History of Machinery Industry: Construction of the First Tractor Factory in China
Release time:
2023-05-19 17:28
The first tractor factory (hereinafter referred to as "Yituo") is one of the "156 projects" aided by the Soviet Union. It is the earliest and largest tractor factory in China, and is known as the "eldest son" of China's agricultural machinery industry ". The factory is located in Jianxi District, Luoyang City, Henan Province, covering an area of 6.451 million ㎡, with a construction area of 180.77 million ㎡, known as "tractor city. The plant began preparations in 1953, started construction in 1955, and basically completed construction and put into production in 1959. In 1997, YTO changed its name to "China YTO Group Co., Ltd.", which belongs to China National Machinery Industry Group Co., Ltd.
In the 1950 s, the Soviet Union was mainly responsible for planning and providing important machinery and equipment. All the preliminary process design and technical design of the factory were undertaken by the Soviet National Automobile and Tractor Design Institute. Kharkov Tractor Factory of the Soviet Union is responsible for the construction design of all processes and provides Deter -54 tractor drawings. The Kharkov Agricultural Machinery Design Institute of the Soviet Union is responsible for the preliminary design of the expansion of the workshop buildings and the construction of some core workshops; the rest of the project design by the domestic 15 units to undertake. The Soviet Union provided a large number of design drawings, technical data, machinery and equipment, and successively sent 40 experts to the factory for guidance, which contributed to a successful technology transfer.
In October 1959, a complete production system was built, including 11 basic production workshops and 3 auxiliary production workshops. The factory has a total of 92 production lines, 9691 sets of various types of machinery and equipment, of which 1599 sets of machinery and equipment imported from abroad. At that time, the factory buildings were mainly reinforced concrete structures, and the main components were prestressed. During the period of reform and opening up, there were not many new factories, mainly to transform some old factories to adapt to the production of new products. On July 20, 1958, a tractor was assembled to create China's first tractor-Dongfanghong -54 crawler tractor. Subsequently, the product was modified and the Dongfanghong -75 crawler tractor was successfully trial-produced in 1959. By the 1970 s, Dongfanghong tractors had undertaken more than 60% of China's machine farming operations. Since the reform and opening up, Yituo has gradually developed from a single crawler tractor to a variety of products. New products include wheeled tractors, harvesters, road rollers, excavators, loaders and trucks. YTO's influence in agricultural and industrial development has continued to expand, and it has produced nearly 4 million tractors and other machinery and equipment. At present, YTO's large, medium and small tractors rank first in the country in terms of market share and ownership.
The layout of Yituo factory area is well preserved. Most of the factories built during the construction period aided by the Soviet Union are still in use. The main building of the factory area is majestic and solemn, harmonious and unified. The facade composition is symmetrical. The facade of the building is red as the keynote, and the decorative surface is mainly red brick, with coordinated colors and rich details. "Soviet-style architecture" combines traditional Chinese architectural elements and is an important relic of Chinese industrial history. In addition, YTO still uses or retains a lot of Soviet-made machinery and equipment used in the establishment of the factory, as well as machinery and equipment manufactured for YTO by enterprises in Shanghai, Kunming, Shenyang, Dalian, Wuhan, Qiqihar, Wuxi and other places. In terms of quantity alone, these machines are sufficient to equip a large workshop.
The square in front of the factory, namely Dongfanghong Square, is located directly in front of the Yituo factory area, maintaining the style of the early days of the factory. The square is centered on the 9m high standing statue of Chairman Mao Zedong, with a clear and symmetrical layout, magnificent momentum and distinctive characteristics of the times. As the starting point of the main axis of the factory area, the front square is connected with the main road of the factory area to form a central landscape corridor, which inherits the Soviet-style axis pattern and can be described as a typical case of industrial construction technology transfer.
The factory gate and the factory building were built in 1956. They are multi-storey brick-concrete structures and form the front area of the factory together with the square in front of the factory. The east building and the west building of the factory are symmetrically distributed on both sides of the gate, which are connected with the gate through the street building. In the middle of the eaves of the main entrance are decorated with party emblem, sickle, five-star, flag, crawler and other elements, which form the carving decoration reflecting the socialist industrial culture. The office buildings on both sides are wooden roof trusses with four slopes of "cape type" roof. Later, the Zhongjie Building was repaired and strengthened, and the east and west office buildings were rebuilt as they were, and the style of Soviet-style architecture was maintained. The entrance colonnade, cornice, column head and foot line were rich, and the details were exquisite.
Stamping workshop construction started in 1956, completed and put into production in 1959. The workshop was expanded to the west side in 1960, and the First Tractor Manufacturing Plant was renamed the Stamping Branch Plant in 1970. The workshop is of the Soviet-style architectural style, with mid-axis symmetry, regular plane, uniform column network distribution, open internal space, and the overall use of side windows, high side windows, roof rectangular skylight lighting. The east side of the workshop is a brick-concrete structure office building, which is consistent with the west side facade of the tool workshop, symmetrically distributed along the main axis of the factory, and has a unified style. Stamping shop the original production of crawler tractor stamping parts.
The engine workshop and the stamping workshop were built in the same period, the building facade is similar, and the style is unified. In 1984, it was renamed as the engine factory. The workshop is grand and is a single-storey multi-span workshop with clear internal space function layout and clear operation flow line. It adopts 12*12m and 12*18m standardized column network system and is set as production area, auxiliary room and office area. The west side is a brick-concrete structure of the office building, the details of the building decoration is rich, there are decorative line feet outside, relief, cornice are reflected. The engine workshop originally produced 247 kinds of engine parts for 54-type crawler tractors. In July 1958, the first AE-54-type diesel engine was manufactured as the engine of crawler tractors.
The tool workshop was started in 1955, completed and put into production in 1959, and renamed as tool department in 1978. The structure of the workshop is a single-storey reinforced concrete structure, using precast reinforced concrete columns, beams, purlins, small dense ribbed roof panels, as well as the lighting and ventilation system of trapezoidal steel roof trusses and steel structure U-shaped skylight trusses. The assembly workshop, stamping workshop and engine workshop built by the Soviet Union also basically adopted the same structural design. The west side of the plant is a brick-concrete structure of the Soviet-style office building, the composition is symmetrical, and the middle part is a prominent two-story high porch. In the early stage of production, the tool workshop produced 23100 kinds of non-standard process equipment for 54 crawler tractors. The tool workshop is equipped with Soviet-made and domestic machinery and equipment produced in the 1950 s, such as Soviet-made machine tools in 1956. The workshop also includes a sharpening room equipped with old machinery and equipment.
The assembly workshop was originally a chassis assembly workshop, which started construction in 1956 and was renamed as an assembly factory in 1984. The building of the workshop is huge, and its main body is 9-span joint layout. The north and south sides of the structure adopt high and low span layout. The inner south side of 6*6m, 6*12m and 12*12m column net is the former site of crawler tractor assembly line. Except for some crane lines and equipment changed due to the production process, the rest of the structure is a Soviet-style decorative tower in the middle of the roof of the brick-concrete structure office building on the east side of the original building. This workshop not only assembles the whole assembly of crawler tractors, but also processes some parts. Beginning in July 1958, a large number of crawler tractors rolled off the assembly line from here.
So far, there are still many Soviet-made machine tools in the workshop.
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