roof", carton packaging, generally a "roe" per box. Although the "head screw" has no dimensional accuracy, it has a rather strict appearance requirement. The hexagonal surface must be smooth and free of visible spots and rust; the thread must be full and there must be no missing teeth. ,glitch. For this reason, this product has to be picked by 100% manually. The market demand at that time had already profoundly affected the operation of these small enterprises. Its main sales direction is the hardware store. By around 1960, it gradually decreased until it died.

Hot pressing and manual hot forging with presses are the basic methods for forming products. The special size is a large diameter or rod length, small batch, multi-use manual, large batch size, medium size, the use of machine tools. Molding molds are manufactured in the simplest way. The car, the planer, and the fitters are manually trimmed. The grinding machine is not available. It can be considered “finishing” with sandpaper and oilstone. The heat treatment of the mold also uses a coal stove, which is mastered by the master, “seeing what you see” (looking at the heating temperature and the tempering color with the naked eye). This may be the technique that has been used for thousands of years. The production of hot-forged core steels was mainly domestically available high-carbon tool steels (in the 1950s, China’s basic steel number system was established, and the steel grade of high-carbon tool steels was “ㄊ8,ㄊ10”). "The old Chinese phonetic symbol, corresponding to the Chinese phonetic "T", that is, later T8, T10. The literate little master called the steel "cloud 8", "cloud 10" steel). Regardless of the steel material used in the product or tooling, the material store’s steel number, even if it is steel, is neither a concept nor an “acceptance” condition.

The machine tools used for cutting products are almost exclusively special machine tools, and are generally "belt machine tools" without motors. One type of machine, known as the "Sky Axle" type, is the most common type. Under the roof 2-3 meters above the roof of a vehicle, it hangs a "sky axis" several meters long and is driven by a motor. Several pulleys are mounted on the "axle", and each pulley is associated with the pulley of each small machine on the ground with a long flat belt. "Ten axis" starts, all the machines can work (each machine has its own device that can control the start and stop). Once this workshop started, dozens of belts buzzed and flew up and down, spectacular and thrilling. Security issues were naturally inevitable, but no matter whether the factory or the superior seemed to be accustomed to it, they did not question it. Even if you only need to open a machine, you must do so. It now appears that this is really hard to imagine. Car bolt head, car (strictly regarded as "milling") nut end, bolt or rod end, "sets" of thread, etc., almost all of this dedicated machine tools, they already have "specialization "The basic characteristics. Its structure is basically the same, small and simple, but the head, the fixture is different. However, they are extremely easy to imitate and undoubtedly belong to the industry. Until the 1990s, in the area of ​​Jiangsu and Zhejiang, it was also possible to see a large number of similar simple special-purpose machine tools that were used by professional companies for their own use or supplied to their factories. Simple and dedicated, this can be considered as an inevitable process or method for the professional development of fasteners.

The most important element of the bolt, the thread, is a “square thread,” which is a technology that is now almost extinct. The degree of surface smoothness of the thread is entirely controlled by the master craftsman's craftsmanship. When I first entered the factory and participated in labor, I had to work on the “threading”. The school’s “cutting theory” must be applied to the squaring of dies, which is really difficult, because this “soil dent” is almost in textbooks. No mention, let alone control by hand, is easier said than done! Although the thread of the nut is also tapped with a "taper," there is no concept of "precision." The nut that is tapped off can be fitted with a bolt and "can". The material used for the product is “ㄤ3” (the steel number specified in the old Chinese phonetic symbols in the 1950s, that is, the later common carbon steel A3), and naturally it does not matter heat treatment. "Wool products" is worth mentioning, "light products" are also good, but also do not do surface treatment, oil rust can be shipped.

Interestingly, where do these already specialized technologies come from? According to the observations made by similar companies across the country, general inferences can be obtained, and the source should be coastal cities such as Shanghai. The first large-scale inland migration occurred during the Anti-Japanese War (Several bosses and masters at the author's factory were known as the “Jiangyan”). When some of the relocated enterprises established themselves in the area, their technology immediately followed. It will inevitably gradually spread outwards. Moreover, it can be imagined that the technology that landed in a certain place will inevitably have different degrees of improvement in its application process. This is roughly the history of the development of small-sized fastener companies in the budding period from the 40s to the 1950s. At that time, there was a concept that made screws and nuts in Shanghai. At the end of the 1950s, the factory organized a team of 7 or 8 members to “get the Bible” in Shanghai. This was the first time the factory went to Shanghai to seek arts (more then several years later, this is a later story). This shows that Shanghai is indeed one of the sources of domestic fastener technology.

When I visited the factory, the most intense feeling for the author was: “Isn’t this a complete workshop?” I can not help but sigh, those schools taught the “Su-style theory” (at that time the school used a full set of Soviet Union materials, directly after translation The use of both theory and practice has indeed benefited and benefited the students who have received this formal education. Compared with the actual state of technology, the gap is so great. How can it come in handy? Of course, subsequent developments show that this worry is only temporary. Assigning coban students to these small enterprises actually infuses vital and even crucial technical factors for their future development and upgrading. It is indeed a very sensible decision.

Mainly in the "blacksmith workshop", the state of the domestic fastener companies probably is generally the same. It is this numerous small fastener factory that meets the needs of the “small screws” required for the recovery and construction of the early New China (the first bridge of the Yangtze River—the tens of thousands of rivets required for the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge. It is provided by the small factory in Wuhan, using raw technology and equipment, with the sweat of the employees as scheduled.) The "workshop" of that year was like a virgin land to be cultivated. China's fastener industry will only grow and develop in this land in the future.