Penny-Pinching

After hearing the young employee's words, Zhang Yi felt a little embarrassed. After all, he had ordered all these machine tools, and the three CNC Machines he had purchased this time were all ordinary models with fairly average precision. Given their price, there was no way they could have been good machines.

A slightly better machine tool would cost at least several, or even dozens of times more than these ordinary ones. It was simply beyond what Zhang Yi could afford right now.

So Zhang Yi turned to Xiao Hua and the others, clearly asking whether they had any good solution. If there really was no way around it, then Xiao Hua and the other two would have to use ordinary machine tools to process these parts that required relatively high precision.

But in that case, not only would production efficiency be far lower than that of CNC Machines, the scrap rate for the parts would also be extremely high. After all, this was ordinary machine processing. No matter how skilled Xiao Hua and the others were, they were human, not machines, so mistakes were inevitable.

That would very likely drive up the cost of his Aerodynamic Bicycle. Most of these parts were made from high-performance Titanium Alloy, after all. Scrapping a single piece would cost Zhang Yi tens or even hundreds of yuan.

Moreover, the Aerodynamic Bicycle had far more than just a few precision parts. Besides the part currently being processed, there were several others with even higher precision requirements. In fact, the part being processed was the one with the lowest precision requirement among them. Yet even a part like this could not be handled by these machines, let alone those requiring greater precision.

"Brother! Don't look at me. I don't have any good solution right now either. I just inspected this machine and found that it was designed for rough machining from the start. It simply cannot perform precision machining.

Of course, these machines are still capable of processing ordinary parts without high precision requirements. But once they encounter parts that demand greater precision, their shortcomings become apparent.

Xiao Liu, Xiao Xia, and I just discussed it as well. Even if we upgraded some of this machine's components, it would not improve its precision by much.

Aside from the fact that the internal components do not meet the required precision standards, this machine's software system also has major flaws. I know its software has serious problems, but there's nothing I can do about it. We're in mechanical engineering, not the Industrial Computer Software Department." Xiao Hua spread her hands as she spoke.

After hearing Xiao Hua's words, Zhang Yi's face reddened. Originally, he had planned to buy the same kind of machine tool as before, but after reading this model's description, he discovered that its performance was only slightly worse than the one he had bought previously, while the price difference was nearly one hundred thousand yuan. So, in order to save money, he had bought these machines instead of the type he had already purchased before.

For the moment, he had no good solution either. He did not understand this field. Of course, he could go to the Scholar Hiring Mall and hire Scholars from the computer department, but unfortunately, he could not afford computer-related Scholars with the Scholar Coins he currently possessed.

A Scholar from the Industrial Computer Software Department cost at least two hundred Scholar Coins per year to hire. Even if Zhang Yi converted every bit of property he had into Scholar Coins, he still would not have enough to hire one Industrial Computer Software Department Scholar for a year.

Zhang Yi then turned his gaze toward Zhang Yang beside him. After all, Zhang Yang had been a lathe operator for more than ten years. He must have processed countless parts and used many different machine tools, including machines with poor precision like these. Zhang Yi wanted to see whether he had any good ideas.

Seeing Zhang Yi's gaze, Zhang Yang knew that Zhang Yi was asking him. However, he did not answer immediately. Instead, he walked over to the machine tool, took a rough workpiece, placed it inside, started the machine, and carefully watched it operate.

The part was soon finished. He casually took it out and carefully measured it. Sure enough, its precision was still far from acceptable. He then put the part back into the machine and began programming the machining process on the control panel. As he programmed, he occasionally paused to think. Nearly half an hour later, he finally finished the processing program and started the machine again.

As the machine ran, no one spoke. Everyone stared intently at the part being processed inside, including Zhang Yang himself. In truth, he was not confident either. These machines were simply too poor in performance. Not only were the machines' components imprecise, even their systems were inadequate. That was something he had rarely encountered in his more than ten years of work.

Even on the few occasions when he had encountered machines like these, they had generally been used for rough machining, where precision was not required at all. Therefore, he could only rely on his past experience operating machine tools to alter the machining data.

The part was soon finished. Zhang Yang took it out again and measured its dimensions. After measuring it, his expression finally relaxed somewhat. He then made further adjustments to the earlier data and started the machine for another run.

After revising the machining data five or six times in succession, Zhang Yang finally said to Zhang Yi, "Director Zhang! This is already the machine's limit. Its inherent precision is what it is. If you want to improve it further, I have no good solution unless the machine's components are modified and replaced with more precise ones, and its system is replaced as well.

Only then could this machine's precision improve by another level. But even then, because the machine itself has major design flaws, it would still be impossible to reach ideal precision. Besides, doing that would be worse than building a new machine from scratch or buying machines with somewhat better performance."

Although Zhang Yang said that, after he corrected the machining data, the parts being produced were already much better. They had even basically met this part's precision requirements, though they had only basically met them.

In reality, they were still somewhat short of truly passing inspection, and the scrap rate remained relatively high. But under the current circumstances, it would be impossible to improve the precision unless the machine underwent a complete overhaul.

Although the processed parts still had not met Zhang Yi's expectations, Zhang Yi nevertheless said to Zhang Yang, "Master Zhang, you've worked hard. You truly deserve to be called an experienced master."

"It wasn't hard, Director Zhang. It's what I should do. But Director Zhang, when you buy machine tools in the future, please don't buy machines with such outdated performance again. At the very least, buy machines from major brands. That way, their performance and production efficiency will be guaranteed. Otherwise, not only will you waste time and have no guarantee of precision, you may even waste materials and energy." In truth, Zhang Yang was also exhausted by then. He had spent several straight hours constantly revising machining data in front of that machine. An ordinary person would have been unable to endure it long ago.