Paton's miracle: a breakthrough of the genius of welding in the USSR

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Let's continue our exploration of the deep roots of the 1945 Victory and the Stalinist miracle. We do this using the example of an outstanding Russian and Soviet scientist, founder of the Institute of Electric Welding, Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR Yevgeny Paton.

It was thanks to his automatic welding machines (ACC) that it was possible to achieve record figures in the production of tanks. Yesterday's bridge builder of the Russian Empire became the "culprit" of one of the Soviet Union's epoch-making breakthroughs in industry. Its auto-welding can be safely put into the Victory weapons gallery together with a Katyusha, an Il-2 attack aircraft or the legendary thirty-four. However, like Yevgeny Oskarovich himself.

But how did you achieve this? And is it possible to repeat this in the current Russian Federation?

Paton's electric welding changes electrohephaestus

In the late 1920s, when Yevgeny Paton was busy with the restoration of bridges and their construction already in the Soviet Union, he pondered the transition from riveted structures to welded ones. The labor intensity of the construction of bridges decreased several times, huge savings in metal were achieved, and the construction time was radically reduced. But how can this be done if electric welding is still terra incognita for him, and the country is too far behind the West in terms of modern technologies? But in 1929, a Russian engineer, who was already in his sixties, rushed with youthful fervor to master a completely new scientific and applied field. Not from scratch: electric welding (called electrohephaestus) was invented in 1883 by Nikolai Benardos, and his work was picked up by Nikolai Slavyanov in the 1890s.

"If the Russian Empire and the USSR had earned only on the extraction and sale of raw materials, the epochal developments of Academician Paton would never have been realized"

Paton decided to continue their business in 1929. Although Yevgeny Oskarovich worked in Kiev, at the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, at first he did not have a laboratory, equipment, or even a modest premises. Paton gets his first refuge at the Kiev plant "Bolshevik", where there was already a welding shop. Science begins to work hand in hand with real work. In the beginning, Paton's lab consists of one electrical engineer and an enthusiastic welder. Welded beams are tested for strength at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute. The idea of doing electric welding at first aroused bewilderment in the academic environment: they say, the topic is narrow, an occupation not for a scientist, but for an engineer. But Paton insisted on his own - and the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR gives him three rooms in the basement of the former gymnasium. And again, the inventor inspires his employees: let's work hand in hand with the industry!

“… The electric welding laboratory should not issue puffy scientific reports, but really help the industry to master new methods of metal welding. I warned them that they would have to visit factories a lot, help them cope with the difficulties of mastering welding, train personnel for factories, fight riveting supporters …”- the academician wrote in his memoirs. These words would be read by the current "managers" of Russian science, who demand from scientists only reports and a citation index in journals.

But the strength of one laboratory is insignificant. And then, in 1930, Paton made a bold step: on the advice of his student Boris Gorbunov, he organized the Electric Welding Committee of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, in which factory engineers and welders took part. That is, the academician-titan again goes to the broadest involvement of the working industry in scientific work. And it turns out!

The scientist-engineer never tired of repeating: science and industry must work in the closest alliance, the researcher must visit factories and help implement their developments.

“… Should a scientist be engaged in all this, should he be at war with those who look at everything only from their departmental bell tower? Or maybe our business is to give the people this or that discovery and then move on to new research?..

… What could be more absurd in our Soviet conditions than a "priest of pure science"? " - we read in the academician's memoirs. Well, then all this was possible: factories were working at full capacity literally everywhere. Living industrialization provided energy for developing science.

Let's go back to our days. Is something like this possible today, when factories massively "died out" in Kiev, Moscow, and in big cities? Instead of them there are either shopping and entertainment centers, or nesting places of "kreakl" (tattoo parlors, advertising agencies, coffee shops and lampshades), or the quarters of an elite crook? Of course not. If some technology of metal hardening with the help of nanotech appears today - where to develop and distribute it? Where are the factories that will give orders to academic and applied research institutes for the latest developments, what will be looking for talented university students to work at home? There is none of them. And there is no breeding ground for scientists. But in the Russian Empire and in the USSR, factories and plants were working with might and main. It was the industry that pulled Paton's initiative. Take away the stormy industrialization of Stalin, and Paton's miracle will disappear. Will wither and wither like a cut flower.

