Chapter 142 The Terrifying Consistency

Section Chief Wang took a deep breath.

He pulled a pair of white gloves, which had even yellowed slightly, from his pocket and put them on.

His movements were full of a sense of ritual.

These gloves had accompanied him as he handled tens of thousands of parts; they were the tools of his trade at the Modu Machine Tool Factory.

He took the silver ring that Lin Xi handed to him—the separation hook inner lock.

It felt slightly cool to the touch.

It had a heavy, substantial feel.

The material was 30CrMnSiA, an ultra-high-strength alloy steel.

This type of steel had extremely high hardness and great toughness, was prone to sticking to the cutting tool, and was extremely difficult to machine.

At the Modu Machine Tool Factory, they always rough-turned it first, then heat-treated it.

Finally, an Eighth-Grade Worker would use a high-precision cylindrical grinding machine to slowly grind away the excess material bit by bit.

Section Chief Wang narrowed his eyes and held the part up to the light.

As he turned his wrist.

The silver inner wall reflected a cold, sharp band of light.

There was no scattering.

The light band was straight, and its edges were sharp.

Section Chief Wang's brows furrowed.

He extended his gloved thumb, pressed the pad of his finger gently against the inner wall, and slid it slowly.

There was no resistance.

There was no graininess.

He couldn't even feel any friction; it was as smooth as touching a piece of oiled glass.

"Mirror finish..."

Section Chief Wang blurted out two words, his voice sounding somewhat dry.

But he still didn't believe it.

Tactile sensation, that sort of thing, could sometimes be deceptive.

"Let me borrow that for a moment."

Section Chief Wang pointed to an old-fashioned optical instrument beside the workbench.

That was a 9J light-section microscope, a relic from the sixties.

But even now, it remained an authority for measuring surface roughness.

Lin Xi made a "please" gesture.

Section Chief Wang carefully placed the part on the stage, secured it with a clamp, and adjusted the focus.

He leaned in to the eyepiece and closed one eye.

Within the field of view, a bright band of light was projected onto the surface of the part.

If the surface were rough, the light band would curve like a sawtooth.

But now.

That light band was as straight as a line.

Section Chief Wang's hand trembled, and he nearly knocked over the microscope.

He quickly turned the micrometer drum to read the peak-to-valley value of the light band's curvature.

Reading: 0.5.

"Ra 0.5 microns..."

Section Chief Wang jerked his head up and stared fixedly at Lin Xi:

"This is impossible!"

Ra 0.5, this is the precision that only a grinding machine can achieve!

But just now, he clearly saw that this machine was using a turning tool!

"Replacing grinding with turning?"

Section Chief Wang's voice was trembling. "Hard turning?"

Lin Xi didn't speak, he just nodded.

"Coincidence... this must be a coincidence."

Section Chief Wang took off his gloves, his palms covered in sweat.

He placed the part back beside the microscope, and with a final trace of stubbornness in his tone, he looked at Zhang Zhengguo.

"Commander Zhang, this must be the limit sample for your machine, right?"

"For this kind of ultra-high-strength steel, tool wear is extremely fast."

"If you can pick out one perfect one from a hundred blanks, I'll consider you impressive."

"But aerospace missions require batch production! They require stability!"

"We need thirty!"

"Can you guarantee the next one will still be this accurate?"

Section Chief Wang's words were well-founded and logical.

At the Modu Machine Tool Factory, the reason Master Chen was driven to the brink of despair was precisely because no matter how high one's skill level, a person's state fluctuates.

Being full, being hungry, being in a bad mood, or even someone coughing nearby could cause that one cut to be ruined.

This was the curse of the yield rate.

Hearing this, Qu Weimin, who had been silent all along, also looked at Lin Xi.

His eyes held both anticipation and unease.

Lin Xi smiled.

He smiled a little coldly.

He couldn't even be bothered to explain.

He simply picked up the part from earlier and turned to walk to a table beside the console.

There sat a wooden transfer box that looked like it had some age to it.

The box wasn't large, but the craftsmanship was meticulous.

Inside, thick cardboard and cork were used to seamlessly partition it into individual "small compartments."

Each compartment was lined with a layer of special packaging paper soaked in anti-rust oil.

With a flick of his wrist, Lin Xi gently placed the part back into one of the empty compartments.

The movement was smooth and fluid; although it seemed casual, it was so precise that it didn't touch any of the partitions.

Section Chief Wang subconsciously stretched his neck to take a look.

Just one look, and he froze in place.

Qu Weimin was also stunned.

In that wooden box, two rows of silver rings were neatly arranged.

Each one lay quietly in its own cork compartment, emitting that dazzling, cold light.

Eighteen of them.

Aside from the one Lin Xi had just put back.

There were seventeen other identical parts.

Just like a copy-paste, they were quietly displayed.

"Section Chief Wang, did you misunderstand something?"

Lin Xi pointed to the transfer box, his tone flat.

"We've made twenty of these from last night until now."

"The first and second were for parameter debugging, which was also my oversight, so they had some flaws and were put in the scrap area separately."

"The remaining eighteen are all here."

"If it's not too much trouble, would you like to measure them all?"

Section Chief Wang felt as if his throat was blocked by something.

Refusing to believe it, he walked over quickly.

His hands were even trembling slightly as he carefully took out the second one from the cork compartment.

He put it under the microscope.

Reading: 0.48 microns.

He put it back and took the third one.

Reading: 0.51 microns.

The fourth...

The fifth...

In the large constant-temperature workshop, only the clicking sound of the microscope stage adjustment remained.

And the sound of Section Chief Wang's increasingly rapid breathing.

Twenty minutes.

A full twenty minutes.

Section Chief Wang acted as if he were crazy, measuring every single one of those eighteen parts.

Cold sweat streamed down his cheeks from his forehead.

Qu Weimin stood to the side, watching the row of data that Section Chief Wang was recording on paper.

His hands began to tremble uncontrollably.

0.50, 0.49, 0.51, 0.48, 0.50...

Even a layman who didn't understand technology could see what this row of numbers represented.

This wasn't just precision.

This was a terrifying consistency.

It meant that when this machine was cutting this steel, which was harder than bone, it was as easy, stable, and indifferent as cutting tofu.

No emotion, no fatigue, no mistakes.

The livestream chat was flooded with comments:

【Holy crap! This is the dimensionality reduction strike of Industry 3.0 against 2.0!】

【Section Chief Wang's CPU has fried.】

【The process capability index is absolutely off the charts!】

【In the past, we relied on the intuition of veteran masters to gamble on probability; now, we rely on algorithms to lock in tolerances.】

【At this moment, humanity has been utterly defeated by the machine, but it has also won the future.】

When the last part was measured.

Section Chief Wang slumped into his chair, as if his spine had been pulled out.

He looked at that pile of data, his eyes hollow.

"How could it be... so accurate?"

"No tool adjustments? No compensation?"

"No need to listen to the sound?"

He muttered to himself, as if his decades of experience had all become a joke.

Qu Weimin walked up silently and took the data sheet from Section Chief Wang's hand.

He didn't speak, just adjusted the glasses on the bridge of his nose.

He lowered his head and stared at the rows of numbers.

0.50, 0.49, 0.51, 0.48...

In the constant-temperature workshop, you could hear a pin drop; there was only the extremely faint humming of the ventilation fan.