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Material sciences needed for modern jet engine blades are a closely guarded secret, and thanks to not manufacturing them in china, those secrets have managed to
by dmitrygr 3mo ago
Material sciences needed for modern jet engine blades are a closely guarded secret, and thanks to not manufacturing them in china, those secrets have managed to remain not stolen.
Fun story: it is not just jet engines - it is only recently that china was able to actually make indigenous ballpoint pens https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38566114 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38566114
- didntknowyou 3mo agorecently? and you posted an almost 10yo article?
- dmitrygr 3mo agoyes, compared to the length of time ballpoint pens have existed (88 years -- since 1938), this is very recent - only 9 years ago
- dzhiurgis 3mo agoCan Chinese companies order just the blades from RR or P&W? I've watched their manufacturing video recently and shocked how much of it was hand labour - it's not something I'd associate with precision. My partner said they must know better tho lol.
- kevin_thibedeau 3mo agoThe RR video showing manual assembly of wax molds is a low volume development line. It isn't their main production process.
- tedd4u 3mo agoI've seen that video. Guaranteed they wouldn't have put the slightest bit of information in there if they thought would help the competition.
- notahacker 3mo agoThey can order engines from RR or P&W But those companies have no commercial interest in supporting a Chinese manufacturer that just wants the blades even without export controls, when they can make much higher margins selling whole engines that must be maintained using their parts (in practice variants of the engines destined for COMAC also omit some of the IP that finds its way onto Airbus and Boeing because you can help a customer too much...)
- ivell 3mo agoSeems they have figured out the single crystal blade tech https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/china-crystal-superalloy-jet-engine https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/china-crystal-...
- akiselev 3mo agoFrom the article: > DD6 is a second-generation nickel-based single-crystal superalloy developed by the institute with fully independent intellectual property. Its chief engineer, Li Jiarong, said the alloy’s performance matches or exceeds that of comparable second-generation superalloys used in Europe and the United States, at a lower production cost. US manufacturers have already developed sixth-generation SC superalloys and most Western airlines are on engines with third- and fourth-generation materials. The technology behind single crystal superalloys is relatively well understood, the problem is getting the process reliable enough to be economical in an industry that requires tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars to develop through trial and error. The TFA's point is that unlike EVs or semiconductors, the turbofan industry is between a rock and a hard place that China's other successful industries weren't.
- IHateAcronyms 3mo agoTFA = The Featured Article/The F**ing Article
- kergonath 3mo agoThe word is "fucking". We’re grown-ups, we can use grown-up words.
- azan_ 3mo agoIsn't China currently among the leaders of material science with lots of top 10 universities located in China? [0] (in rankings that do not incorporate prestige but actual scientific output) [0] https://scholars-stage.org/china-and-the-future-of-science/ https://scholars-stage.org/china-and-the-future-of-science/
- wmf 3mo agoQuantity isn't quality.
- azan_ 3mo agoIsn't having universities in global top10 actual quality?
- SecretDreams 3mo agoWhere are the jet engines?
- azan_ 3mo agoIn the making I'm sure. It's really naive to think that jet engine is challenge that won't be overcome.
- litbear2022 3mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi%27an_Y-20#Specifications_(Y-20B) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi%27an_Y-20#Specifications_(Y...
- queenkjuul 3mo agoIn the J-20Bs
- tom8ow 3mo ago[flagged]
- OneDonOne 3mo ago[dead]
- TFNA 3mo agoYou fell for a meme that was tired years ago already (your link is from 2017, after all). The article itself notes, “Relatively low-value items, like ballpoint pens, have not been a priority”, so obviously this says little about higher-priority military and industrial areas to which the CCP devotes greater effort.
- 8note 3mo agois it really a tired meme? its a clear prioritzation choice from the government, and that prioritization is itself a technology notably this same prioritization mode resulted in the soviet union failing to produce quality of life improvements for its citizens. the failure is that the CCP is unable to prioritize making simple useful stuff
- TFNA 3mo agoHave you been to urban China anytime after that 2017 article? The country is now as developed as anywhere else, indeed it feels like it is gradually overtaking other developed countries. The comparison to the Soviet Union feels ridiculous to anyone with a firsthand experience of the country.
- jurgenburgen 3mo agoThe political push in the US to cling to legacy fossil fuel technologies feels to me more Soviet-like if anything.
- cpursley 3mo agoNot really, the Soviets pushed all sorts of new transportation and energy generation ideas, not to mention nuclear.
- BigTTYGothGF 3mo agoWhat country do you live in, and are they currently capable of making ballpoints?
- 3mo ago
- OneDonOne 3mo agoIt is not the pen, it is the pen tip. Ballpoint pen tips are microscopic tungsten carbide ball held inside ultra-thin steel sockets. So you need cutting tolerances precise to 0.001 millimeters. If the socket is a fraction of a micron too loose, the ink leaks. Too tight, and the pen won't write. Source from al-Arabiya: https://english.alarabiya.net/variety/2017/01/14/At-last-China-managed-to-make-ballpoint-pens https://english.alarabiya.net/variety/2017/01/14/At-last-Chi... The point (no pun intended) is that China was beginning to crack the processes for making the precision machine tools that make machine tools.
- margalabargala 3mo agoThey are not microscopic! I can easily see the balls in the tips of ballpoint pens.
- jurgenburgen 3mo agoThe BBC article even mentions that they are milliscopic, not microscopic. > 2.3-millimetre
- OneDonOne 3mo agoThe ball is not microscopic, but the tolerances required to make the ball spherical and fit into the socket are.
- margalabargala 3mo agoExactly, so this sentence is incorrect: > Ballpoint pen tips are microscopic tungsten carbide ball held inside ultra-thin steel sockets
- OneDonOne 3mo agoYes indeed, you are correct. My mistake.
- dingaling 3mo ago
- NitpickLawyer 3mo agoIt's not even that. You can have all the designs you need, but you also need a bunch of downstream tech to get from drawings to production. This is something that centrally planned economies struggle with. You can't 5-year-plan your way to jet-engines if you haven't previously 5-year-planned for all the auxiliary infrastructure needed to support that. We already know this was an issue with the soviets, back when they had the plans for us jet engines (for fighter planes), but couldn't replicate them. Same for stealth, hell even some of their rocketry. And the soviets had plenty of auxiliary systems already in place, during the cold war. As someone said above, they could do quantity, they could do limited high-quality, but couldn't do both at the same time. There are things that work with 5-year plans: railroads, road infra, buildings, etc. And there are things that are not that easy, and take multiple decades from when the order comes to having it realised. Something that's not immediately obvious for western folks is that when you mix central planning with authoritarian governments, you will get a huge number of pain points along the way, where orders come downwards towards the ones executing them, and overreporting/missrepresentations/lies go upwards. It's like the longest game of telephone, where you start from the top, demanding x y z, get reports that you're on your way of getting 3x, 3y, 3z and in reality you have some of x, none of y, and z looks like z but it's actually three x's in a trench coat.
- selimthegrim 3mo agoThis is of course exemplified by the joke - what's the famous Soviet machine that cuts wood into two pieces? One that cuts wood into three pieces.