It went on. Kharkov plant "Hammer and Sickle" sent for testing the frames of two threshers - riveted and welded. As a result, Kharkiv residents switched entirely to welding. Then the Zaporozhye Kommunar, which produced combines, did the same.

“This firm course towards close connection with production, about the direct" return "of our scientific work to practice, the course towards an offensive, active and restless life more and more determined the life of our welding committee. Its members were attached to factories and carried out their main work there. Kiev welders already knew the way to the committee well, factory engineers from other cities not only wrote to us, but often came to the laboratory themselves for help and advice …”- Yevgeny Oskarovich recalled.

It was the work with the industry, the breakthrough in welding at the construction sites of Magnitka that allowed Paton and his team to earn funds for serious scientific research. Let's pay special attention to the fact that the future Stalin Prize laureate actually acted in the spirit of an innovative entrepreneur. He did not write letters to the people's commissariats and departments with plans and requests for money and resources, did not expect any assignments from them. Paton, on a completely market-based basis, earned the means himself and set tasks for himself, relying on the unthinkable needs of real production.

The time has come to create a full-fledged institute instead of a small laboratory.

In-line welding time

In 1932, Yevgeny Paton talked with the head of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, Alexander Bogomolets, about the need to create an IES - the Electric Welding Institute. But there is not enough money. It is necessary to build a new building, and Paton replies: “… we understand that now, when such a construction is underway, the state counts every ruble. Therefore, we are ready to get by with the most modest amount, if only it would be enough for the building. And what is needed to equip equipment, we will earn ourselves under contracts with factories …"

And again we sadly lower our heads. Again, not about the current Russian Federation. Its military-industrial complex is too small in volume to extend even science.

IES emerged in 1934, seven years before the war. Soon the two-story building becomes small, and again the Patonians are building outbuildings for themselves through cooperation agreements with factories. Moreover, the institute refuses to purchase imported scientific equipment: its own testing machines are being built at the IES. And the amount of money earned on contracts with enterprises is twice the allocation from the state budget. And even then, Evgeny Paton thinks about creating automatic machines for factory welding, practically robots that do not have fatigue, the hand will not flinch during the seam, and the eye will not fail. And each machine will replace a dozen workers.

The birth of the automatic welding machine

Science and practice at the IES went hand in hand. Making mistakes, sometimes failing, but developed a welding head better than an imported one, proving its superiority at the Gorky Automobile Plant. Soon the institute could present 180 working projects of machines for automatic welding of beams, columns, tanks, cars, boilers and others.

In order to far surpass human productivity, the Patonians decided to increase the current strength and cover the surfaces to be welded with a layer of flux in order to isolate them from air and ensure the quality of the seams. Eugene Paton sets a super task for the institute: the machine must be ready in 1940!

“I have more than once been convinced from my own experience that difficult and daring problems are much more interesting to solve than simple and small ones. And even if this does not seem like a paradox, it is easier to solve.

When a person has to cross not over a hillock, but take a steep, inaccessible peak in science by storm, he collects, mobilizes, and then gives all the best that is in him, he becomes stronger, smarter, more talented. This means that it becomes easier for him to work,”says the scientist himself.

The academician (not the state!) Sets the task: on June 1, 1940, to show the finished automatic installation for closed electric arc submerged arc welding.

The general atmosphere in the USSR and Stalin's magic civilization also played a role here. Tens of millions of people were caught up in the Stakhanov movement. It is not surprising that Evgeny Oskarovich - quite in the spirit of that stormy time - set before his employees a task that seemed impossible.

