Chapter 1165
The Workbench is Complete! Nanoscale Stable Operation
He pointed to the two huge platforms inside the vacuum chamber that simulated the core operation—the feeding platform and the mask platform—and the complex bearing components below them, his voice hoarse with resentment.
"Chief Engineer Su! Engineer Yuan! We're so sorry! We've held everyone back!"
These precision drive spindles... they're still lacking something! We followed the blueprints, used the best experienced craftsmen, the most precise machining centers, and the best materials... but... but the dynamic balance, the surface hardness uniformity..."
The female engineer next to him quickly recited a series of data, awaiting further instructions.
"Actual test data shows that when the feeding stage is moved at medium speed in the X-axis, the slight undulation of the bearing raceway causes a jump error of more than 10 nanometers! Under the superposition effect, it has far exceeded the design requirement of 3 nanometers! Not to mention the microparticles generated after the special grease we made ourselves evaporated in the ultra-high vacuum environment..."
Su Dingping remained silent, his brows furrowed, his sharp gaze piercing through the heavy observation window, fixed intently on the two "trembling" core platforms inside the cabin.
It's like an athlete preparing for the Olympics, but their leg joints are rusty and fitted with cheap springs! No matter how precise the instructions from the brain are, they end up as trembling and shaking when they reach the hands! To make matters worse, this "iron cage" itself is leaking air—this is just outrageous!
The engineer in charge of the vacuum system reported the readings from the detector next to him with a long face.
"The vacuum level has dropped again! It can only be stabilized at 10^-4 Pa, which is far from the target of 10^-6 Pa! We've investigated, and it's due to the new sealing ring material we developed ourselves... The process stability is insufficient, and micro-leaks keep appearing under cyclic stress testing..."
"Materials, materials!"
Yuan Tao's voice carried a desperate anger.
"The heat treatment of the key alloy materials for bearings is substandard! The stability of the polymer material formulation for the sealing rings is also problematic! Basic industries! Basic industries are dragging us down!"
Lu Guangjun hung his head, like an old ox whose spine had been pulled out.
He knew better than anyone that some core bearing components with extreme precision requirements could not be processed using the makeshift, modified equipment currently available in military factories. Without those foreign nano-precision grinding machines that cost hundreds of millions of yuan each and could process down to the submicron level, it would be asking the impossible! You can't cook without rice!
"Pause the experiment."
Su Dingping's voice finally rang out, unusually calm, without blame, only a chilling silence like the deep sea.
This calmness, however, was more painful to Lü Guangjun than any angry outburst.
He opened his mouth, but only managed to squeeze out a dry, unintelligible sentence.
"Chief Engineer Su...we'll think of another way...we..."
"Director Lü, Engineer Yuan, you both did your best."
Su Dingping raised his hand to stop them from talking, shifting his gaze from the chaotic scene to the outline of a huge, heavily guarded, independent factory building further out the window.
There stands the largest and most mysterious device in the entire Dragon Heart Base—the Stellarator Prototype Experimental Reactor!
"The failures are visible, but we haven't lost our direction."
He seemed to be reaffirming his own beliefs, and also reassuring everyone.
"The bearing problem... let's try a different approach! Vacuum sealing... there must be a solution too!"
After saying that, he stopped looking at anyone, turned around, and strode towards the huge factory where the stellarator experimental reactor was located.
In the workshop filled with the atmosphere of failure, that figure stood out remarkably tall, yet carried a sense of desperate loneliness. Guo Xueyun stood in the corner, watching Su Dingping disappear behind the tall, electric radiation-proof door, her lips pressed white, her eyes filled with worry, but she forced herself not to chase after him.
All she could do was leave silently, and a moment later, she quietly delivered a fresh, piping hot, nutritious soup and clean bedding to the door of the special rest room outside the factory building.
Time passed in a state of deathly silence and anticipation.
Three whole days and three nights!
Those outside could only see the "Under Experiment" and "Radiation Hazard" indicator lights on the massive doors of the stellarator factory, which never went out. No one went in to disturb them; the air was as oppressive as solidified concrete.
The researchers mechanically performed other data processing and theoretical analysis tasks in the pre-research workshop, but their minds were already wandering to that mysterious factory building. Private discussions were inevitable.
"Three days... Can Chief Engineer Su really come up with a solution? Those are ultra-precision bearings and vacuum seals... This is something that can't be applied to the nuclear fusion simulation approach, right?"
