The six-storey-high hydraulic press is like a "steel giant", the hot steel ingot is sent in, and under the huge pressure, the operation process such as pulling, upsetting, cutting and other operations has been successfully completed... The behemoth in front of you is a 12,000-ton free forging hydraulic press designed and manufactured by China itself.
The 1961 logo on the fuselage stands out, and yes, 60 years later, it's still in operation.
Next to the 10,000-ton hydraulic press, a red banner of "10,000 tons of heavy burdens are picked by tens of thousands of people, and Taishan does not bend over the top" brought us into that special era.
At present, the 10,000-ton hydraulic press is still operating normally
After the founding of New China, the urgency of the development of the national economic construction made the electric power, metallurgy, heavy machinery and national defense and other industries recover rapidly, the demand for large forgings soared, and the only few small and medium-sized hydraulic presses in China at that time could not forge large forgings at all, far from meeting the pace of national construction, and could only rely on high-priced imports from abroad. "To grasp the initiative of development and get rid of this situation of dependence on imports, we must have China's own industrial mother machine." Ling Jin, secretary of the party committee and deputy general manager of Shanghai Electric Shangshang Reforging and Forging Co., Ltd., recalled that in 1958, Shen Hong, then vice minister of the Ministry of Coal Industry, wrote to Chairman Mao Zedong proposing to build a 10,000-ton water press himself, and Chairman Mao approved it. After studying, the relevant departments of the central authorities decided to bring the task to Shanghai, set up a design team with Shen Hong as the chief designer and Lin Zongtang as the deputy chief designer, and started from scratch to manufacture China's first 10,000-ton hydraulic press.
After 4 years of hard work, in the spring of 1962, China's self-designed 10,000-ton hydraulic press was successfully developed and put into production in Shanghai Heavy Machinery Factory.
June 22, 1962, is a memorable day in the history of China's industry - China's self-designed and manufactured 12,000 tons of forging hydraulic press was completed and officially put into operation
Li Xiang, deputy chief engineer of Shangzhong Casting and Forging Co., Ltd., said that this 12,000-ton hydraulic press has two significant characteristics, one is heavy and large. It has 4 large columns, each 18 meters long, 1 meter thick in diameter and weighing 80 tons. Three large beams, each weighing several hundred tons; the second is precision. It uses high-pressure water with a pressure of 350 atmospheres, and it is controlled by 12 high-pressure water pumps, 16 accumulators and hundreds of high and low pressure valves.
Because of these two characteristics, in the past, people regarded the manufacture of 10,000 tons of hydraulic presses as very mysterious and did not dare to touch it. However, the Chinese people who have stood up have the courage to break into this "forbidden area".
At that time, almost all the designers had never seen the 10,000-ton hydraulic press, and there was very little information to refer to. Faced with the situation that the design cannot be started, the majority of designers have faced difficulties and run all over the factories with small and medium-sized forging hydraulic presses across the country, carefully inspecting and understanding the structural principles and performance of the equipment. They made a variety of models from paper chips, planks, bamboo poles, tin sheets, glue mud, sand and other materials, compared them repeatedly, and finally determined the design plan. In order to avoid waste caused by rework and repair, they decided to build a 120-ton hydraulic press and a 1,200-ton test hydraulic press first, and then formally build a 12,000-ton hydraulic press on the basis of accumulated experience.
Ling Jin said that facts have proved that this method of "crossing the river by feeling the stones" while studying, practicing, and improving at the same time is very effective. In the process of manufacturing this 10,000-ton hydraulic press, the engineering and technical personnel and the master workers worked closely together to create many "combination of soil and ocean" methods such as "electric slag creates miracles, skillfully sews hundreds of clothes", "large swinging wooden arrays, silver wire to Kunlun", "ants nibbling on Taishan, and jointly attacking the 'golden' pass", and so on, and has overcome various technical difficulties.
For example, the column hole of the 10,000-ton hydraulic press is very important, and the three large beams each have 4 column holes, if the processing quality is not good, the column hole is slightly deviated, and the hydraulic press cannot be installed. According to the requirements, such a large column hole had to be machined on a large precision boring machine, but there were no large boring machines at that time, only a few simple boring rows. To this end, the engineering and technical personnel and the master workers held several "Zhuge Liang meetings" on the spot, according to the distance between the upper and lower ends of the 4 boring rows, there are 12 data, and the error of each data must be below one in ten thousand, hundreds of times to survey and measure up and down the large beam, and study the scheme of soil processing. After 10 consecutive days and 10 nights of hard work, we finally found a breakthrough by improving the structure of copper bearings of earthen equipment, and solved the difficult difficulty of "boring row trace".
The 10,000-ton hydraulic press has made a contribution to the construction of large forgings in China's Qinshan Nuclear Power Plant, and the picture shows the production of forgings by hydraulic presses in the 1980s
Glory belongs to the past, and the superior does not lie on the merit book of his predecessors and become complacent.
Especially in the transition from the planned economy to a market economy, Shangzhong people have carried forward the "spirit of 10,000 tons" and embarked on the fast track of development.
In the face of the new situation, the first 10,000 tons of hydraulic press can not adapt to the requirements of large-scale nuclear power forgings production, the decision-making level of the company proposed: "If we digest and absorb advanced concepts and process technology on the basis of dependence on foreign countries, it is doomed to be subject to people, and there will be a lack of initiative in strategic development", and finally decided: "Relying on the spirit of 10,000 tons, through independent innovation, manufacturing the world's largest tonnage of 16,500 tons of hydraulic presses."
Also in this workshop, next to the 10,000-ton hydraulic press is a hydraulic press of 24.22 meters high and 11 meters wide - 3600 tons of self-weight, the smallest of the three horizontal bridges has 360 tons, more than 40,000 parts, and it took 18 months to complete the manufacturing.
Currently the world's largest 16,500 tons free forging hydraulic press
On August 15, 2009, the 16,500-ton hydraulic press of Shanghai Heavy Machinery Factory was put into operation. Since then, Shangzhongren has successfully developed two other "world's first" top equipment - 630 tons / meter operating machine and 450 tons of electric slag remelting furnace, which has laid a hardware foundation for the country to revitalize the equipment manufacturing industry and adhere to the road of high-tech industrialization.
In conquering major national projects, the top heavy people dare to gnaw the hardest bones and dare to pick up the heaviest burdens.
"Hualong No. 1" nuclear power forgings development project, is China's high-end manufacturing industry to the world "national business card", but also China has completely independent intellectual property rights of the third generation of nuclear power technology, its specific barrel forgings, transition cone, flow distribution component forgings production is a new challenge for Chinese manufacturing. The superior people sacrificed their courage and took over the heavy responsibility of this era. In 2019, the "Hualong No. 1" nuclear reactor pressure vessel, evaporator, reactor internal components main equipment large forgings were successfully delivered in an overall complete set of delivery breakthroughs, which strongly supported the localization of nuclear island main equipment with complete independent intellectual property rights in China, and represented That China stood at the forefront of competition with global high-end equipment.
Column Editor-in-Chief: Liu Kun Text Editor: Liu Kun Caption Source: Li Maojun Photography
Source: Author: Liu Kun