Slab crafting documentation

[1nanofarad]

The newest mechanic to the game was working with slabs and chunks. This came with the new alternate schematics for assembler. Can we get a flow chart of how the mechanics work. Also there are hidden functions for the blast furnace that can not be discovered unless you toss things in and test them. Can we get more details into what the blast furnace does?
Chunks and slabs are far more efficient than ore and bars. You can get bars by tossing a slab into a shredder so everything is backwards compatible. But little of this is documented.

I've tried replacing my miners with blast drills, I can't make enough mining charges to get it to work. There is a hard limit on the number of seeds in the game. while a certain area helped a lot with this. I still can't get enough. A seed crafting mechanic is sorely needed. Since I plantmatter fiber to make plantmatter bricks, half my fiber is going somewhere else and i'm getting way to much extract that has very little use.

[GD]

I checked the maths just today. The moment you start to make ingots from powder instead of ores the benefit is smaller than you think compared to chunks (but 100% better than the basic ore smelting).

The blast furnace of refined chunks instead of using powder saves you 2 Thresher-processes and 1 additional blast-step. But you get 5 additional gravel for free.

Drill -> Ore x 2 -> Ingot x 1
Drill -> Ore x 1 -> Powder x 1 -> Ingot x 1
Ingot x 25 -> Slab x 1
Slab x 1 -> Ingot x 25
Blast Drill -> Chunk x 2 -> Slab x 1
Blast Drill -> Chunk x 1 + Shiverthorn Extract -> Refined Chunk x 1 -> Slab x 1 [Best]
Blast Drill -> Chunk x 1 -> Ores x 25 [extra Gravel x 5] -> Powder x 25 -> Slab x 1

Much more important is that you start to use Blast Drills with all the upgrades in the tech Tree. (15 charges every 12 seconds for 1 chunk +4 chunks bonus for free not reducing voxel).

[GD]

BTW: Large scale maximum Blast Mining is insane. You need a very very very big Greenhouse to sustain it.

[1nanofarad]

The blast furnace is the real problem. Nothing says what it does and how it works with mining charges.

[Chinchillin]

Tech tree shows every recipe for blast machine, as well as recipes for all other machines

[1nanofarad]

Originally posted by Chinchillin:

Tech tree shows every recipe for blast machine, as well as recipes for all other machines

this is not clear and concise information. This is me looking at every recipe going ok what is that used in? ok I make that then what! the alt recipes do not show up in the intermediates tab.
there is no clear path of how to make anything. It is all piecemealing everything together till you find some kind of production path.

[Voidslime]

I'm trying to work out how the blast smelter works. There are 5 cycles for minute so any input and output x5 is the throughput per minute. My understanding is that the upgrades don't require more blast charges. I have multiblast 3 and it seems to work with 1 charge.

At unlock it will smelt a recipe twice
4 chunks -> 2 slabs, 4 ore -> 2 ingots, 2 ore dust -> 2 ingots
totaling 10 slabs or ingots per minute.
Multiblast 2 doubles throughput.
8 chunks -> 4 slabs
= 40 chunks per minute to 20 slabs per minute.
Multiblast 3 up it by 2.
12 chunks -> 6 slabs
= 60 chunks per minute to 30 slabs per minute.

All still on 5 mining charges per minute which is great!

[Voidslime]

I haven't had to ramp up mining charge production at all. I have a main line and use long inserters to pull 15 per minute into a 3 way splitter so each gets 5 per minute

[GD]

You are correct for blast smelting you don't need more charges. You can even save charges with multi-blast. Only for blast mining the number of charges goes exponentially up to 75 charges per minute (from 5) at peak efficiency.

I would however highly consider what you blast smelt. Of course those recipes you can only do in the blast smelter. However for basic ones iron ingot, copper ingot and atlantum ingot I gone back to MK2 smelters. They are far quicker and more fuel efficient for basic ones.

So now I use MK2 for basic smelting of powders (!) and use blast smelting to make them into slabs. But I only do that to syphon off gravel in the powder-making process. Otherwise I would go via Refined Chunks except for Atlantum for which no refining exist yet and Steel via Steel Powder which is already 16.67% more efficient with Iron than making it from Iron Ingots or even making it from Iron Chunks directly (even worse).