Chapter 14
Date: June 8, 3027
"The building materials provided by Nasir Industrial weren't what was promised," Andrew sighed. His eyes had heavy bags underneath them and it looked like he was going to have trouble sleeping. "I've got four people in the hospital and about a million eagles worth of equipment to replace."
"Your people are more important than us finishing construction on time," I immediately said. "If need be, I'll even cover their hospital bills."
"No," Andrew shook his head. "It was our fuck up, so we're going to make it right. Insurance has our people and equipment covered. Unfortunately, until I can source someone with the right materials for the rest of the underground construction, we're going to be held up. It'll be an extra few weeks to get new materials. Probably a month or two to acquire new machines to work with the material, and another month to get everything back on track. In total, we're looking at a delay of three months or so."
"What was wrong with the materials?" Sylvie asked.
"Before I can explain that, I have to explain the requirements that the local government requires for manufacturing facilities and particularly underground facilities. For things to be up to code according to the inspection and permits, the materials we use have to be up to the standards that were used during the Star League. Particularly the steel and other supportive components. If they're a not a certain grade or strength, then it's going to collapse or have issues when exposed to external forces. What Nasir sold us was subpar, shitty quality, and couldn't even hold up to the most basic of our tools," Andrew had stood and started pacing angrily. "It was an inferior steel alloy that looked similar to what we're supposed to use, but when we began to expose it to stress, it snapped. We were lucky that the cavern ceiling didn't come down on us, that it was just the steel."
"So, can you tell us what was wrong with the materials explicitly?" I continued Sylvie's question. "Or is it more of a guess?"
"The latter," Andrew huffed. "Problem is, they were on the government approved list for those materials, and now they won't answer our calls."
"So, get the government involved," I said. "They were on the approved list, I assume they're still there?"
Andrew nodded.
"Then that means they're on the hook for this too if you can prove the inspector on their end was bribed or similar," I shrugged. "I can't instruct you or your company to do anything. But it's what I'd do if I were in your place."
"I'll kick it up the chain," the foreman nodded. "As it is, I've extended the contract date with no extra expense on your end," he pulled out a new copy of the construction contract. "The only thing that has changed here is the dates," He put his finger near what he was talking about. "Estimated time of completion is sometime in November instead of the August we anticipated previously. The reason we're putting December here is to give us a cushion. Like I said earlier, all of the stuff we're having to replace and the people we're having to train will take extra time. I just don't want this to come back and bite us in the ass if something else happens again."
"You've been straight with us," Billy shrugged, finally speaking. "We'll be straight with you. Just keep being honest with us, and we'll keep treating you the same."
"We'll do our best," Andrew nodded. "Now, if you'll sign and date here," he indicated to both Sylvie and I. "Then we'll have finished the contract extension, and I can go cuss out the assholes who put my people in the hospital."
"You want some help?" Sylvie asked. "This guy won't let me cuss the people out when we're negotiating," she jerked her thumb at me.
"Different circumstances," I gently reminded her.
"If you want to scream at people with me, then come along," Andrew shrugged. "We're not going to be able to work until we replace the machines that got destroyed. Someone might as well have fun with all of this. The rest of us aren't."
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While Sylvie and our contractors worked out the building material issues. Billy and I were hard at work retooling the factory to the specs to produce the first edition of the Mackie we were going to be putting out.
Most of it was as simple as swapping out certain tools for others to make different cuts and shapes. But quite a lot of it wasn't that simple. You see, in the modern age I had come from, modern CNC machines were doing the jobs that a lot of different machines used to do. A single CNC machine (or 3D printer in the case of plastics or prototyping) could make an entire part from a single piece of metal or melted plastic.
That wasn't the case here. Unless you were working with some of the most advanced equipment that existed, you were back to what we were doing in the two World Wars. If on a larger scale. Each of the machines we had did one, maybe two things. They cut a piece of metal in a certain way, or did a specific thing with the right chemical mixture in the case of the myomers.
Changing the machines to cut things differently for our new build was somewhat difficult. Because we didn't have the full space of the complex to use until construction was finished, we were working on one section of the factory at a time, making that part, and then moving onto the next one. Almost like we were prototyping the entire process.
