Inventors with 61 patents have been refined in this way

On December 24, 2021, Zhang Shuxiang, a farmer inventor in Manas County, is debugging a new precision film spreader. Photo by Zhu Wenbin

　　　Tianshan Network reporter Gai Youjun correspondent Zhu Wenbin

　　"This is my first national invention patent – the multifunctional corn threshing machine. This machine now seems very simple, but it was a very practical product more than a decade ago..." On December 24, 2021, Zhang Shuxiang, general manager of Manas County Xianghe Agricultural Machinery Co., Ltd., proudly introduced it to the orderer.

　　Born in the countryside, Zhang Shuxiang has a low level of education, but he has personally developed more than 60 national patents. Patent innovation, achieve dreams. Facing the future, Zhang Shuxiang looks forward to playing the "two cards" of intelligence and internationalization and continuing to light up the dream of innovation.

　　Entrepreneurship to find the first pot of gold

　　Zhang Shuxiang is a native of the countryside. Years of rural life experience have had a profound impact on him. Since he grew up with his family and suffered from heavy farm work, he had the idea when he was in junior high school: if he could invent tools to improve production efficiency, farmers could easily do farm work! Since then, a seed of invention has taken root in his heart.

　　Due to the large number of brothers and sisters in the family, after graduating from junior high school in 1989, Zhang Shuxiang followed his compatriots from his hometown in Huining County, Gansu Province, to Work in Manas County, Xinjiang. That year, at the age of 17, his mind was full of expectations for a better life in the future. Zhang Shuxiang worked as a shoemaker, set up a stall, and made and sold tin chimneys, so he wandered for more than a year. Later, he felt that if he wanted to do something decent, he still had to learn a craft. So he went to an iron processing and repair shop in the county of Manas county and became an apprentice, learning techniques from his master.

　　In 1994, Zhang Shuxiang became a teacher and opened an agricultural machinery repair shop. Due to good craftsmanship and easy-going, the business of the repair shop is getting better and better, and it can have a net income of more than 1,000 yuan per month when it is good. In 1995, Zhang Shuxiang found that several local wood processing factories had a lot of discarded scraps, and he thought of using these scraps to make rolling pins for sale. Therefore, he designed and produced his own processing equipment, bought scraps at a price of 50 yuan per car, and began to produce rolling pins, spatulas and so on. The rolling pin was wholesale for 6 dimes a piece, and it was sold to Urumqi, Shihezi and other places. Relying on the production of rolling pins and other products, Zhang Shuxiang earned the first pot of gold.

　　When he was young, Zhang Shuxiang was full of enthusiasm for life and always had endless energy. From the production of the first rolling pin, to the production of washbasin shelves, tractor trailers, tractor suspension chains, fertilizers and other products, Zhang Shuxiang has gone through nearly 10 years. By chance, Zhang Shuxiang found that the best-selling tractor suspension chain he produced appeared in Hebei and other places, and it also sold very hot, and he had a sense of patent protection.

　　Overcome difficulties and accept defeat

　　Around 2004, Manas County and other places planted cotton in large areas, and cotton medium-tillage fertilizer spreaders became a sought-after commodity at that time. In the hot agricultural machinery processing and sales market, Zhang Shuxiang is keenly aware that the technical content of the medium-tillage fertilizer machine is low, and the processing plant with a slight scale can do it, and the market will be saturated after a long time. If an enterprise wants to develop and grow, it must produce products with a certain technical content. Therefore, Zhang Shuxiang began to develop and produce products with high technical content such as corn threshing machine and film spreading planter.

　　On the basis of the single function corn threshing machine, Zhang Shuxiang added functions such as wind selection, impurity removal, screening, and bagging. Soon, this multi-functional corn threshing machine was successfully developed, and Zhang Shuxiang obtained his first national invention patent. This multi-functional corn threshing machine became popular after being put on the market, and the products were sold to many provinces, autonomous regions and cities. It wasn't until a few years later that the self-propelled corn combine came along that this versatile corn threshing machine was discontinued. At that time, Zhang Shuxiang deliberately left a prototype. He said: "In the future, it will be put in the Agricultural Machinery Museum to inspire us to draw the power of scientific and technological innovation from old products." ”

　　Compared with the development of multi-functional corn threshing machine, Zhang Shuxiang's road to the development of cotton precision film laying planter is much more tortuous.

