automation for smelting?

[Xoyv]

so been following various youtubers and have to say this looks really really interesting, but there's one thing i've kind of noticed. is there no automation option form smelting ingots?

like maybe a medium smelter that's about 2X2 or 2X3 in size, that automaticly melts down ores, pours them into a bar mould, and ejects them for either a conveyor belt or a "net" to catch? maybe even give it the option of choosing how big the bars it makes/how long it waits before pouring. bonus points if the smelter physically "flings" the bars out like some sort of wallace and gromit style machine

[Sir Kepi]

Great idea, I'd love to be able to automate smelting and have thought about various ways to do this with what's currently available in the game. The problem is that you could have a couple small chunks of gold drop into the crucible, then there might be a long enough break in the gold (or iron, if you're making iron) for it to melt.

Anyone know if it's possible to add more ores after the ones inside the crucible are melted? That would eliminate that problem and the only issue would be somehow getting ores to fall into the crucibles.

[Xoyv]

i mean there ARE sorter belts, so that shouldn't be much of a problem

[Sir Kepi]

Originally posted by Xoyv:

i mean there ARE sorter belts, so that shouldn't be much of a problem

Yeah I realize that. The questions I'm posing are: Is it possible to keep adding ores to molten metal inside the crucible? Or will they not smelt? If they smelt, will they be added to the current value of the already smelted metal or will those ores be lost? I'm asking that because a machine could break, thus halting production entirely, or you might get only gold for a while and no iron, halting iron production.

If it's possible to smelt more ores without losing value, then the question becomes how to reliably get ores to fall into crucibles from a conveyor system.

[ThanatosX]

2-3 ramps and a funnel probably. Seems like everything is at an awkward height.

[Lizzard]

I tried this and got a good flow of small gold ore. Problem is, the crucible seems to only calculate the gold that went in BEFORE it was melted. I'd normally have a $1500 gold bar with the amount I collected, but when I did the auto smelting, I got about a $90 bar :(

[ThanatosX]

I got 2 pours from one crucible, one tiny, one big. Needed +2 height to get the funnel above the forge and crucible, but the aperture is too wide anyway so a lot miss the pot.

[Sir Kepi]

Originally posted by Lizzard:

I tried this and got a good flow of small gold ore. Problem is, the crucible seems to only calculate the gold that went in BEFORE it was melted. I'd normally have a $1500 gold bar with the amount I collected, but when I did the auto smelting, I got about a $90 bar :(

Ah. I'd call that a bug then. Would definitely be nice to see some kind of smelting automation given that there are conveyors, sorters, drills, harvesters and the like for automating things. Kinda makes sense that there should be automation for smelting too.