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More manual
Added sections on the technic-specific kinds of item processing, and on generic metal mechanics, and the specific trickery around iron (merging in notes_on_iron).
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manual.md
264
manual.md
@ -160,12 +160,274 @@ elevation -150 downwards. It is much harder to dig than standard stone,
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so impedes mining when it is encountered. It has mainly decorative use,
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so impedes mining when it is encountered. It has mainly decorative use,
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but also appears in a couple of machine recipes.
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but also appears in a couple of machine recipes.
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alloying
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--------
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In technic, alloying is a way of combining items to create other items,
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distinct from standard crafting. Alloying always uses inputs of exactly
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two distinct types, and produces a single output. Like cooking, which
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takes a single input, it is performed using a powered machine, known
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generically as an "alloy furnace". An alloy furnace always has two
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input slots, and it doesn't matter which way round the two ingredients
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are placed in the slots. Many alloying recipes require one or both
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slots to contain a stack of more than one of the ingredient item: the
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quantity required of each ingredient is part of the recipe.
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As with the furnaces used for cooking, there are multiple kinds of alloy
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furnace, powered in different ways. The most-used alloy furnaces are
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electrically powered. There is also an alloy furnace that is powered
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by directly burning fuel, just like the basic cooking furnace. Building
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almost any electrical machine, including the electrically-powered alloy
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furnaces, requires a machine casing component, one ingredient of which
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is brass, an alloy. It is therefore necessary to use the fuel-fired
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alloy furnace in the early part of the game, on the way to building
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electrical machinery.
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Alloying recipes are mainly concerned with metals. These recipes
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combine a base metal with some other element, most often another metal,
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to produce a new metal. This is discussed in the section on metal.
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There are also a few alloying recipes in which the base ingredient is
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non-metallic, such as the recipe for the silicon wafer.
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grinding, extracting, and compressing
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-------------------------------------
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Grinding, extracting, and compressing are three distinct, but very
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similar, ways of converting one item into another. They are all quite
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similar to the cooking found in the basic Minetest game. Each uses
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an input consisting of a single item type, and produces a single
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output. They are all performed using powered machines, respectively
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known generically as a "grinder", "extractor", and "compressor".
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Some compressing recipes require the input to be a stack of more than
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one of the input item: the quantity required is part of the recipe.
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Grinding and extracting recipes never require such a stacked input.
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There are multiple kinds of grinder, extractor, and compressor. Unlike
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cooking furnaces and alloy furnaces, there are none that directly burn
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fuel; they are all electrically powered.
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Grinding recipes always produce some kind of dust, loosely speaking,
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as output. The most important grinding recipes are concerned with metals:
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every metal lump or ingot can be ground into metal dust. Coal can also
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be ground into dust, and burning the dust as fuel produces much more
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energy than burning the original coal lump. There are a few other
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grinding recipes that make block types from the basic Minetest game
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more interconvertible: standard stone can be ground to standard sand,
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desert stone to desert sand, cobblestone to gravel, and gravel to dirt.
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Extracting is a miscellaneous category, used for a small group
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of processes that just don't fit nicely anywhere else. (Its name is
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notably vaguer than those of the other kinds of processing.) It is used
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for recipes that produce dye, mainly from flowers. (However, for those
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recipes using flowers, the basic Minetest game provides parallel crafting
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recipes that are easier to use and produce more dye, and those recipes
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are not suppressed by technic.) Its main use is to generate rubber from
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raw latex, which it does three times as efficiently as merely cooking
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the latex. Extracting was also formerly used for uranium enrichment for
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use as nuclear fuel, but this use has been superseded by a new enrichment
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system using the centrifuge.
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Compressing recipes are mainly used to produce a few relatively advanced
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artificial item types, such as the copper and carbon plates used in
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advanced machine recipes. There are also a couple of compressing recipes
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making natural block types more interconvertible.
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centrifuging
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------------
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Centrifuging is another way of using a machine to convert items.
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Centrifuging takes an input of a single item type, and produces outputs
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of two distinct types. The input may be required to be a stack of
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more than one of the input item: the quantity required is part of
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the recipe. Centrifuging is only performed by a single machine type,
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the MV (electrically-powered) centrifuge.
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Generally, centrifuging separates the input item into constituent
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substances, but it can only work when the input is reasonably fluid,
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and in marginal cases it is quite destructive to item structure.
