The Mechanical Era

It was a calm, quiet morning on the 13th of Navitas, 5018. The sun had just started to rise, projecting and covering its yellow light onto the rapidly industrializing city of Hoverdam. Kant Maybale was found sitting uneasily inside the carriage, wearing a white suit with a shirt and a black tie.

He was busy reading a book, an adventure novel, to distract him from the outside world, and the fact that he had to ride in these primitive horse-drawn vehicles, on his way to the new steel mill that he had commissioned to be built.

Steel was a very important material to master. It would allow the city to build stronger and larger buildings, make more powerful steam engines, produces stronger armor, and build new mechanical devices which were previously impossible to build.

The carriage was being guarded by a few police officers wielding FLM-18s, and a few DEF agents. As they rode along the smooth brick roads, Kant realized that he needed an agency tasked to protect him at all costs, like the Secret Service back in his own world.

Regardless, he can get to work on that as soon as he gets back. Right now, he wanted to see with his own two eyes how much iron he can quickly convert into steel, and the proper time it takes to remove the adequate amount of carbon, to make the steel as strong as he can.

The carriage soon came to a stop, and the door opens up. Kant places the book to his side and gets off the carriage. It was a 12-meter tall building with multiple long chimneys present. The building was built in a way to allow for easy expansion and had track lines that went inside the building so that some cargo trams can deliver large quantities of the iron to the mill.

Kant walked inside the building, where he found it barren of workers but filled with machinery. Understandable, considering the sun is just rising. Kant starts to walk around the rooms, examining everything. He noticed that every room was connected with a conveyer belt, used to transport the materials within the factory before being loaded and shipped out to the correct destination.

Other than the conveyer belt, there was also the presence of steam-powered machinery that was crucial to prepare and producing the steel. After a long walk, Kant comes back to the beginning and walks outside.

"Is there anything missing, your majesty?" one of the DEF agents asked.

"No. Everything is just fine. Now, we just have to wait," Kant replied. Just like that, they all waited for the workers to arrive, one by one. Upon arrival, they all bowed down to Kant, before waiting for everyone else. Soon, after about a few hundred people arrived, they all got inside and started working on the steel mill.

They were all wearing a specific type of uniform, issued to them under the orders of the young king. It consisted of a heavy cotton shirt with long sleeves and a high collar to protect the neck from sparks and hot metal.

For the bottom half of their body, they were given pants made of heavy wool, some brown heavy leather boots, an apron, and a hat to protect themselves from any dangers they may face while working in the mill.

Kant wanted to make sure that they knew he cared about his people. To make sure that they would have a high image of him, and to avoid any public relations disaster, he went though the extra step., to save face and make the government seem competent and trustworthy.

The workers were then assigned to their rooms, which were mostly separated by a white line on the floor. They were all taught how to use the machinery yesterday evening, just after the building was fully constructed and fitted with the machines. Though they might not be experienced, they already knew what to do.

Caravans and cargo trams soon started to line up and travel inside the building through the open gates. The raw iron and other materials were dumped onto the conveyer belts, where it was dragged into the screening room. Kant, with a DEF agent wearing white clothing, walked inside the mill.

The screening room was very noisy, filled out with mechanical sounds of the trommel and the shaking screens. The workers, the ones who operated the machines, often had to shout to communicate with each other through the loud noise. The room itself started to become dusty, and a little hot.

As the environment these group of workers had these dust particles running around, they were given some protection to allow their lungs to keep on properly functioning in the future, and to not develop any respiratory complications.

The iron is first put through the trommel, which consists of a cylindrical drum, mounted on a central axle. The drum is made up of a series of sieves that allow the iron or any other material, to pass through based on its size. Once the iron has passed through the drum, they are separated into different sizes based on the size of the sieves.

Once the iron has passed through the trommel, they are taken to the shaking screens. The shaking screen consists of sieves arranged in a vertical stack. The screens themselves are made up of parallel wires that are spaced apart to allow materials of a certain size to pass through.

As the name suggests, once it starts operation, the frame of the machine starts to vibrate at a fast rate. While the frame vibrates, the iron that is continued to be separated is fed onto the top screen. The smaller ones pass through the openings in the screen, collected in a conveyer below, while the larger ones are collected at the bottom.

Once the materials are screened and properly separated, they are brought over to the blast furnaces. As the iron the mill received is not pig iron, they have to convert it into pig iron themselves.

The two of them walk over to the next room where they found it to be dominated by these tall, cylindrical furnaces, heated with the help of coal-powered steam engines. While the furnaces are charged with iron, coke, and limestone, the steam engine is given the power to activate the bellows, which transfer air into the blast furnace, increasing the temperature.

As the air is blown into the furnace, it combines with the coke to create a reducing atmosphere. The iron ore reduces oxygen and forms pig iron. The limestone is there to help remove impurities from the pig iron and form slag.

As the blast furnaces started to operate, the room heated up more than it did in the screening room. By this point, the workers, the agent, and Kant himself started to profoundly sweat. The DEF agent turned to Kant and asked him a question.

"Was this why you instructed them to wear white clothing, sir?" he asked.

"Yes. Yes, it was," Kant replied before he took a sip from his water bottle.

The two waited for about 2 hours in the hot loud room, about as loud as a dozen chainsaws being fired at the same time. Thankfully, Kant made sure to issue ear muffs, to allow the workers and himself to keep their hearing. Once the pig iron was made, it was transferred over to the converter room through heat-resistant ladles and pots, with the help of steam-powered cranes.

Once the pots were filled up with pig iron, it was brought over to the converter room, where the Bessemer process takes place. The converter room was fitted with this egg-shaped vessel made of iron and lined with refractory bricks. It was also where the cranes come from, to help lift the pig iron.

"Ready to pour it when you are!" the crane operator shouted.

"Just a minute! We will be there!" the others replied. They went on to grab long metal rods or tongs, and get into position.

"Ready! Pour the pig iron in!"

The operator pulled a lever, causing the pot to pour the dense, molten metal into the mouth of the converter. The other workers, holding their metal rods, guided the flow of the molten pig iron into the mouth, to avoid any spills or splashes that could cause injury and damage equipment.

Once the pig iron has been poured, the preheated converter is then tilted so that its mouth faces downward. A blast of air is blown into the vessel using steam-powered machinery, fitted with a mechanical clock to measure the time.

As the air is blasted inside, the reaction starts to take place, and the room starts to rise in temperature. The carbon dioxide that is created inside the converter is vented out through the tall chimney, and into the atmosphere.

To ensure that the reaction proceeds efficiently, the converter is tilted back and forth. This process takes on for a couple of dozen minutes before it is stopped. Once the air is finished blowing inside, the time they took is recorded, to help conduct the strength tests in the future.