There was no reference material for Luo Qi to consult. It was simply a flash of inspiration, a new direction worth trying.
If his idea for a controllable magnetic field succeeded, it would rewrite the production systems Luo Qi knew and bring about another revolution!
A new day arrived.
Leaving Room 1, Stendhal walked into the desert and picked through a huge pile of everyday items. Scavenging garbage on an alien planet was something countless people dreamed of.
When Luo Qi controlled the robotic vehicles to dismantle the base, he had already sorted these items.
There were intact human household supplies-hair dryers, washcloths, clothes... and working electronics.
Most of it was scrap metal.
Motors and salvaged electronic components were packed into empty crates, while intact circuit boards and wires were sorted separately. Even broken circuit boards were stored away by Luo Qi to be dismantled later.
In Factory No. 1's general processing area, Robotic Vehicle 5 brought in the empty crates used to store electronic products and began salvaging their electronic components.
Robotic Vehicle 4 and Stendhal worked together to build a rudimentary robotic arm, with a simple motor drive and hydraulic lines.
Once the first robotic arm was complete, they mounted it on a ceiling track base and connected it to a wired power supply.
Stendhal looked at the crude contraption. It really was assembled from pieces dug out of a garbage heap.
"Dad, can that thing really work?"
Luo Qi said, "We have no other choice."
The robotic arm's main job was to sort materials for the electromagnetic smelting furnace.
After connecting the power, Stendhal retreated far away.
Luo Qi controlled the robotic arm through electrical signals. After confirming that the power indicator had lit up correctly, he entered only a command to move right for its first test.
Yet under the surveillance camera, the robotic arm made a complete turn.
Stendhal applauded. "That's freaking awesome, Dad! It actually worked!"
Speechless, Luo Qi entered another electrical signal.
He instructed the control board to reduce the current input severalfold.
The electrical signal retransmitted by the control board constituted a simple command to lift upward.
Amid the whine of its motors, the robotic arm slammed hard into the ceiling!
Stendhal's clapping hands froze. His smile vanished, and as he slowly lowered his hands, he had no idea where to put them.
Luo Qi could only dismantle the robotic arm and inspect it again. Another simulated run showed no errors.
The second test began. The robotic arm went limp, but it obeyed much better.
The robotic arm's movements were not particularly precise, and this was where the factory cameras proved their worth. Luo Qi could compensate for errors in its operation in real time.
Meanwhile, Luo Qi's second machine took shape through the efforts of Robotic Vehicles 2 and 3.
It was a mold-making machine. It converted electrical energy into heat, using high temperatures to turn sand into heat-resistant silicon-based ceramics and form molds for parts.
Ideal outcome: Pour molten metal into the mold to obtain a part.
On the evening of Day 21.
As a human being, Stendhal had already gone to rest.
Only the robotic vehicles remained to oversee the equipment. The mold-making machine finished firing a mold for a simple hollow cylindrical part.
Using its built-in laser rangefinder, a robotic vehicle found that the mold's dimensional error was two millimeters. Next came the heat-resistance test.
The robotic vehicle poured molten iron into it from a container. Unable to withstand the heat, the ceramic mold cracked.
The first experiment failed. The metal was recovered and the debris cleared away.
Another round of experiments began.
The robotic vehicles kept working, adjusting the proportions of the ceramic raw materials and firing another mold.
Second experiment-failure.
Third experiment-failure.
The fourth...
...failed.
It was not until late at night, when the base's overall power reserves dropped below 20%, that Luo Qi chose to stop.
He waited for the next day's sun...
Fresh sunlight broke over the horizon, illuminating the red earth.
The salvaged factory came alive again. Its power reserves steadily replenished, and Luo Qi began another day of experiments.
Experiment 88.
A new black ceramic mold was in place, over twenty centimeters in diameter and ten centimeters thick.
An annular groove occupied its usable central section. The intended part was cylindrical, with a wall thickness of 0.8 centimeters and an outer diameter of seven centimeters.
A robotic vehicle helped pour in the molten iron. Under the camera's observation, the metal slowly cooled, while the mold withstood the heat without breaking.
Using a mold made of Metal Silicide with a new composition, Luo Qi produced his first part. It was merely a product made to verify his production capability and had no practical use.
Stendhal kept this first, commemorative cylinder.
Luo Qi paused his work on optimizing the molds and began designing a prototype for the first-generation mining vehicle and manufacturing its parts.
At this point, the yield of acceptable formed parts reached 99%, with dimensional errors within 0.5 millimeters, but their surfaces were very rough.
The grainy, frosted texture was clearly visible. They had to be polished before they could be used directly.
These various manufactured parts were not especially precise, but Luo Qi had a compensation algorithm.
He only needed to match parts whose errors compensated for one another to obtain highly precise instruments in the end.
It was the same principle as seven plus three equaling ten, while 7.8 plus 2.2 also equaled ten.