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(In real life, centrifuges require their input to be mainly fluid, that
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is either liquid or gas. Few items in the game are described as liquid
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or gas, so the concept of the centrifuge is stretched a bit to apply to
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finely-divided solids.)
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The main use of centrifuging is in uranium enrichment, where it
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separates the isotopes of uranium dust that otherwise appears uniform.
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Enrichment is a necessary process before uranium can be used as nuclear
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fuel, and the radioactivity of uranium blocks is also affected by its
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isotopic composition.
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A secondary use of centrifuging is to separate the components of
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metal alloys. This can only be done using the dust form of the alloy.
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It recovers both components of binary metal/metal alloys. It can't
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recover the carbon from steel or cast iron.
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metal
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-----
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Many of the substances important in technic are metals, and there is
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a common pattern in how metals are handled. Generally, each metal can
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exist in five forms: ore, lump, dust, ingot, and block. With a couple of
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tricky exceptions in mods outside technic, metals are only *used* in dust,
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ingot, and block forms. Metals can be readily converted between these
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three forms, but can't be converted from them back to ore or lump forms.
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As in the basic Minetest game, a "lump" of metal is acquired directly by
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digging ore, and will then be processed into some other form for use.
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A lump is thus more akin to ore than to refined metal. (In real life,
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metal ore rarely yields lumps ("nuggets") of pure metal directly.
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More often the desired metal is chemically bound into the rock as an
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oxide or some other compound, and the ore must be chemically processed
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to yield pure metal.)
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Not all metals occur directly as ore. Generally, elemental metals (those
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consisting of a single chemical element) occur as ore, and alloys (those
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consisting of a mixture of multiple elements) do not. In fact, if the
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fictional mithril is taken to be elemental, this pattern is currently
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followed perfectly. (It is not clear in the Middle-Earth setting whether
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mithril is elemental or an alloy.) This might change in the future:
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in real life some alloys do occur as ore, and some elemental metals
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rarely occur naturally outside such alloys. Metals that do not occur
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as ore also lack the "lump" form.
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The basic Minetest game offers a single way to refine metals: cook a lump
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in a furnace to produce an ingot. With technic this refinement method
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still exists, but is rarely used outside the early part of the game,
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because technic offers a more efficient method once some machines have
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been built. The grinder, available only in electrically-powered forms,
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can grind a metal lump into two piles of metal dust. Each dust pile
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can then be cooked into an ingot, yielding two ingots from one lump.
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This doubling of material value means that you should only cook a lump
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directly when you have no choice, mainly early in the game when you
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haven't yet built a grinder.
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An ingot can also be ground back to (one pile of) dust. Thus it is always
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possible to convert metal between ingot and dust forms, at the expense
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of some energy consumption. Nine ingots of a metal can be crafted into
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a block, which can be used for building. The block can also be crafted
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back to nine ingots. Thus it is possible to freely convert metal between
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ingot and block forms, which is convenient to store the metal compactly.
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Every metal has dust, ingot, and block forms.
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Alloying recipes in which a metal is the base ingredient, to produce a
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metal alloy, always come in two forms, using the metal either as dust
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or as an ingot. If the secondary ingredient is also a metal, it must
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be supplied in the same form as the base ingredient. The output alloy
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is also returned in the same form. For example, brass can be produced
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by alloying two copper ingots with one zinc ingot to make three brass
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ingots, or by alloying two piles of copper dust with one pile of zinc
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dust to make three piles of brass dust. The two ways of alloying produce
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equivalent results.
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iron and its alloys
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-------------------
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Iron forms several important alloys. In real-life history, iron was the
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second metal to be used as the base component of deliberately-constructed
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alloys (the first was copper), and it was the first metal whose working
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required processes of any metallurgical sophistication. The game
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mechanics around iron broadly imitate the historical progression of
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processes around it, rather than the less-varied modern processes.
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The two-component alloying system of iron with carbon is of huge
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importance, both in the game and in real life. The basic Minetest game
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doesn't distinguish between these pure iron and these alloys at all,
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but technic introduces a distinction based on the carbon content, and
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renames some items of the basic game accordingly.
