Chapter 168: Test Run and Heartbeat

At 6:40, the workshop’s rolling shutter was pushed open by its hydraulic arms. Day-shift workers filed in one after another. The dull knock of hard hats bumping together, the rasp of rubber-soled shoes against the concrete floor, and the clipped calls of the shift handoff ripped the night shift’s silence to shreds. Lin Chen leaned against a load-bearing pillar in the corridor, the glow of his terminal screen already dimmed. He rubbed his stiff right leg, slid the terminal back into its shockproof case, and carried the case into the workshop. The air was thick with the sour smell of cutting fluid mixed with metal dust, leaving a faintly astringent bite in his lungs. The punch press on Phase Two had already been preheated, and the hydraulic pump gave off a deep, steady hum. Director Wu stood beside the power distribution cabinet with half a cigarette between his fingers, unlit. He glanced at Lin Chen’s left foot, then at the equipment rack.

“Power it up. Do it your way.”

Lin Chen nodded. He crouched down, opened the side panel of the cabinet, and flicked the breakers with practiced fingers. The main power came on, and the relay engaged with a click. Indicator lights on the board came on one by one: green, green, yellow, green. The terminal screen began scrolling again:

[INFO] System boot. CPU: 38°C. Memory: 15%. [INFO] Sensor A/B connected. Local cache: active.

He stepped back, set the terminal on an antistatic mat, and opened the real-time monitoring window. The punch press began running unloaded, the ram cycling up and down as the vibration curve traced a stable baseline across the screen. The temperature probe held steady at forty-one degrees. Everything was normal. He leaned against the cabinet, closed his eyes, and listened to the machine breathe in its regular rhythm. The swelling in his left ankle felt like a sponge soaked through with water, heavy and dragging. He shifted his posture and put all his weight onto his right foot and tailbone.

At 7:15, the line began feeding material. Steel plates entered the die, and the hydraulic valve pressurized in an instant. The vibration peak shot up to 1.9, and the temperature probe started climbing. Lin Chen opened his eyes, his fingers hovering over the keyboard. The script’s sliding-window filter was doing its job, smoothing out isolated spikes. But after three consecutive stamping cycles, the vibration curve at Node A developed an abnormal “step”—not a momentary impact, but a sustained high-frequency microtremor. The temperature rose in sync: sixty-five degrees, closing in on the threshold. He quickly pulled up the historical data for comparison. The pattern had not appeared during the night-shift test. He typed in a diagnostic command and read the low-level registers. The result showed slight uneven wear on the die’s guide post, causing resonance during the ram’s return stroke. It was not a false sensor reading. It was an equipment hazard.

He looked up at Director Wu. Director Wu was staring at the discharge end of the press, brow tightly furrowed. Lin Chen walked over and kept his voice low.

“Director Wu, the baseline vibration at Node A is drifting. The guide post may be wearing unevenly. I recommend stopping the machine for inspection, or reducing speed to seventy percent.”

Director Wu turned his head, his gaze hard. “Reduce speed? This batch has to ship this afternoon. If we stop to inspect the die, half the day is gone. You sure it isn’t your script being too sensitive?”

Lin Chen did not argue. He turned the terminal screen toward him and pointed at the curve. “These are continuous sample values, not isolated spikes. Uneven wear will shorten die life and increase the risk of a jam. If we don’t stop now, there’s a high chance the die will need repairs this afternoon.”

Director Wu stared at the screen for ten seconds. The workshop was deafening, and between them there was only the roar of the machines. He crushed out the cigarette butt, picked up the walkie-talkie, and said, “Maintenance team, bring a micrometer to Phase Two. Reduce the punch press to seventy percent. Check the guide post during the die-change gap.”

The order went out. The rhythm of the press slowed, and the high-frequency microtremor gradually disappeared. The vibration curve dropped back into the safe zone. Lin Chen sat back down on the mat, the back of his coveralls already soaked with sweat. The swelling in his left ankle crept up his calf, as if fine needles were pricking through the fascia. He pulled out a can of Yunnan Baiyao spray from his bag and sprayed it twice through his pants. The medicine was icy cold, and for a brief moment the sting overpowered the numbness. He opened his notebook of mistakes and wrote:

07:42 Node A baseline drift confirmed as mechanical uneven wear. Script threshold logic valid. Curve stabilized after speed reduction. Need to expand uneven-wear feature library to avoid later misclassification as sensor fault.

The tip of the pen made a soft scratching sound on the page. He closed the notebook and kept watching the screen. The data stream flowed like a quiet river, running steadily inside the green safe zone.

The morning passed slowly in the scrolling of numbers. During the die-change interval, the maintenance crew removed the guide post and indeed found one-sided wear of 0.3 millimeters. After the spare part was replaced, the punch press returned to full-speed operation. The vibration and temperature data moved back into the green zone. Every twenty minutes, Lin Chen recorded another log entry and checked the occupancy of the local cache. TF card read and write operations were normal; there was no overflow. He leaned against the cabinet and closed his eyes to rest. The cramping in his right leg had eased, but sensation still had not returned to his left foot. He could only rely on controlling his breathing to press down the fatigue in his body.

At 11:30, the bell marking the end of the morning shift rang. The workers left their stations one after another, and the roar in the workshop gradually died down. Director Wu walked over holding an attendance sheet.

“I’ve looked at the data. If that wear hadn’t been caught and material jammed this afternoon, the whole line would’ve been down for half a day. Your setup has proven itself.”

He paused, took an envelope from his pocket, and set it on the cabinet. “Factory rules. Piece-rate pay. For this deployment and debugging job, that counts as three work units. Add in the hardware advance from before, and the total is twelve hundred. Finance will transfer it to your card next week.”

Lin Chen looked at the envelope without reaching for it right away. “What about follow-up maintenance? The script needs periodic updates to the feature library, and the boards need dust cleaning and new sealing strips every quarter.”

Director Wu gave him a look, as if he had not expected the question. “The factory doesn’t keep idle people around. But your system really does work. Next quarter, Phase Two is expanding production, and we’ll need four more sets. If you do them to the current standard, the factory will settle by project. Talk to Old Li in Equipment about the details.”

Lin Chen nodded. He picked up the envelope. It felt moderately thick, the edges of the bills inside a little rough. He shut down the terminal and packed away his toolbox. When his left foot touched the floor, a sharp stab of pain shot from his ankle to his knee. He clenched his teeth and made no sound. When he walked out of the workshop, the sunlight was blinding. He leaned against the wall and pulled out his phone. The screen lit up with one unread text message. It was not from Old Zhao, and not from Professor Zhou. It was from an unfamiliar local number:

Student Lin Chen, the application materials for the Provincial Department of Industry and Information Technology’s intelligent manufacturing pilot project have been received. Your equipment logs and field data are of strong reference value. There will be a technical coordination meeting at 2 p.m. Wednesday in the third-floor conference room of the department. Bring the raw data.

Lin Chen stared at the screen, his finger hovering over the keypad. He replied:

Received. I’ll be there on time.

Sent.

He slipped the phone back into his pocket and lifted the shockproof case. Wind moved down the corridor, carrying the first coolness of early autumn. He stepped forward and headed out, his gait still slightly uneven, but his back perfectly straight. His next stop would be the department office. Behind him, the workshop’s machines were still roaring with their steady rhythm.