40d:Metal industry

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The metal industry can be quite profitable, as pursuit of high-quality weapons and armour for your military or statues and furniture for hallways and rooms can provide many lesser-grade items to trade or melt down and recycle.

Raw material

Ore

Ore is a generic term given to a mineral which can be refined to produce a metal. Within the game this is done at a smelter.

By default, all ore is reserved for smelting rather than being available for use by masons or stonecrafters.

You can adjust the preferences in the Stone Status Screen to free ores for uses other than smelting. This can be a quick way around producing high-value furniture from gold nuggets (or similar high-value ores) by using a mason rather than refining the ore and producing furniture using your metalsmith.

Bars

Once an ore is smelted into pure metal, it becomes a bar of that metal. Sometimes ores and/or bars can be combined to produce alloys, which also come in bars.

Heat sources

Producing metal from ore, and turning the metal into finished products, requires a large amount of heat. This can come in two forms:

Conventional vs Magma powered

Conventional (non-magma) smelters and forges require fuel to run them. Magma versions require only an open floor to magma below them.

Fuel

Fuel for the metal industry is processed at a smelter or wood burner, but magma smelters and magma forges do not need conventional fuel to operate.

Producing steel will require refined coal even at a magma smelter, either in the form of coke or charcoal. Pig iron is made by smelting 1 iron with 1 refined coal and 1 flux, and steel is made by smelting 1 iron bar with 1 pig iron, 1 more refined coal and 1 more flux, producing a final product of 2 steel bars. In the end, each steel produced requires 1 iron ore, 1 flux, and 1 refined coal, regardless of where it is processed. (See Fuel and Smelting.)

Stockpiles

Ore will be placed in stone stockpiles by dwarves with the stone hauling labour enabled. The stockpile must be set for required ore to be permitted but it can have Economic and Other stones forbidden.

For continuous operation of smelters, stockpiles of ore, as well as flux and refined coal if producing iron or steel, should be located nearby the smelter. Refined coal will be placed in a bar stockpile which has coal permitted.

Smelters:Forges

Because smelters can be slower than forges, especially when producing steel bars and/or items that consume several bars at a time, providing several smelters (and smelter operators) per working forge is recommended.

Clutter can be a problem as well, especially when smelting steel or bituminous coal, and multiple smelters can be rotated as one becomes cluttered and the next activated.

Completed products

Through a variety of labours and workshops, the metal industry can create high value armor, furniture, weapons and crafts.

Summary

flowchart of raw materials and produce created through the metal industry

Required worker / tasks

• Miner / mining, producing ore, flux and coke.
• Peasant / for the large volume of raw materials used, it is generally inefficient to use skilled labour for hauling. Due to the heavy weight of many ores and bars, improve Strength attributes are desirable over untrained haulers.
• Wood burner / Produce charcoal (a fuel)
• Furnace operator / Produce bars from raw ingredients, produce coke (a fuel)
• Armorsmith / Produce metal armor from bars
• Metalsmith / Produce metal blocks or furniture (including anvils, bins, buckets, and cages) from bars
• Weaponsmith / Produce metal weapons, crossbows, bolts, and trap weapons from bars