　　In 2005, zhang Shuxiang developed the first generation of cotton precision film spreading planter products are defective, farmers are not satisfied, the product has become scrap iron, Zhang Shuxiang lost more than 500,000 yuan. In the face of setbacks, Zhang Shuxiang was not discouraged. He invited professional technicians from Urumqi and other places to establish a research and development team to develop a new generation of products. Every spring sowing season, Zhang Shuxiang leads technicians to serve farmers free of charge, learn from experience in the field, and continuously optimize product performance. Relying on the strength of not accepting defeat, he led the team to overcome one technical difficulty after another, successfully developed a cotton precision film spreader, and has obtained more than 20 national patents. After the new cotton precision film spreading planter was put into use, it became a good helper for farmers to save costs and increase efficiency.

　　In December 2010, Zhang Shuxiang established Manas County Xianghe Agricultural Machinery Co., Ltd., which became a designated new product promotion enterprise in the autonomous region. For more than 20 years, Zhang Shuxiang has led the R&D team to delve into research and development of 28 kinds of agricultural machinery products, which are all over the north and south of the Tianshan Mountains, and are exported to northeast China, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia and other places. At the same time, he has also obtained 61 national invention patents and utility model patents, and the technical indicators of many products are in the leading position of similar products in Xinjiang.

　　 Intelligently "equipped" new agricultural machinery

　　"Today, our company has more than 60 patents. For me personally, innovation is my persistent pursuit. For enterprises, it is difficult to survive and develop for a long time without innovative products. Zhang Shuxiang said.

　　In 2016, in order to meet the needs of large-scale development, Zhang Shuxiang moved the enterprise to manas County Agricultural Machinery Manufacturing Industrial Park and began his second venture in life.

　　In recent years, he has to upgrade and optimize products every year, and has also carried out joint scientific and technological research with scientific research institutes such as Xinjiang Agricultural University to develop more high-end products. A few years ago, Zhang Shuxiang learned that Aksu, Hotan, Kashgar and other places were vigorously developing the forest fruit industry and were in urgent need of red date harvesters, so he went to the field to investigate and understand the needs of jujube farmers. After returning, he devoted himself to the research and development of intelligent red date harvesters.

　　In 2018, after repeated experiments and improvements, the self-propelled jujube harvester he developed was promoted and used in Aksu, Hotan, Kashgar and other places, and a machine can pick more than 10 tons of dates a day, which greatly reduces the intensity of manual labor and improves production efficiency. In particular, this jujube harvester cracks the technical problems of jujube and jujube leaves, and the separation of jujube branches is not clean, and is welcomed by jujube farmers.

　　Zhang Shuxiang introduced that at present, the company's agricultural machinery products have a total of five categories and 14 series, of which there are more than 30 kinds of planting and fertilization machinery; forest fruit industry agricultural machinery has red date harvesting machine, walnut peeling cleaning machine, orchard trenching fertilizer machine, grape buried vine machine, etc.; agricultural harvesting machinery has seed melon seed machine, straw return machine, etc.; animal husbandry machinery has multi-functional forage crusher, etc. In view of the environmental protection problems in the development of modern agriculture, he has also developed products such as drip irrigation belt recycling machine and mulch film recycling machine, which effectively reduces white pollution.

　　"China is already the world's largest producer and user of agricultural equipment, but China's agricultural machinery and equipment industry must still vigorously enhance the localization and autonomy of high-end agricultural machinery and equipment." Zhang Shuxiang set the development goal of product intelligence and brand internationalization for his enterprise.

　　"Combined with the application of Internet +, cloud computing, Internet of Things and other technologies in modern agricultural machinery and equipment, we are developing a new generation of agricultural machinery and equipment with information acquisition, intelligent decision-making and accurate operation capabilities." Facing the future, Zhang Shuxiang is full of confidence.