Day 9 - Steel Factory

Today was the excursion to the Wu Han Steel factory. I had to wake up at 6 15am, just so that I have enough time to prepare. We met the class at 8 10am SHARP!!! So that, we can avoid the penalty system of paying whenever you are late.

From this paragraph onwards, it will be very concentrated on the processes. So please bear with me so that I will be able to get AD for my blog =)

The whole factory that is used to produce the steel that consumers sue in China and all parts of the world is 1.5km long, and it only takes 1 minute to produce a roll of Steel. Amazing yes?? =0 The first process of making steel is using huge metal barrels to pump raw steel into the super hot furnaces to process the raw steel into steel that can be sold to consumers on the market. After a few seconds, a large bar of heated steel will be pushed onto the conveyor belt to be sent to the second process.

At the second process, as the processed bar of steel is still at an extremely high temperature, it will still be very malleable. It will be sent on the conveyor to the 'rolling pin'. At the rolling pin, it will be controlled from a control station where the employees will be able to control the various settings of the 'rolling pin'. For instance, the thickness that they want the bar to be and the length of the steel bar. The factory contains two such rollers, however they are of different quality. For the older version of the 'rolling pin', the pins need to be changed every 24 hours. But for the newer version, the pins needs to be changed every 4 hours. And each time time the pins are changed, it takes them 40 minutes.

At the third process, the steel strip will be sent to the cooler to cool the strip into the size that they want. The conveyor is designed in a way that when the steel strips are traveling on the conveyor, the thin strip of metal will not bend. Otherwise, the steel strip will have to go through the same processes again.

Lastly, the steel strip will be rolled into a 'curler'. A 'curler' is used to roll the strip off the conveyor and roll the strip into a barrel for storage, so that it doesn't take up much space.

After the tour of the steel factory, we went back to the university to have a lunch break before our IS class at 2pm. We decided to wait for the guys, while they went back to the staff office to return the helmets. Meanwhile, we laid on the grass and decided to cam whore!!! =) After lunch, we went to collect laundry (yes. it is our second barrel of laundry. Third batch will be coming soon). We had our IS module which talks about the political and economics of China. We ended earlier by 1 hour and 30 minutes. So the bunch of us headed out with Ji Long to buy our needed necessities.










Reflection

Through visiting different aspects of China, like factories and scenic sites. We will be able to experience different parts of what makes China the new global superpower.