Skip to content

Making Steel

Steel is the first big wall in Feedback. Nothing locks it away, but you have to hold a crucible inside a narrow, hot temperature window for a while, and that's hard. Everything you learn about heat comes together here.

Check JEI's Thermal process page for Steel Ingot for the exact figures; they're summarised below.

What you need

  • A Crucible on a Firebox. A large crucible is strongly recommended.
  • Charcoal to burn, and a Powered Bellows on the firebox. Charcoal alone isn't hot enough.
  • An Iron Ingot and a piece of Charcoal to put in the crucible.
  • Ideally a Thermometer.

The process

Put the iron ingot and the charcoal into the crucible, then get the crucible into steel's band and keep it there:
Band 1350–1410 Tu
Fastest at 1380 Tu
Hold 30 seconds, if held exactly at 1380
Max rate 5 Tu per tick
Spoils above 1470 Tu, into Burnt Iron

What that means in practice:

  • Below the band nothing happens, and progress you'd made slowly slips away. That's safe, just slow.
  • Inside the band it progresses, fastest near the middle.
  • Above the band it stops progressing again, and you're getting close to the spoil line.
  • Above the spoil line the batch is ruined instantly. The iron and charcoal become Burnt Iron.
  • Heating too fast also stops progress, even inside the band. A small crucible on a full fire climbs faster than steel allows, so it can't make steel at all at full blast. That's the real reason for the large crucible.

Tips

  • With only words to go on, steel's window straddles yellow / pale yellow (1300–1400 Tu), which is too vague. The thermometer reads in 25 Tu steps, about two steps inside the window, which makes this doable by hand: heat, check, ease off, check again.
  • Insulation helps a large crucible sit steadily in the band.
  • Run the bellows through a Clutch so you can stop the air without stopping your whole line.
  • A Bimetallic Strip can switch the bellows for you, but the standard strip trips at 1440 Tu, above steel's band (top 1410). It holds a large crucible within about 20 Tu either side of 1440: no progress, but no burnt iron either. On a small crucible it swings past 1470 and burns the batch.
  • For proper automatic control, bolt a Temperature Sensor on and use a Controller.

Other routes

  • Cast Iron + Charcoal also makes steel, in a shorter hold. Cast iron comes from an Iron Ingot + Coal held at a lower, wider band (check JEI).
  • Four Steel Swarf (from drilling, turning or grinding steel) can be melted back into a steel ingot in the same band, with an even shorter hold. Nothing has to go to waste.

After steel