Industrial upgrade

Building the Power Storage Station would ensure that every electrical device in Factory No. 1 could operate day and night.

With human workers, this would have meant rotating three shifts to maintain production. It also laid the groundwork for supplying electricity to newly built factories.

After all, everything on Orange Star developed on a foundation of electricity.

The Power Storage Station would be built south of the base. Factory No. 1 devoted its full capacity to battery production, and with sufficient materials, its assembly line could provide Luo Qi with 50 High-Energy Batteries an hour.

The transport vehicles began hauling the crude batteries off the line. Their exteriors had not even been painted; they simply looked like brown bricks.

The robotic vehicles handled unloading and wiring them in parallel, stacking the batteries into a neat rectangular block. With production capacity still limited, the first Power Storage Station had to remain exposed to the air for now.

But Orange Star had obvious advantages: there was no flowing liquid water and no extreme weather.

Humanity had already accounted for the temperature difference between day and night when designing these batteries. They could withstand the conditions.

The batteries were stacked one by one into a large rectangular block. Their parallel connectors were attached to superconducting wires, then tucked into small recesses reserved on the batteries' exterior surfaces.

Stendhal shuttled between the Power Storage Station and the solar power station, both of which needed him to perform tasks the robotic vehicles could not.

He was a workhorse, after all.

Once round-the-clock production had yielded 2,500 High-Energy Batteries and 4,000 Solar Panels, Luo Qi suspended Solar Panel production.

He changed the production specifications for Line No. 1, switching it to similarly panel-shaped wall modules that would serve as protective walls for the energy station.

Luo Qi also converted another transport vehicle into a mining vehicle to meet the base's gradually increasing demand for raw materials.

At the same time, he began expanding steel production by building two new Electromagnetic Furnaces. This brought Luo Qi’s total to three, raising daily steel output to one tonne.

Simple mechanical parts, basic electronic circuit boards, and High-Energy Batteries-the three assembly lines operated normally.

After half a month of initial development, Luo Qi finally had everything he needed for the comprehensive industrial upgrade he wanted.

Taking on the role of an engineer, he worked through the night to upgrade the factory's industrial design, first addressing the problems of large components and interchangeable parts.

Germany's military had already demonstrated the issue of interchangeability to the world during Earth's Second World War.

Things were simpler for Luo Qi. He had to design and produce everything in-house, and contract manufacturing did not exist on Orange Star.

This also ensured that all the equipment he produced was interchangeable to a certain extent, reducing the burden of maintenance, production, and logistics at the base. Whatever could be salvaged would be reused.

New robotic arms were designed.

But the most critical issue was the base's current production method. Luo Qi still used casting combined with electromagnetic impact: one formed the overall component, while the other handled its surface finish.

Now that it was time to mass-produce components, casting was no longer suitable for metal parts.

Luo Qi planned to design a new Integrated High-Precision Stamping Process.

His homeland in his previous life had not mastered this process. The United States and a few other advanced nations were the ones adept at reaping its technological benefits.

This process stamped metal castings into components that met specifications in a single operation, including but not limited to automotive parts, aircraft parts, missile nose cones, and other missile components.

High-precision component stamping offered extraordinary advantages in manufacturing and processing. It was also a challenge intelligent machines had to overcome if they wanted to expand production capacity rapidly.

Imagine raw materials flowing onto an assembly line and becoming usable components with a single clack. How terrifying would that manufacturing speed be?

Luo Qi had advantages of his own. He was a supercomputer, capable of extrapolating data and running simulations, then validating them against real-world conditions.

He soon produced a compact thousand-tonne stamping press. Although it fell short of true high-precision stamping, the components it produced still met the standards for use.

With this press in place, new mechanical parts poured off the production line.

Luo Qi controlled the robotic vehicles as they selected the most suitable components for assembly and installation, upgrading the factory's production lines into truly precise assembly lines.

They had complete Silicone Gel Conveyor Belts, with brand-new standardized robotic arms on either side.

Crude circuit boards and electronic components formed signal exchangers, alongside new stepper motors and silicon casings...

The Electromagnetic Furnaces operated continuously, smelting large quantities of metal into molten iron. It flowed into high-precision molds to form rough castings, then proceeded to high-precision stamping...

The interior of Factory No. 1 underwent a sweeping transformation.

The next morning, Luo Qi left Stendhal to his own devices.

Luo Qi told him there were no project tasks that required his help for the time being.

From then on, Stendhal was used more for repairs and maintenance.

That morning, Factory No. 1 completed its first comprehensive upgrade. Even the old Electromagnetic Furnace had been melted down and rebuilt.

The log database recorded the first factory upgrade: Upgrade Log No. Red 0001.

