Smelting stuff fast, a comparison =)

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netmc

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Jul 29, 2019
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In one of the videos reika posted of his base, it showed the friction heater running at full speed (non-exploding). It was spitting out items as fast as they were inputted. I think it cooked a stack of items in just a few seconds. So, this is probably the fastest method, but does take getting the torque/speed ratio exactly right.

As mentioned earlier, the railcraft steam oven is pretty nice. It's runs about the same speed per process as the TE furnace, but can cook 8 or 9 items at once.
 
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belgabor

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In one of the videos reika posted of his base, it showed the friction heater running at full speed (non-exploding). It was spitting out items as fast as they were inputted. I think it cooked a stack of items in just a few seconds. So, this is probably the fastest method, but does take getting the torque/speed ratio exactly right.
Yeah, I was under the impression it can only go kaboom if it's hot and has nothing to do, so I just ran it on a maxed magnetostatic. Apparently that's not the case =)

As mentioned earlier, the railcraft steam oven is pretty nice. It's runs about the same speed per process as the TE furnace, but can cook 8 or 9 items at once.
I completely forgot about that one, kinda embarassing given it was my main ore processing furnace in my previous world for quite some time...
 

Revemohl

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The arcane furnace is comparatively difficult to automate too. The Thauminomicon says you can use those grates and a hopper but in my experience that's just sprayed things out of the bellow holes.
Insertion is ridiculously simple, actually -- just connect any kind of pipe to an item grate placed in the hole on the top of the furnace. It counts as an inventory, so any pipe will connect, and it will drop items straight down (into the furnace).
I facepalmed hard when I first realized you can do that... only about a month ago. And I've been playing with TC4 ever since it came out. Shameful :<
 

belgabor

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Insertion is ridiculously simple, actually -- just connect any kind of pipe to an item grate placed in the hole on the top of the furnace. It counts as an inventory, so any pipe will connect, and it will drop items straight down (into the furnace).
I facepalmed hard when I first realized you can do that... only about a month ago. And I've been playing with TC4 ever since it came out. Shameful :<
Reread what you cited =)
Also that was introduced in 4.1 I belive, along the Thaumatorium/automated alchemy, wasn't in 4 all the time. But as Azzanine wrote, last time I tried to do it that way it didn't backlog properly and started to spill items everywhere. The capacity seems to bit quite large, so you won't notice it immediately or on setups that don't backlog.
 

Wekmor

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Looks good, I like it. :)

You could count the stuff you need (easy if you use coal) to get the ignis and see how much rf you would get from that
 

belgabor

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Looks good, I like it. :)

You could count the stuff you need (easy if you use coal) to get the ignis and see how much rf you would get from that
True in principle, but monitoring coal usage would be a pain in the backside. The infernal furnace isn't bad, but too frickely to automate. As posted before, if automated by duct it spews input items everywhere instead of backlogging. Could be done by golem, but my main focus was high throughput smelting and imo it's not suitable for that :)
 

Wekmor

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True in principle, but monitoring coal usage would be a pain in the backside. The infernal furnace isn't bad, but too frickely to automate. As posted before, if automated by duct it spews input items everywhere instead of backlogging. Could be done by golem, but my main focus was high throughput smelting and imo it's not suitable for that :)
Just put a grate and a hopper above the grate. That always worked for me
 

Iluvalar

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I now and then mentioned that I had tested some mod furnaces, mostly being interested in if ther

e is anything in current mods that can keep up with a IC2 induction furnace. To validate my results and include some mods I hadn't checked before, I now ran a new comparison.

I hope people find this useful or at least interesting, feel free to ask/post if you have questions or comments :)
For completness, you shoul include the neitherhack furnace which is twice as efficient as a normal one.


That's also incredibly slow compared to the above methods.
The TiCo smeltery worth a mention nevertheless. It's much cheaper then other late game machines (I now make it even before my pulverizer now). And it double the ore without intermediate steps.
 

Padfoote

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The TiCo smeltery worth a mention nevertheless. It's much cheaper then other late game machines (I now make it even before my pulverizer now). And it double the ore without intermediate steps.

Regardless, in a test based on the speed of smelting the TiCo Smeltery is extremely slow compared to the methods listed in the OP. How soon you can make it or that it can double ores doesn't matter in a test based upon speed.
 

belgabor

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For completness, you shoul include the neitherhack furnace which is twice as efficient as a normal one.
True, but I think it isn't faster than a vanilla furnace (which I should in fact have included). Main focus was speed vs. RF/Energy usage. Furnaces without (somewhat) direct RF consumption I only included as reference points.

The TiCo smeltery worth a mention nevertheless. It's much cheaper then other late game machines (I now make it even before my pulverizer now). And it double the ore without intermediate steps.
Main reason it isn't included isn't the speed but the fact that it doesn't use regular smelting receipees.
 
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Wekmor

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To the smeltery:
For a test you would need to set a 'max' height. But what is it? Bedrock to build limit? Yeah would be pretty fast then, but then the argument that it is cheap to build is just invalid : D
 

Dezz

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Jul 13, 2013
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What is the perfect power input for the friction heater?

Torque?

Rads/sec?
 

belgabor

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As far as I know it only needs power, torque/speed don't matter. The highest power I did on the comparison was pretty much optimal I think. It heats up to 1902 degrees. 2000 is the max, but if you add too much power it goes kaboom, so higher is kinda risky.

Edit: Highest power on the test is a tier 5 magnetostatic on penultimate speed setting. Highest = kaboom.
 
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