The IES coped with it by the end of May 1940. Auto-welding of Paton under flux is of keen interest to Joseph Stalin himself. The academician was awarded the Stalin Prize in March 1941. A special decree of the Central Committee and the government obliges to introduce automatic submerged-arc welding throughout the country. Stalin invites Paton to Moscow - to spread the technology and break the resistance of the conservatives.

Here we immediately note the most interesting realities of the wonderful Stalinist civilization. No one is developing automatic submerged-arc welding for a narrow military-industrial theme, only for the production of tanks and aerial bombs. No, a breakthrough technology promising a sharp jump in productivity and quality of labor, in saving resources, was originally planned for use in peaceful industry. For the production of welded wagons, agromachines, columns and pipes for the oil refining and chemical industries, for the automobile and shipbuilding industry, for welding steel bridge modules. It is then responsible for the introduction of technology in the country, the Deputy Prime Minister of the USSR Vyacheslav Malyshev will become the legendary organizer of tank construction and use Paton's assault rifles with might and main for the production of armored vehicles. But the primary focus was not on one defense industry, but on the entire industry.

Here again we see how the present RF is shamelessly losing in comparison with the Stalinist Soviet Union. After all, it seeks to make the military-industrial complex the only vehicle for scientific and industrial development, without trying to carry out industrialization along the entire front. On the eve of the war, everything was different.

“Shipbuilders especially encouraged us with their demands. They needed a compact, handy and lightweight welding machine that would move along the seam with its own motion. In the same 1939, a self-propelled automatic machine was born at the institute, which we called a welding tractor. (This name was suggested by the external similarity and the fact that our machine moved along steel sheets, like an agricultural tractor across a field.) Our first tractors were intended for welding the sheathing of the plane sections of ship hulls and for welding the deck and bottoms.

When submerged-arc welding appeared, we returned to this first-born tractor of ours. After reworking its design, little remained of the old model. Now it was equipped with a head of the 1941 model, a bunker for flux appeared, the running sliders moved until the seam was cut, and the welding speed could be adjusted in the range from 5 to 70 meters per hour … - the legendary academician recalled.

The decree of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the government of the USSR, issued in December 1940 and dedicated to the Paton auto-welding, set the terms for the introduction of the technology, as well as the personal responsibility of the people's commissars for the assigned affairs. It is curious how it involved encouraging innovators. Eugene Paton himself was entitled to a prize of 50 thousand rubles, 100 thousand - to award the most distinguished scientific workers of his institute. 1.2 million rubles were allocated for bonuses to factory workers who distinguished themselves in the introduction of new technology at their enterprises. At the same time, three and a half million were allocated for the construction of a new building for the Electric Welding Institute and the purchase of new equipment. Yes, the current decrees of the Russian government are a pale shadow of such elaborate documents.

I am especially struck by the fact that Academician Paton himself set tasks for his institute, and they arose from the closest interaction with the working industry, on a commercial basis. But then Stalin and his team were able to appreciate the fruits of the entrepreneurial spirit of Paton and similar innovators, picking up the initiative in time and channeling the resources of the state into it.

Grimy technomages of war

The further course of events is known. And how the war broke out, how the institute was evacuated to Nizhny Tagil, and how the assault rifles ACC ("Patons") have been working since 1942 at all enterprises of the legendary Tankograd. If in 1941 only three "Paton" robots worked at the factories of the country, by December 1944 there were already 133. Moreover, teenagers and women could work for them. Curiosity: Paton received his first Ph. D. degree only in 1945. But his true dissertation was epoch-making technological breakthroughs and 110 built bridges. At that time, the state assessed scientists by real deeds, and not by the "citation index".

