Chapter 98 Mass Production of "Level 8 Workers"!

Lin Xi was not angry; instead, he pulled out a chair and sat down.

"Master," Lin Xi suddenly called out.

Li Jianguo, who was huddled in the back row smoking a dry pipe, paused: "What is it?"

"How old are you this year?"

"Fifty-two," Li Jianguo replied.

"How old were you when you entered the factory as an apprentice?"

"Sixteen."

"How many years did it take you to go from an apprentice to earning your Eighth-Grade Worker certificate?"

Li Jianguo smacked his lips twice.

He seemed to fall into reminiscence, a hint of pride appearing on his face:

"I was considered fast!"

"Willing to endure hardship and quick-witted, it took me twenty years!"

"For anyone else, it would take at least thirty years."

Twenty years.

Lin Xi nodded, his gaze sweeping across the room.

His voice suddenly became deep and powerful:

"Did you hear that? Twenty years!"

"In all of China, how many Eighth-Grade Fitters, Eighth-Grade Turners, and Eighth-Grade Grinders—like my Master—are there in total?"

No one answered.

Everyone knew in their hearts that they were treasures as rare as pandas.

Every factory treated them like ancestors, and losing even one was a loss to the nation.

"Then do you know, how many old-fashioned manual machine tools like the C620 and C616…"

"…that are still in their prime, are there in all of China?"

Lin Xi held up a finger and slashed it fiercely through the air.

"Conservatively estimated, 1.5 million units!"

Boom!

This number was like a heavy bomb, exploding directly in the conference room.

Jiang Jun was stunned.

He had previously only focused on the few high-precision, cutting-edge machines in the laboratory.

He had never turned his gaze toward such a vast base.

Lin Xi stood up, pressed his hands on the table, and leaned forward:

"These 1.5 million machine tools are the industrial foundation of our country right now!"

"But most of them can only do rough work."

"Why?"

"Because there aren't enough master craftsmen to operate them!"

"It takes twenty years to train an Eighth-Grade Worker."

"It takes hundreds of thousands of operations to 'feed' that experience into them."

"Can we afford to wait? Can the country afford to wait?"

Lin Xi's voice rose sharply:

"Building five-axis machine tools is for arm-wrestling with Western countries in the future."

"But right now, what we need is to improve our basic industrial capability!"

Lin Xi pointed to the "m1 kit" on the blackboard:

"What if we could create a system that only costs a few thousand yuan?"

"And if installing it could make these million old machine tools undergo a complete transformation?"

"No need for twenty years of experience, no need for 'feel'."

"An apprentice who has just entered the factory for half a year."

"As long as they can read blueprints and press that green start button, they can machine parts with an accuracy of 0.01 millimeters!"

"Comrades, we are not just building machines."

Lin Xi's eyes burned, and he said, enunciating every word:

"We are mass-producing 'Eighth-Grade Workers'!"

Dead silence.

Absolute, dead silence.

Only the sound of the cold wind howling outside the window.

Everyone had their mouths wide open, their minds buzzing.

The barrage in the live broadcast room exploded in that instant.

[Holy crap! It's lit! This is what you call vision!]

[Mass-producing Eighth-Grade Workers... this isn't just working on technology, this is forcibly giving the national industry a cheat code!]

[Turning 1.5 million old machine tools into CNC machine tools? This picture is too beautiful, I dare not look!]

[Forget 1.5 million units, even 100,000 units would be enough to change the industrial landscape!]

Jiang Jun felt goosebumps all over his body, his scalp tingling.

He looked at Lin Xi, and his eyes had completely changed.

If before he was looking at a "benefactor" or a "genius"...

…then now, he was looking at a "commander."

This was not climbing Mount Everest.

This was forcibly raising the horizon of the entire Qinghai-Tibet Plateau by a notch!

This was the true industrial revolution!

"Bang!"

A loud noise broke the silence.

Zhao Qiang slammed the table and stood up abruptly.

That face, which was always timid and submissive, was now flushed red, and he was trembling with excitement.

"It can work! This thing can absolutely work!"

Zhao Qiang rushed to the blackboard, grabbed a piece of chalk, and began drawing frantically:

"The biggest problem with manual machine tools is the transmission!"