Over the last few months, we'd dialed in the myomers, and worked on the parts that made up the legs. Those parts weren't quite up to the military specs for a modern Mackieyet. At least not yet, according to the information that fed itself into my brain when I looked at them. But they were close, and they would (hopefully) work once we finished working on the torso assembly.
The bits we were retooling today wasn't anything regarding said torso, though. Instead, we were working on the actuators. Oddly enough, it seemed that for the most part, actuators were one of the few parts that were mostly universal. With only a few outliers using proprietary parts for that.
What that ended up meaning, was that we weren't really changing anything from the old machines that built them beforehand, so much as making sure that they were spitting out actuators that were hardened and within the specs we wanted. I didn't have much experience in manufacturing when I was a business owner beforehand, having mostly dealt with the software and service side of thing. But one of the things I remembered my grandfather saying from his time in the factories was tolerances and just how important it was that your parts be within the tolerances you wanted. Deviations cost time and money. While we had time (For now) to get things right, we still couldn't afford to waste either of them. So, Billy and I stood over the shoulders of some new hires as they monitored the actuators that came out of the assembly line.
Despite being one of the smallest parts on a 'mech, they were among the most important. The small bits of myomer bundles, joints and small motor controls were what allowed a 'mech to move through the battlefield, independently control limbs, and balance properly. Without one, it was akin to having a sprained ankle, or a broken wrist. Still possible to move, but made harder because something was wrong or broken.
"Alright, that should be plenty," I said after about an hour or so. "We need to go ahead and pull these to make sure they're within the ranges we want for the Mackie later."
With the instructions given, Billy took the tools we used to measure everything with down to the micrometer. A few high or low were fine, we were looking for outliers beyond that of three micrometers on either side.
"Only one failed," they reported. "It was the first one out."
"At least it's consistent with the other machines around here," I muttered.
For all that we were making good progress on retooling and testing the machines. The first full part out of everything was going to have to be thrown away or scrapped and recycled. The first part always had an eight to fifteen percent deviation from the rest of the parts that the machines seemed to manufacture, and despite whatever strange ability fed information to me, I couldn't seem to make it work any better than that.
"I wish I knew why the first part was always so off," Billy had brought a cart over with the actuator. To the naked eye, you wouldn't be able to see a difference, it was only when you had the tools to measure that the difference was plain. We might even be able to get away with installing and selling this as part of a 'mech. But I wasnt' willing to sell subpar 'mechs or equipment, and neither were any of the guys I'd brought over from Quikscell. We were tired of being crap manufacturers. So, we'd have to eat the cost, or figure out how to fix the line somehow.
"Me too," I sighed. "Put it with the other failed parts and we'll revisit them once we've got the rest of the factory finished."
"Throwing away ten percent of our parts is going to hurt in the long run, Edmund," Billy scowled. "That's not the kind of thing we'll be able to accept forever.
"It won't be forever," I replied. "Once we figure out why and how it's doing it, we should be able to fix it. Or if we can't, then we hire one of the big factory guys to come out and see what they can do to fix this. Until then, as long as we can mostly get things the way they should be, we should move onto the rest of the skeletal structure and making sure we can manufacture it."
"Torso'll take more space than we have," Billy nodded. He knew as much as I did that the setbacks on construction were messing with our original plans. "We can see about the cockpit, shoulders, and arm housings. Though, I'm worried about those given we haven't finished getting the weapons ready for the housing."
"Rip the ones out of the testbed and use them to test the housings," I said. "We can always put them back when we're done."
"Makes sense to me," Billy chewed some tobacco before spitting it into a bottle he carried with him. "I'll have the boys start working on it. 'Ventually, we're gonna run out of busy work."
"I know," I sighed. "We may have to start rotating them onto the medium lasers and have the medium laser guys come learn new stuff."
"Just something to think about for the future, boss," Billy shrugged. "I'll start working on the weapons from the other Mackie, and we'll start retooling the arms."
"And I'll start trying to figure out how to not throw away ten percent of our potential profits," I replied. "Hopefully it's just something that starts out of spec and then locks back in," I muttered to myself as I went for my toolbag. "But if it's more than that, I might have to take the whole line apart…"