Factory No. 1's production lines were filled with brand-new automated equipment. Dozens of metal arms moved under Luo Qi's precise control, like a forest of metal tentacles.

These robotic arms were entirely self-manufactured, with an operating precision error of one millimeter-good enough for the current level of production.

Combined with Luo Qi's real-time error compensation, they raised Factory No. 1's production capacity yet again!

It went straight into a mindless, repeating 28-hour light-manufacturing cycle.

The equipment produced by the new production lines was now precise enough to meet current construction requirements.

Luo Qi planned to establish a new production line to make engineering robots capable of moving on their own.

These robots would replace the robotic vehicles as maintenance workers in the increasingly narrow spaces between Factory No. 1's assembly lines.

Blueprints began taking shape in Luo Qi's mind, where electrical energy surged wildly.

Sparks of ingenuity collided with science and technology.

The T-1 Engineering Robot production line was ready.

Robot production began...

Mechanical components formed the robots' bodies.

Circuit boards were a crucial part of the robots' data processing, while the electronic sensors on their bodies served the same function as human skin.

The signal exchanger mechanism served as the robots' control terminal. Luo Qi could transmit electromagnetic waves from the base's signal module. Once received, the signal exchanger inside each robot converted them into electrical signals, allowing him to control its movements remotely.

It was much like playing with a remote-controlled car.

With its production lines modified, Factory No. 1 entered production mode.

The first humanoid robot's main body rapidly took shape as components came together into a steel frame. For now, it consisted only of a roughly humanoid torso, which was then packed with various parts.

Its hands and feet were soon completed on other production lines and brought together for assembly. A camera head salvaged from the old base was then installed, finally giving it something of a human appearance.

The first robot was connected to a power supply on the assembly line. Beneath its open chest, current began flowing through the metal wires on its silicon circuit board.

It awakened. Electricity flowed through its body like blood, bringing it to life. A robotic arm on the ceiling gripped its back and lowered it onto the floor.

The new base's wall-mounted Wi-Fi equipment continuously broadcast Luo Qi's control commands.

[Begin establishing wireless signal]

[Begin checking basic operating data]

[Activate]

The robot raised its head, topped with a bullet-style camera. A red light began blinking on the camera!

This camera had also been dismantled from the old base. The new base still had no way to produce the module inside it that converted optical signals into electrical signals.

[Establish synchronized visual feed]

[Begin real-time signal feedback]

The robot took its first step, then its second.

It moved slowly, as though getting used to its body, raising its hands and stepping forward as its movements shifted from awkward to smooth.

Clad in a silver-gray silicon casing, it stood upright on two legs before the now somewhat aging robotic vehicles, as if announcing the arrival of a new era.

They looked a little like the small yellow engineering robots from the game Titanfall 2 in his previous life, with thin limbs and boxy heads.

Luo Qi produced a full twenty robots to replace the robotic vehicles and Stendhal, putting them to work throughout the light-manufacturing factory.

They were Luo Qi's projections into the physical world, tirelessly assisting the automated production lines and contributing to the construction of the entire Orange Star Base.

Day 34 arrived.

At this point, the actual technological level of the civilization in this region was only roughly equivalent to Earth's around 1960, with rudimentary assembly-line industrial production capacity.

Although the automated robotic arms looked advanced, Luo Qi actively controlled them by allocating his own computing power, even handling their error compensation.

Without Luo Qi's remote control, they would stop dead.

The robots, seemingly able to move freely, were merely obedient marionettes.

Their strings had simply become electromagnetic signals.

There was only one master here: Luo Qi, who controlled everything from behind the scenes.

The energy station had 2,500 batteries, divided among three new power stations. At least if one blew up, the other two would remain.

As the production lines became increasingly well coordinated, the mining capacity could no longer meet production demands.

The base consumed enormous quantities of metal, and new equipment had to be built in preparation for new factories.

With steel output peaking at two tonnes a day, Luo Qi could no longer contain his restless ambition.

The mining vehicles were converted transport vehicles, after all. Their fixed modules could no longer support further modifications.

Following his plan, he separated the metal furnaces from the multipurpose workshop, preparing to establish an independent steel production factory.

Construction of the first steel production building began.

At the same time, a new production line was installed in Factory No. 1, dedicated to producing hard silicon panels and structural frames for the new steel factory building.

While hunting for treasures among the sorted rubbish in the ruins, Stendhal found himself an astronomical telescope.

He had not touched any work for three days. He used the telescope to peer into the endless depths of space, gazing toward Water Blue Star.

His family was there, along with everyone he cared about and everything he had. Humans had never been creatures that enjoyed loneliness.

As he studied the dark, starry sky, Engineering Robot No. 1 appeared beside him.

"Mr. Stendhal."