Human favors are human favors, and business is business.

Although he didn't know how Tang Ziqi calculated that he would encounter the problem of cotton raw materials supply, after he owed the favor, Shi Yiwen did not think about paying it back immediately, not to mention that in his opinion, the girl owed her more favors.

Compared to others, current business is more important.

Among all factories, iron factories are undoubtedly the most important. Since it produces "mule machines" with complex structures, it can also produce looms with simple structures. One of the most fundamental reasons why Ni Mingde chose to let the iron factories produce looms is that only the iron factories can design a hydraulically driven factory building and other factories as a whole. This is the biggest advantage of the iron factories.

Now the iron factory not only produces machines, but also takes care of the overall design of the factory, which is completely beyond Shi Yiwen's expectations. He is not opposed to this. After all, in this process, his own technology can also be improved, especially the overall industrial design level.

Shi Yiwen even set up a construction business, specializing in the construction of industrial factories. Of course, now it is just constructing simple factory buildings in the 1950s, but through the accumulation of experience, it can ultimately lay the foundation for the establishment of the architecture discipline in the future.

However, when Zhao Guoye, an official who was prosecuted from the Ministry of Industry, started planning and building the factory for Ni Mingde, he encountered a problem.

"The price of bricks has risen!"

In front of the young master, Zhao Guoye said anxiously.

"I've calculated that it's not enough to rely on a few nearby kilns alone, so I was thinking about buying more bricks along the river, but who knew that the price of more than a dozen kilns around 20 miles has increased, and it has increased by more than 10%!"

"What! More than 10%?"

Shi Yiwen said in surprise. He didn't expect that the most common construction materials such as bricks would increase their prices, and so much.

"Young Master, those kilns said that the weather was good last year, so there were many people building houses, and the price increased only when the bricks were not available. In my opinion, they must have seen that we had to use a large amount of bricks, so they increased the price together."

Building a factory is different from building a house for ordinary people. Even if the whole brick house is full of brick houses, it is completely hollow walls, which saves bricks and keeps warm. However, the factory built solid walls, so there are naturally many bricks used. In addition, the factory courtyard is also built with brick walls, so a large number of fired clay bricks are naturally used.

As there is more demand, the supply and demand relationship changes, and the price will naturally increase.

Shi Yiwen, who has been used to too many price increases, was not at all upset because of Zhao Guoye's words. He just responded lightly and said.

"Since they have raised prices, we will run our own kiln factory and burn bricks by ourselves. Anyway, there are more bricks in the future, and it will be possible to reduce costs by producing them yourself."

In fact, every time I come to the iron factory, Shi Yiwen will pass by a kiln. The kiln is located by the river, which is a typical traditional Chinese kiln. There are two earthen kilns, with hundreds of acres of grass planted by the river, which is the fuel for burning bricks. The reed sheds on the open space are filled with dry bricks.

Originally, Shi Yiwen did not take the basic materials such as bricks to heart, but now that there is a problem, it will be just right to solve it.

Of course, Shi Yiwen did not choose to build the earth kiln of this era. The earth kiln's production efficiency is too low and the energy consumption is too high, so he chose a 16-door wheel kiln. The reason for choosing 16-door wheel kiln was because of the chimney. In the production of wheel cellars, a large amount of flue gas needs to be eliminated. At the same time, due to the huge cellar body and long flue, it requires a large amount of pumping force, so the chimneys of wheel cellars are relatively high. The height of the cellars is generally determined based on the number of cellars. The chimney of about 54-door cellars is at least 50 meters high. Even the 32-door cellars cannot be lower than 30 meters. In contrast, the chimney height of the 16-door wheel cellars only needs to be less than 15 meters, which is considered economical and affordable. Of course, the main cutting is due to technical reasons.

Although the price of bricks has increased, I have bought a batch of bricks before and there are ready-made bricks available, so I immediately started to build a wheel kiln. Among the brick kilns in the 21st century, it is a representative of high energy consumption and has backward technology, but it is definitely an extremely advanced thing in the seventh year of Wanli.

Unlike ordinary soil crypts, it is a continuous production kiln, which can load blanks, produce bricks, and clean them at the same time. It is divided into preheating, firing, cooling and other belts along the length of the tunnel. During firing, the green body is fixed in one part, and the fuel is added in sequence at each part of the tunnel, so that the flame continues to move forward along the ring. The green body goes through three stages in turn to form a product. The thermal efficiency is high. The fuel is added from the feeding hole on the top of the kiln.

The fire partitions of the wheel cellar are: 5 to 7 pre-heating belts, 2 to 3 burning belts, and 3 to 4 kilns are installed. The order of each belt of the wheel cellar remains unchanged, but it always moves in one direction. Once ignited, it can be continuously produced for 24 hours. In terms of work efficiency and thermal energy utilization, it is beyond the reach of the earth kiln during the Wanli period. A sixteen-door wheel kiln can produce tens of millions of bricks and tiles a year.

While the masons were building wheel cellars, Shi Yiwen did not get idle, but instead studied brick making machines. In the past, brick making was all hand-made, and mud was all dependent on hand, not only on hand, but even the blank making was made by wooden molds, and hand-made blanks were made into pieces.

It is also because of this that after going to the brick factory and witnessing the cumbersomeness of making bricks, Shi Yiwen decided to study the brick making machine. In fact, there was no need to study anything at all. He just needed to go to the space and searched the computer in the electronic reading room of the provincial library and found dozens of articles or electronic books about mechanical brick making. If it weren't for the relationship between paper, he could even print it out directly - syncopations did not need to be adjusted, and several articles were traditional Chinese.

After a little research on the principle of the brick making machine in the space, Shi Yiwen has some understanding of mechanical brick making. The process of mud, stepping on mud, turning mud and turning mud can be replaced directly with a mixer. As for blank making, brick extruder can be used. In fact, its structure is not as complicated as expected at the beginning. It is a simple spiral extruder. When extruding and forming in the machine, it is cut and molded through more than a dozen iron wires from the outlet.

The principle is simple, but it is not easy to manufacture. However, thanks to the experience accumulated in manufacturing spinning machines and other equipment over the past few days, neither mixers nor brick extruders have stumped the workers in the iron factory. Even a few fine parts such as steel gears do not require Shi Yiwen to enter the space to process them with machine tools. Those craftsmen can cast them into shapes by casting them through lost wax, and then they can be used after tempering and grinding.

Half a month later, a "joint production line" composed of several mixers and brick extruders appeared on the newly built brick yard.

Shi Yiwen nodded to Zhao Guoye and said.

"Start work!"

On the drive flywheel of the transmission belt, a faint smile appeared on Shi Yiwen's face, but after a moment the smile on his face stiffened, and he murmured with his eyes wide open.
Chapter completed!