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The iron/carbon spectrum is represented in the game by three metal
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substances: wrought iron, carbon steel, and cast iron. Wrought iron
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has low carbon content (less than 0.25%), resists shattering, and
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is easily welded, but is relatively soft and susceptible to rusting.
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In real-life history it was used for rails, gates, chains, wire, pipes,
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fasteners, and other purposes. Cast iron has high carbon content
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(2.1% to 4%), is especially hard, and resists corrosion, but is
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relatively brittle, and difficult to work. Historically it was used
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to build large structures such as bridges, and for cannons, cookware,
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and engine cylinders. Carbon steel has medium carbon content (0.25%
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to 2.1%), and intermediate properties: moderately hard and also tough,
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somewhat resistant to corrosion. In real life it is now used for most
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of the purposes previously satisfied by wrought iron and many of those
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of cast iron, but has historically been especially important for its
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use in swords, armour, skyscrapers, large bridges, and machines.
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In real-life history, the first form of iron to be refined was
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wrought iron, which is nearly pure iron, having low carbon content.
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It was produced from ore by a low-temperature furnace process (the
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"bloomery") in which the ore/iron remains solid and impurities (slag)
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are progressively removed by hammering ("working", hence "wrought").
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This began in the middle East, around 1800 BCE.
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Historically, the next forms of iron to be refined were those of high
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carbon content. This was the result of the development of a more
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sophisticated kind of furnace, the blast furnace, capable of reaching
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higher temperatures. The real advantage of the blast furnace is that it
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melts the metal, allowing it to be cast straight into a shape supplied by
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a mould, rather than having to be gradually beaten into the desired shape.
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A side effect of the blast furnace is that carbon from the furnace's fuel
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is unavoidably incorporated into the metal. Normally iron is processed
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twice through the blast furnace: once producing "pig iron", which has
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very high carbon content and lots of impurities but lower melting point,
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casting it into rough ingots, then remelting the pig iron and casting it
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into the final moulds. The result is called "cast iron". Pig iron was
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first produced in China around 1200 BCE, and cast iron later in the 5th
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century BCE. Incidentally, the Chinese did not have the bloomery process,
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so this was their first iron refining process, and, unlike the rest of
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the world, their first wrought iron was made from pig iron rather than
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directly from ore.
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Carbon steel, with intermediate carbon content, was developed much later,
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in Europe in the 17th century CE. It required a more sophisticated
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process, because the blast furnace made it extremely difficult to achieve
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a controlled carbon content. Tweaks of the blast furnace would sometimes
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produce an intermediate carbon content by luck, but the first processes to
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reliably produce steel were based on removing almost all the carbon from
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pig iron and then explicitly mixing a controlled amount of carbon back in.
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In the game, the bloomery process is represented by ordinary cooking
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or grinding of an iron lump. The lump represents unprocessed ore,
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and is identified only as "iron", not specifically as wrought iron.
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This standard refining process produces dust or an ingot which is
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specifically identified as wrought iron. Thus the standard refining
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process produces the (nearly) pure metal.
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Cast iron is trickier. You might expect from the real-life notes above
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that cooking an iron lump (representing ore) would produce pig iron that
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can then be cooked again to produce cast iron. This is kind of the case,
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but not exactly, because as already noted cooking an iron lump produces
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wrought iron. The game doesn't distinguish between low-temperature
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and high-temperature cooking processes: the same furnace is used not
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just to cast all kinds of metal but also to cook food. So there is no
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distinction between cooking processes to produce distinct wrought iron
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and pig iron. But repeated cooking *is* available as a game mechanic,
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and is indeed used to produce cast iron: re-cooking a wrought iron ingot
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produces a cast iron ingot. So pig iron isn't represented in the game as
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a distinct item; instead wrought iron stands in for pig iron in addition
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to its realistic uses as wrought iron.
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Carbon steel is produced by a more regular in-game process: alloying
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wrought iron with coal dust (which is essentially carbon). This bears
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a fair resemblance to the historical development of carbon steel.
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This alloying recipe is relatively time-consuming for the amount of
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material processed, when compared against other alloying recipes, and
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carbon steel is heavily used, so it is wise to alloy it in advance,
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when you're not waiting for it.
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There are additional recipes that permit all three of these types of iron
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to be converted into each other. Alloying carbon steel again with coal
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dust produces cast iron, with its higher carbon content. Cooking carbon
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steel or cast iron produces wrought iron, in an abbreviated form of the
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bloomery process.