"There is a gap between the original trapezoidal lead screw and the nut, which was designed for manual operation."

"As long as we replace this with a ball screw."

Crack!

The chalk in his hand was snapped by him.

But he didn't care at all, and continued to use the broken chalk to draw an ingenious structural diagram:

"And then add that lookup table method of Liu Xiaodong's…"

"That would be 'digitizing' the master craftsman's feel!"

The more Zhao Qiang spoke, the more excited he became. He turned to look at Lin Xi, tears shining in his eyes:

"Manager Lin, this is giving the industry a blood transfusion!"

"If we really manage to make this kit, it will be a merit of immeasurable proportions!"

Lin Xi smiled.

He walked over and patted Zhao Qiang on the shoulder:

"Engineer Zhao, you've hit the nail on the head."

"I'm putting you in charge of this mechanical modification plan. Any problems?"

"No problem!" Zhao Qiang roared.

"If I can't handle the adaptation of that ball screw, I'll unscrew my own head and let you kick it like a ball!"

The atmosphere at the scene had completely changed.

The previous skepticism, contempt, and dissatisfaction had all vanished into thin air.

Replacing them was a kind of near-manic drive.

Lin Xi struck while the iron was hot, walked back to the head of the table, and began assigning tasks.

"Wang Yu!"

"Here!"

"You are responsible for the circuit board design of the entire kit."

"My requirements are only three: durable, durable, and damn it, durable!"

"The workshop environment is harsh, with lots of oil and metal shavings."

"Your circuit boards must be as tough as a tank for me!"

"Understood!"

"Master, Big Cannon."

Li Jianguo had long since put away his pipe and straightened his back: "Go ahead."

"The non-standard parts designed by Zhao Qiang and his team."

"And the modification of the first batch of prototypes will have to rely on your craftsmanship to 'produce the samples'."

"For those places where high precision is required, it will still require your old lathe tools to bite through them."

Li Jianguo chuckled and rubbed his calloused hands:

"As long as there are blueprints, there is nothing I cannot turn!"

Finally, Lin Xi looked at Jiang Jun.

Jiang Jun took a deep breath and took a step forward:

"Manager Lin, what about me?"

"Don't be impatient."

Lin Xi looked at him meaningfully,

"The current m1 kit is a temporary solution and not perfect enough."

"Your task is to work on the optical scale."

"In the next step, your optical scale will be our anchor."

Jiang Jun nodded vigorously, his eyes slightly red.

He could feel that Lin Xi truly understood technology, and truly understood people as well.

"Alright."

Lin Xi checked the time,

"It is now two o'clock in the afternoon."

"I hope to see the first modified CNC C620 running within a week."

"Dismissed!"

With the order given, it was like a military command that moved mountains.

There was no nonsense, not the slightest hesitation.

Liu Xiaodong chewed on a candy and started writing code while hunched over the table;

Zhao Qiang dragged a few technicians and dived directly under the oil-stained lathes to measure dimensions;

Wang Yu hugged the blueprints and sprinted toward the electronics laboratory.

The entire Red Star Laboratory instantly turned into a precision machine running at full speed.

He Zhenhua stood by the window, watching this scene, and felt something surging in his chest.

He had seen Siemens' laboratories in Germany—rigorous, rigid, and cold.

But in this crude workshop in the Northwest, he saw a vitality he had never seen before.

It was the tenacity of wild grass pushing through rocks.

It was the wildness of not only wanting to survive but also wanting to poke a hole in the sky.

"Manager Lin."

He Zhenhua turned to look at Lin Xi, who was drinking water, his tone complex:

"I have a premonition."

"Red Star Technology might become the most terrifying monster in the history of China's industry."

Lin Xi put down his enamel mug, the corners of his mouth curling into an arc.

"Engineer He, be confident."

"Remove the word 'might'."

He walked to the window, looking at the vast Gobi Desert in the distance, his gaze seemingly piercing through time and space:

"The CNC conversion of 1.5 million machine tools is just a warm-up."

"This m1 kit will not only arm domestic factories."

"It will also be sold abroad to earn those foreigners' dollars, and wash away their low-end manufacturing foundations until they are in tatters!"