"I doubt it... Although the previous breakthrough in reflectors was based on the idea of stellarators, those were optical surfaces after all... This time it's the core of mechanical motion!"
"That's right, everyone has their own expertise! I've never heard of the General Labor Union of Su working on precision machining and materials science!"
Even if he's a genius, there are limits, aren't there?
Yuan Tao happened to be passing by and overheard these whispered discussions. His anger and anxiety, which had been building up for days, suddenly surged up. He turned around abruptly, his usually smooth face now filled with a fierce expression, and pointed at the researchers who were chatting quietly, scolding them in a low voice.
"Shut up! Get to work! Don't you know the rules?!"
His voice wasn't loud, but it carried a chilling, oppressive quality.
"What Chief Engineer Su is doing inside is none of your business!"
If he says he can solve it, then he definitely can!
Seeing the researchers lower their heads in fear, Yuan Tao took a deep breath, his eyes sweeping over everyone around him who was listening intently. His voice was firm and resolute, carrying an almost obsessive conviction.
"Remember this! Su Dingping!"
He is not human!
He is the hammer sent by God to smash the shackles around our necks imposed by those Westerners! He is a divine being sent to carve a bloody path for our Longxia tribe!
He pointed in the direction of the stellarator factory outside the door.
"You think the lights in this factory are just for the stellarator? They're the guiding stars!"
He can access the world of those blueprints! He can pull something usable out of the impossible! Everyone, focus your attention on the important things! Those who are holding us back, get out of here!
This almost cult-like, fanatical declaration stunned everyone, yet strangely dissipated much of the pervasive doubt and oppression. After all, the miracle of the reflector had only just occurred.
Amidst this mix of trepidation and blind anticipation, Su Dingping emerged on the morning of the fourth day.
His face bore an unmistakable deep weariness; his eyes were sunken, and his lips were somewhat chapped. But his eyes shone with an astonishing brightness, as if burning with two leaping blue flames! What made one's heart stop was that in his hands, he was holding two thick stacks of brand-new design drawings, the ink seemingly still wet!
"Old Yuan!"
Su Dingping's voice was unusually hoarse, yet full of power, with a hint of barely perceptible excitement.
"It's done! The blueprints are in place! A new bearing design! A completely new sealing structure! Immediately organize a team to verify it! Notify the integrated factory to make a prototype based on this! The sooner the better!"
Yuan Tao practically ran over, disregarding all decorum, and snatched the stack of drawings titled "Zero-gap Nanomagnetic Suspension Bearing System Based on Heterogeneous Magnetic Trap Coupling" and "Multilayer Heterogeneous Gradient Damped Vacuum Sealing Assembly".
He flipped directly to the page on the core principles and structure, and the final estimated indicators.
"Magnetic field...force control...non-contact...coupling...compensation..."
Yuan Tao's fingers traced the incredibly complex yet subversively beautiful magnetic circuit diagram on the blueprint, his eyes widening in disbelief.
"Metal bellows... sandwich amorphous damping... ultra-micro gradient filling..."
His gaze then drifted to another set of drawings, featuring an unprecedented composite sealing structure design.
Finally, his gaze settled on the two key indicator figures circled in red at the end of the drawing, gleaming with a metallic sheen: — Dynamic repeatability error of the bearing system.
≤2.8nm!
—Simulated value of vacuum leakage rate of sealing system.
≤5.0× 10^-10 Pa·m^3/s!
These two data points, like two violent lightning bolts, struck Yuan Tao's brain hard!
"2.8 nanometers? 10 years?!"
His voice was so sharp it was distorted, his eyes were wide open as if they were about to pop out, and his hand holding the blueprints was trembling violently.
"My God... Su Dingping... you... you brought out some divine artifact from that godforsaken place again? How... how did you come up with this?!"
"No diamonds are wasted in the world of blueprints!"
Su Dingping forced a tired yet extremely excited smile, his eyes bloodshot but surprisingly bright, and he blurted out a sentence out of the blue.
"We have to thank the vacuum maintenance system and the complex stress-resistant structure of the plasma chamber's inner wall for our relentless efforts in developing the stellarator!"
Those things forced us to meet extremely high limits!
He suddenly waved his hand, pointing to the huge vacuum chamber in the pre-research workshop.
"Don't just stand there! Do it now! Try it!"
The blueprints were quickly distributed, and the entire workshop was instantly geared up at high speed, as if injected with a powerful stimulant! The Longxin design team offered theoretical optimization suggestions for several key control loops in the blueprints. New blueprints were sent to the integrated military factory overnight.