But finding matching parts required a large pool to choose from, and unsuitable parts had to be melted down and remade.
An unexpected by-product of his research into silicide molds was a heat-resistant metal-silicide material whose hardness already rivaled steel.
The first batch of parts was ready. Next came the problem of their rough surfaces. For a part's service life, a rough surface was essentially a death sentence.
Thus, Luo Qi's third machine was a sand tumbler.
Theory: Use tumbling sand to abrade the surfaces of parts and achieve a polishing effect.
Experimental results: High power consumption, low efficiency, and long processing times.
So Luo Qi turned his attention back to electromagnetic fields.
Applying elementary electromagnetism had begun to give him a grasp of other possibilities.
Theory: Elementary electromagnetism-high-frequency oscillation of an energized electromagnetic field.
Experiment: Use superconducting wire from Water Blue Star and a laboratory high-frequency transformer to release a large amount of energy in an instant, striking the workpiece's rough surface.
Result: The part and its supporting platform instantly melted into molten iron, and the metal floor plate burned through. The experimental energy was too high.
Stendhal was working with Robotic Vehicle 5 to install more overhead robotic arms when an abrupt explosion and its accompanying shock wave nearly scared his soul out of his body.
"Good God, Dad! Are you preparing a self-destruct sequence?"
Holding the superconducting wire, Robotic Vehicle 5 said, "Easy, Stendhal. That was just an accident."
The result exceeded Luo Qi's calculated simulations and could be considered an unexpected gain: weaponizing powerful electromagnetic waves.
A robotic vehicle patched the circular hole in the floor, and the frequency was adjusted again.
The experiments continued...
Before he knew it, Day 24 had arrived.
After another hundred experiments and refinements, Luo Qi finally solved the roughness problem. The parts' surfaces achieved an astonishing mirror finish.
The relevant data on the unexpected discovery of weaponized powerful electromagnetic waves was preserved.
In the data world, the theory of controllable magnetic fields continued to develop and expand.
Unfortunately, limited by a shortage of materials and instruments, Luo Qi could not conduct deeper research into controlling electromagnetic forces in the physical world.
For now, he could only devote himself to building basic infrastructure.
The three main machines were in place, forming a complete production system.
Unflatteringly, it was a small processing workshop. More generously, it was a production line.
But perfecting the production line came at the cost of enormous electricity consumption during research, leaving the base's power reserves liable to hit the 5% warning threshold at any moment.
Stendhal and the robotic vehicles worked together to install more ceiling-mounted robotic arms.
The base's main energy source was solar power, economical and affordable, but its existing solar panels could not fully charge the base's Power Storage Station in a single day.
Now that the light manufacturing facility could produce metal parts, Luo Qi decided to manufacture solar panels, setting aside wind power and other energy sources for the time being.
The first planned mining vehicle was ready for assembly. It would expand Luo Qi's supply of metals, and his plans also called for a solar power station and a Power Storage Station.
Only with a sufficient energy supply could the base enter continuous production.
Orange Star had a thin atmosphere and almost no windy periods. Whenever the wind did rise, it inevitably carried huge amounts of sand and dust.
Orange Star Base lacked the ability to produce lubricants, and wind power would cause relatively heavy wear on metal components.
Besides, there was simply too little wind. In all his time at Orange Star Base, Luo Qi had only ever seen force-three winds.
The best option was hydrogen energy: splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, then generating electricity from the heat of combustion.
Unfortunately, frozen water on Orange Star existed only at the north and south poles, and large-scale collection was beyond their current capabilities.
Luo Qi dutifully returned his attention to solar panels. Each square meter generated two kilowatt-hours of electricity per hour, which would be considerable at scale.
Most importantly, they were easy for the base to manufacture, and the relevant knowledge was already stored in the database.
For the light manufacturing facility's first official task, Luo Qi brought Stendhal in and began making components for the first small mining vehicle.
Its main body used a transport vehicle integrating a control motherboard, circuitry, and drive motors as its template.
The robotic vehicles brought out a transport vehicle and assembled and modified it in the open area outside the factory.
Stendhal could hardly believe it. Dad had turned an exploration vehicle into a transport vehicle, and now he was turning it into a mining vehicle.
This vehicle really could do anything.
An assembled and welded bucket, one meter long and two meters wide, resembled Zhu Bajie's nine-toothed rake and could churn through sand and soil. Behind the two-meter-wide bucket was a disc-shaped device containing a coarse metal-screening system.
The electromagnetic system could attract metal and perform a preliminary screening of metallic particles. A conveyor belt made from compressed gel then carried them into the rear cargo bed.
Once assembly was complete, Stendhal marveled at Dad's sheer brilliance. On its first startup, the "mining vehicle" actually held together and even began moving beyond the open area to sift sand.
"Dad, I'm starting to believe in you..."
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