Chapter 10

Liu Jianhui sneered disdainfully, "This consumable arc furnace uses the metal rod itself as the upper electrode during operation. Under the effect of the current power supply, it produces an arc with the lower electrode placed in the crucible. The high temperature of the arc melts the upper electrode, which is then rapidly cooled and solidified in the water-cooled crucible to form an alloy ingot. This type of furnace is particularly suitable for smelting active metals like titanium, zirconium, tungsten, molybdenum, tantalum, and niobium, and because it generally operates under a vacuum, it is called a vacuum consumable arc furnace. Hey, college student, you can't even know such a simple principle, right?"

Lu Xin was too lazy to bother with this shameless person. He turned his head to Professor Lin Tao: "Professor Lin, you put dozens of metal raw materials in this furnace. If the high-entropy alloy formed by these materials completely loses its conductivity, the upper electrode of the furnace will completely fail. If the furnace can no longer produce an arc, won't it stop working?"

"Completely lose conductivity? High-entropy alloy completely insulating, completely resistive?" Lin Tao widened his eyes in surprise: "High resistance is indeed a major characteristic of high-entropy alloys. I wanted to find a high-entropy alloy with high resistance, but high-entropy alloys are still metals, not plastics, and cannot have completely resistive properties!"

Lu Xin's words woke the others from their stupor. The few doctoral students under Lin Tao began to discuss animatedly, mostly about whether the high-entropy alloy in the furnace might have become a super-high-resistance alloy.

There are already dozens of different high-resistance alloys in alloy materials, used to manufacture resistive elements, such as nickel-chromium-aluminum-iron, nickel-chromium-aluminum-copper, nickel-chromium-manganese-silicon, and nickel-manganese-chromium-molybdenum alloys. These are not primarily used for conducting current but for their high resistance to limit or control the current in circuits, such as in motors, potentiometers, standard resistors, potentiometers, and rheostats. They are also used to manufacture resistive elements that respond to strain, temperature, magnetic fields, and pressure, as well as in temperature compensators and temperature resistors.

From their discussion, Lu Xin also realized a slight error in his previous statement. He smiled and said, "I might not mean completely resistive, but super-high resistance, with resistance characteristics close to ordinary insulating materials. Professor, if you don't believe it, you can take out a part of the high-entropy alloy solid and conduct a resistance test."

The furnace had been powered off for over ten hours and had long cooled down. Nevertheless, the doctoral students carefully stopped the vacuum, broke the vacuum, loosened the bolts connecting the lower electrode to the crucible, activated the ingot pulling device, and pulled out the high-entropy alloy ingot to test its resistance.

The test results were indeed as Lu Xin had predicted: the resistance was extremely high, almost approaching that of insulating materials.

Now everyone understood. Because the dozens of metal raw materials in the furnace formed a super-high-resistance high-entropy alloy, the metal raw materials could not serve as electrodes in the consumable arc furnace. Without electrodes, the arc furnace could not function properly.

The maintenance workers and equipment managers only understood the equipment and did not know the properties of high-entropy alloys. The people responsible for high-entropy alloy research did not understand the equipment. The two groups did not communicate effectively, and the researchers always blamed the equipment managers. They spent over ten hours without solving the problem.

Lu Xin had detected the metal characteristics of the high-entropy alloy in the furnace and found that the metal molecular structure was much looser, with significant gaps between the metal molecules, and many impurities between the molecules. He boldly proposed the hypothesis of super-high resistance, which was confirmed to be true in less than half an hour.

Lin Tao looked at Lu Xin with admiration, stepped forward, and tightly gripped Lu Xin's hand, laughing heartily, "Lu Engineer, if it weren't for your reminder, we would have been stuck in a dead end, wasting time. Thank you so much!"

Lu Xin strongly suspected that it was because he had fallen into the furnace the previous afternoon and absorbed the special energy from the metal substances that the metal molecular structure in the high-entropy alloy became sparse, significantly reducing its conductivity. He reminded Professor Lin, "The conductivity or resistance of this high-entropy alloy with this ratio might be unstable. Why don't you try the experiment again with the same ratio?"

Lin Tao agreed with Lu Xin's judgment and had the team place the dozens of different metal materials in the furnace according to the original ratio, connect the power supply, and connect the water lines to the vacuum pumps for vacuum extraction. They then connected the water lines to the cooling points, prepared for the smelting, and started the test. The furnace resumed normal operation.

"Ah, I see! Well done!" Jiang Chunyu could hardly contain her excitement. She clenched her fist and punched Lu Xin's chest hard.

Jiang Chunyu had been prepared for the worst, planning to report the damage to the five million yuan vacuum consumable arc furnace to the group company and accept criticism and punishment. She never expected that Lu Xin would turn the tide and prove that the machine was not faulty.

Lu Xin rubbed his sore chest. Was this woman also a maintenance worker? How could she have such strength? But looking at her delicate skin, she didn't seem like a maintenance worker.

He touched his slightly swollen cheek and glanced at the excited Jiang Chunyu, who had a rosy flush on her cheeks. Suddenly, he felt she was familiar, as if he had seen her before.

He racked his brain for a while and finally remembered. He had seen her at his alma mater, Jiangnan University of Science and Technology. She seemed to be a teacher there. Why was she at Sanjiang Group?

Lu Xin mustered the courage to ask, "Vice President Jiang, did you work at Jiangnan University of Science and Technology before?"

Jiang Chunyu frowned, "How do you know that?"

Lu Xin put on a sunny smile, "Vice President Jiang, I went to Jiangnan University of Science and Technology for my undergraduate studies. I've seen you before!"

"Which year were you in?" Jiang Chunyu looked at Lu Xin with a mix of disbelief and suspicion. As a beautiful woman often harassed by men, she never took any man seriously, let alone someone like Lu Xin, whom she had no memory of.

"Teacher Jiang, I was in the Mechanical Engineering College, class of 2009!" Lu Xin slowly recalled that Jiang Chunyu seemed to be a teacher in the Mechanical Engineering College.

Jiang Chunyu's gaze turned cold again, "Two people from your college came last year, Ma Changle and Xie Fei. I don't remember you!" She thought Lu Xin was lying.

"A few months ago, there was a vacancy in the company, and they needed someone urgently, so I switched jobs," Lu Xin said casually, not wanting to mention that Jiang Xueqing had introduced him through a back door.

"I see!" Jiang Chunyu's eyes softened a bit. She laughed lightly and punched Lu Xin again, "You haven't disgraced our school. Keep up the good work!"

Jiang Chunyu turned to discuss the follow-up with Professor Lin Tao and ignored Lu Xin.

Lu Xin watched Jiang Chunyu's back and touched his swollen cheek again. He looked at his phone screen and saw the clear imprint of five fingers. This cold and proud woman hadn't apologized for that slap yet. Humph, I'll get that slap back, or make you pay the price!