During the war, Paton uses his favorite technique: he connects science and the factory. The evacuated PWI turns into practically one of the workshops of Tankograd. Researchers do not wear white coats at all: they are smeared with machine oil, soiled with scale and do not crawl out of the shops, adjusting the work of automatic welding machines (since the end of 1941, Patons are called ACC). During the war years, the IES has done what would have taken twenty years in a peaceful period. On an initiative basis, without commands from the People's Commissariat, Patonians create their own welding machines. Simplify them. The ability of the electric arc to self-regulate is used. The production process of tanks is accelerating unprecedentedly, strong welds withstand the impact of armor-piercing shells. Examining samples of German technology, scientists understand: Nazi factories cook armor plates by hand, the quality of the seams is much worse. The enemy is forced to use the labor of many skilled workers in the release of their tanks. And in Tankograd, yesterday's amateurs become the control panels for the ACC robots: a student of a theater technical school, a rural mathematician teacher, a shepherd from Dagestan, a Bukhara cotton grower, an artist from Ukraine. Boys, women work for ACC …

It is not without reason that in 1943 Yevgeny Paton was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor. He is tireless and uses all the same scientific and practical conferences as in 1930. With the participation of scientists, engineers and workers. For example, in January 1943 there were heated discussions about auto welding …

And in 1945, welding robots-tractors from the Patonovites were already working with might and main on the construction of the first gas pipeline "Saratov - Moscow" …

Are new Patons possible in the Russian Federation?

Let's return from the glorious past to our reality. In the year of the 75th anniversary of the Great Victory, the fruits of which the Russians managed to lose. Our victory is also on the shoulders of such titans as first the tsarist, and then the Soviet, but above all the Russian engineer Paton. A selfless fanatic of science and technology, a brave innovator, an ardent Russian patriot.

Let's draw conclusions for today. Before the automatic welders appeared at the factories of Tankograd, the welding technologies of the Patonians found application in the peaceful industry for the mass production of combines and tractors, cars and wagons, locomotives and mining equipment, dynamos and turbines. There would be no all this peaceful production in our country - there would be no breakthrough of Paton's welding robots in the construction of tanks. If the economies of the Russian Empire and the USSR were reduced only to the extraction and sale of raw materials and with a small additional weight in the form of military factories, Paton would most likely find application in Europe. The seeds of innovation should fall on the fertile soil of the country's developed real sector. And in Russia, alas, they end up on the bare stone of the raw material economy.

The industry in the Russian Federation is frail, applied science has been exterminated, and there is no applied section in the RAS. The thinking of "effective managers" is slavish, with a complex of national inferiority: they prefer to take imported technologies.

Today a slightly different war is being waged against the Russian Federation - the second cold one. To survive and win, the country desperately needs innovators and creators of the caliber of Paton, Yakovlev, Tupolev, Lavochkin, Kamov, Kurchatov, and Korolev. But look around and honestly admit to yourself: can they appear in the Russian Federation at all? In a country made an appendage to Gazprom and Rosneft, where practically everything is purchased abroad, ordered in China? Where are the amounts equal to the budget of a city like Elista for a couple of years allowed for bonuses to the board of Sberbank and other state corporations? Most likely, if such a Paton appeared today, he would find himself in a city with a dead industry. He would try to knock out a penny grant from the Ministry of Science of the Russian Federation to his tiny innovative company (or to a laboratory in a waning research institute), write a bunch of papers, knock dozens of official thresholds - and spit on everything. Having left to work where there is a modern industry. To China, Germany, the United States, to start bringing production back home.

Vladimir Putin's gigantic strategic miscalculation was that during his 20 years of rule, he did not set the task of abandoning the neoliberal model of the economy and carrying out industrialization in the country. History's judgment for this unforgivable mistake will be merciless. And no one will remember that we once defeated German Nazism. Who are you? THE USSR? No, you are the Russian Federation and your place is in the dustbin of history. This can be thrown in our faces.

We need to think hard about this in the year of the 75th anniversary of the Victory …

And what do you think, reader: is it possible in today's RF to expect the appearance of new Patons and "quick-witted Neutons"? If you work at modern enterprises of the military-industrial complex and in the corresponding research institutes, then become our work correspondents. Without violating state secrets, write on the case (you can write under a pseudonym) to the mail of Maxim Kalashnikov -

Everything else (like the epoch-making God-seeking texts of a million characters) will mercilessly go to the trash.