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40d:Smelting
Building and using a Smelter
Metal bars you produced with a smelter are usable in a wide variety of goods, and fuel is usable in a smelter, metalsmith's forge, kiln, or glass furnace.
To build a smelter you need to have a dwarf with the building designer skill, a Fire-safe material and the appropriate craftsdwarf. You place a smelter building using the keyboard commands b-e-s, after which your architect dwarf designs it and then your craftsdwarf builds it.
Using a smelter requires a dwarf with the furnace operator skill and one unit of fuel. You require ore to make a metal bar, or bituminous coal or lignite to make coke. Just like any other building you give a smelter a task using q.
Please note that you have to already have a fuel source in order to make fuel in a smelter, so you either have to bring a unit of fuel or wood with your expedition, have a wood cutter, trade for fuel, or use a wood burner to make charcoal.
If your map has a magma vent or pipe, either visible from the start or one that you have tunneled into, you can instead use a magma smelter, built using the keyboard commands b-e-l. The requirements for building it are the same as for a regular smelter, but for it to function, there must be open space under one of the eight edge tiles(the center is the only tile that cannot be open space), and on the Z-level beneath, there must be magma in that open space, to a depth of at least 4/7. Magma does not currently obey pressure and seek its own level, so tapping a magma pipe from the lowest available Z-level will not cause all the magma above it to rush into the fortress through the opening in the smelter. If there is sufficient magma under the smelter, the circle in the impassable tile at the top middle of the smelter will be red; if not, it will be grey. There does not need to be magma present when the smelter is built, but the channel must be dug in advance, because this cannot be done when the building is already in place.
The magma channel can be under the impassable tile, but it does not need to be. Placing it there may help prevent magma-dwelling creatures from actually seeing any dwarves that may be working in the smelter.
The critical advantage of a magma smelter is that it requires no fuel, except coke or charcoal will still be used in the production of pig iron and steel.
Smelting Ore Results
All ores smelted alone have a % chance of turning into a certain kind of bar. The following table shows those chances.
| Ore | Iron | Gold | Silver | Copper | Nickel | Zinc | Platinum | Tin | Bismuth | Lead | Aluminum | Adamantine |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hematite | 100% | |||||||||||
| Limonite | 100% | |||||||||||
| Magnetite | 100% | |||||||||||
| Garnierite | 100% | |||||||||||
| Platinum nuggets | 100% | |||||||||||
| Gold nuggets | 100% | |||||||||||
| Silver nuggets | 100% | |||||||||||
| Horn silver | 100% | |||||||||||
| Galena | 50% | 100% | ||||||||||
| Tetrahedrite | 20% | 100% | ||||||||||
| Copper nuggets | 100% | |||||||||||
| Malachite | 100% | |||||||||||
| Sphalerite | 100% | |||||||||||
| Cassiterite | 100% | |||||||||||
| Bismuthinite | 100% | |||||||||||
| Aluminum | 100% | |||||||||||
| Adamantine fibers | 100% |
Note that smelting galena often produces only lead which is solely used in producing lay pewter, a low quality alloy.
Coke Smelting
Please note that wood is not actually smelted, it is burned in the wood furnace. It is not called coke when burned, it is called charcoal.
Flux
Flux is that stuff you use to get the impurities out of steel. There are 5 kinds of flux: Calcite, limestone, dolomite, chalk, marble. All function the same way so if you see flux in a recipe, any will do.
Alloys
There are 2 sets of recipes for alloys. The first set use only ore while the second set use only bars. You cannot mix the two.
Recipes using Ore
Please note that when copper or silver ore is needed, any type of ore that produces copper bars or silver bars may be used. This means that you can actually make billon bars out of just tetrahedrite.
| Ingredient 1 | Ingredient 2 | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Copper ore | Cassiterite | Bronze bars[2] |
| Copper ore | Sphalerite | Brass bars[2] |
| Gold nuggets | Silver ore | Electrum bars[2] |
| Copper ore | Cassiterite[3] | Fine pewter bars[4] |
| Copper ore | Cassiterite[2] | Trifle pewter bars[3] |
| Silver ore | Copper ore | Billon bars[2] |
Recipes using Bars
The following are all the recipes when smelting bars at the smelter.
| Ingredient 1 | Ingredient 2 | Ingredient 3 | Ingredient 4 | Output |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Copper bars | Tin bars | Bronze bars [2] | ||
| Copper bars | Zinc bars | Brass bars [2] | ||
| Iron bars | Coke* | Flux | Pig iron bars | |
| Iron bar | Pig iron bars | Coke* | Flux | Steel bars [2] |
| Gold bars | Silver bars | Electrum bars [2] | ||
| Copper bars | Tin bars [3] | Fine Pewter bars [4] | ||
| Copper bars | Tin bars [2] | Trifle pewter bars [3] | ||
| Copper bars | Tin bars [2] | Lead bars | Lay pewter bars [4] | |
| Copper bar | Nickel bars [2] | Zinc bars | Nickel silver bars [4] | |
| Silver bars | Copper bars | Billon bars | ||
| Silver bars [3] | Copper bars | Sterling silver bars [4] | ||
| Gold bars | Silver bars | Copper bars [2] | Black bronze bars [4] | |
| Gold bars [3] | Copper bars | Rose gold bars [4] | ||
| Copper bars [2] | Tin bars | Bismuth bars | Bismuth bronze bars [4] |
- The coke used as a reagent for making pig iron and steel bars also counts as the fuel needed by a normal smelter.
Note: Every recipe that is not used in steel making (except electrum) requires some copper. If you want to have a variety of metals in your fortress, you will want to conserve this resource.
A spreadsheet listing these recipes can be found at the following link. Work is being done currently to allow a person to input how much ore and bars he has, and the sheet will tell him how many of what kinds of metals he can make. Both Excel and Open Office formats are included: http://mkv25.net/showcase/df/Ore%20Smelting%20Chart.zip --Chthon 10:11, 3 November 2007 (EDT)