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There's one more iron alloy in the game: stainless steel. It is managed
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in a completely regular manner, created by alloying carbon steel with
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chromium.
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subjects missing from this manual
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subjects missing from this manual
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---------------------------------
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---------------------------------
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This manual needs to be extended with sections on:
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This manual needs to be extended with sections on:
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* alloying
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* rubber
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* electrical networks
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* electrical networks
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* the powered machine types
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* the powered machine types
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* how machines interact with tubes
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* how machines interact with tubes
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@ -1,68 +0,0 @@
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Notes on iron and steel
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=======================
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Alloying iron with carbon is of huge importance, but in some processes
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the alloying is an implicit side effect rather than the product of
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explicit mixing, so it is a complex area. In the real world, there is
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a huge variety of kinds of iron and steel, differing in the proportion
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of carbon included and in other elements added to the mix.
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The Minetest default mod doesn't distinguish between types of iron and
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steel at all. This mod introduces multiple types in order to get a bit
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of complexity and flavour.
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Leaving aside explicit addition of other elements, the iron/carbon
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spectrum is here represented by three substances: wrought iron,
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carbon steel, and cast iron. Wrought iron has low carbon content
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(less than 0.25%), resists shattering, and is easily welded, but is
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relatively soft and susceptible to rusting. It was used for rails,
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gates, chains, wire, pipes, fasteners, and other purposes. Cast iron
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has high carbon content (2.1% to 4%), is especially hard, and resists
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corrosion, but is relatively brittle, and difficult to work. It was used
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to build large structures such as bridges, and for cannons, cookware,
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and engine cylinders. Carbon steel has medium carbon content (0.25%
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to 2.1%), and intermediate properties: moderately hard and also tough,
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somewhat resistant to corrosion. It is now used for most of the purposes
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previously satisfied by wrought iron and many of those of cast iron,
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but has historically been especially important for its use in swords,
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armour, skyscrapers, large bridges, and machines.
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Historically, the first form of iron to be refined was wrought iron,
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produced from ore by a low-temperature furnace process in which the
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ore/iron remains solid and impurities (slag) are progressively removed.
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Cast iron, by contrast, was produced somewhat later by a high-temperature
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process in a blast furnace, in which the metal is melted, and carbon is
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unavoidably incorporated from the furnace's fuel. (In fact, it's done
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in two stages, first producing pig iron from ore, and then remelting the
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pig iron to cast as cast iron.) Carbon steel requires a more advanced
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process, in which molten pig iron is processed to remove the carbon,
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and then a controlled amount of carbon is explicitly mixed back in.
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Other processes are possible to refine iron ore and to adjust its
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carbon content.
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Unfortunately, Minetest doesn't let us readily distinguish between
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low-temperature and high-temperature processes: in the default game, the
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same furnace is used both to cook food (low temperature) and to cast metal
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ingots (varying high temperatures). So we can't sensibly have wrought
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iron and cast iron produced by different types of furnace. Nor can
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furnace recipes discriminate by which kind of fuel is used (and thus
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by the availability of carbon). The alloy furnace allows for explicit
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alloying, which appropriately represents how carbon steel is made, but
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is not sensible for the other two, and is a relatively advanced process.
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About the only option to make a second iron-processing furnace process
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readily available is to cook multiple times; happily, this bears a slight
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resemblance to the real process with pig iron as an intermediate product.
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The default mod's refined iron, which it calls "steel", is identified
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with this mod's wrought iron. Cooking an iron lump (representing ore)
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initially produces wrought iron; the cooking process here represents a
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low-temperature bloomery process. Cooking wrought iron then produces
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cast iron; this time the cooking process represents a blast furnace.
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Alloy cooking wrought iron with coal dust (carbon) produces carbon steel;
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this represents the explicit mixing stage of carbon steel production.
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Additionally, alloy cooking carbon steel with coal dust produces cast
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|
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iron, which is logical but not very useful. Furthermore, to make it
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||||||
possible to turn any of the forms of iron into any other, cooking carbon
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steel or cast iron produces wrought iron, in an abbreviated form of the
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bloomery process. As usual for metals, the same cooking and alloying
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|
||||||
processes can be performed in parallel forms on ingots or dust.
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Loading…
Reference in New Issue
Block a user