This time, with unprecedentedly detailed process parameter guidance and extremely clear structural breakdown diagrams, the master engineers at the military factory were energized! Although the equipment was still the same, with clear guidance, they were no longer like headless flies!
They drew upon their decades of experience in machining, fitting, riveting, and welding, combining it with the incredible design ingenuity on the blueprints.
Ultra-precision grinding combined with high-precision hand-grinding, a unique stepped ultra-low temperature tempering hardening process, and non-standard modified ultrasonic micro-flaw detection...
Using the most clumsy but also the most reliable method, they transformed the concept on the blueprints into a series of exquisite components that were shiny, covered with fine metallic luster and inlaid with special composite chips—the core module of the brand-new magnetic levitation bearing!
The "multi-layer heterogeneous gradient damping vacuum sealing assembly," which was also manufactured according to the blueprints and is as complex and mechanically beautiful as the inner movement of a top-of-the-line Swiss precision watch, was also sent to the laboratory!
Assemble! Test!
This time, everyone's hearts were in their throats.
The air was so quiet you could hear the low hum of the equipment being powered on and the sound of your own blood rushing through your veins.
start up!
hum-
The feed platform and mask platform glided smoothly on a brand-new, invisible "track" with no visible magnetic field. There was no harsh friction noise, only a very subtle, almost negligible, steady buzzing.
Vacuum degree.
10^-7 Pa... Stable! Leakage signal... Zero!
The vacuum engineer's voice was trembling with tears, yet filled with ecstatic joy.
On the screen, the position curve of the feeding platform is like the most tamed wild horse, galloping at a high speed of more than 3 meters per second along a preset complex trajectory, drawing a smooth and beautiful curve! The high-precision interferometer next to it tracks and provides feedback in real time—the peak-to-peak value of the dynamic position deviation.
1.9 nanometers! Repeatability error.
1.2 nanometers!
data!
Real data!!!
The data completely surpasses the design specifications!
Performance figures far exceeding ASML's existing worktable levels!
The entire workshop was initially deathly silent.
What followed was a deafening roar that nearly blew the roof off!
"It's a success!!!"
"Damn it! It actually worked!!!"
"miracle!"
Yuan Tao's eyes were red and swollen, and he clenched his fists so tightly that his nails dug deep into his flesh without him even noticing!
He hugged Guo Xueyun tightly, his voice choked with emotion, unable to speak.
"Old Guo...did you see that! I told you!"
He is God!
He is a god sent by God!
Guo Xueyun, with tears in her eyes, looked at Su Dingping, who was exhausted but seemed to be radiating light, and nodded vigorously.
This time, it's not just a victory for bearings, but a rebirth for the entire Longxia Precision Engineering system!
Su Dingping looked at the cheering crowd, at the smooth curve on the screen that looked like it had been carved by a ruler, and at the steady, low hum of the vacuum system.
Overwhelmed by a tremendous sense of accomplishment and exhaustion, he felt dizzy and just wanted to find a place to collapse and sleep.
But just then, a slightly hesitant voice rang out amidst the calming cheers.
"Su... Chief Engineer Su... Engineer Yuan..."
He is a young researcher responsible for controlling the logic simulation process.
"The dual-workbench hardware platform...it seems...it's all set. But..."
He paused for a moment, and all eyes turned to him. Yuan Tao also frowned.
"However, coordinating such complex and high-precision dual-stage synchronous motion, ultra-high-speed data transmission, real-time cancellation of micro-vibrations, online compensation for thermal deformation... and the timing coordination of the entire photolithography process... this..."
The young researcher took a deep breath and unleashed the core abyss that was extremely unfamiliar to the entire Dragonheart Laboratory and even the entire Dragonxia tribe's technological community, yet impossible to avoid.
"This requires an extremely complex operating system software platform with a code volume conservatively estimated to exceed ten million lines, and whose core algorithms are completely monopolized by ASM!"
"Our previous research, including the entire Longxia region's research on real-time ultra-precision control algorithms and software platforms for complex electromechanical systems... was a... huge blank area!"
His voice wasn't loud, but it was like an ice pick piercing a passionate heart.
"Forget about development, even if... even if we were given the ASM source code for free right now... who could understand it? Who could digest, modify, and refactor it in a short time? Let alone... develop it from scratch?" (End of Chapter)