Don't quote me on this, but I think you can use them with 4x DC engines to run a grinder, albeit painfully slowly. Also, I think 700C can make spring steel? I'm not certain, don't have Minecraft open, at the mo', so I can't really check.
A good idea, but the loss of power using the worm gears will put you under the 4kW requirement of the grinder. You'll need to use a gearbox instead.
The temperature for spring steel is 1150C. I do not know what the absolute minimum amount of power is that you would need, but 4 steam engines (1 gasoline engine) will not cut it. If geared to a perfect 256 rad/s and 256 Nm, it gets you around 800C.
I think ...something...required 700C, which I was able to do with 4 steam engines. Don't quote me on this, my memory is hazy.
You may be thinking of Silicon Powder because that requires 700C. You cannot use steam engines for the crafting of aluminum ingots though since you will need 900C.
Off-topic, I'm curious, has anyone ever found a valid use-case for a worm-gear (early game or otherwise?)
I find it useful for when you want to conserve resources. Since it has no load limit, I once used it in place of a 16 diamond gearbox on a Bedrock Breaker powered by a Gas Turbine. Steel gearboxes cannot handle 16 kNm of torque. The loss of power becomes very noticeable with the high amount of power that the turbine provides, but I had a scarcity of diamonds. The lack of a lube requirement can give it use in early game when you want to gear up torque and you don't have a decent supply of lube or an automated lube-production setup.
I wouldn't advise using it too much. Only use it for like one or two things. You can do a lot of things with Worm Gears with ElectriCraft, but that will consume more resources than it would be worth generally. Ironically, it saves resources but can also use more if you over-utilize it.
