Overview

The Smeltery is a multi-block structure used in the creation of higher-tier weapons and tools using metal and alloys. It is used to smelt ores, ingots or blocks of almost any metal as well as Obsidian. Alloys include Manyullyn, Bronze, Alumite, Aluminum Brass, and Pig Iron. But beware, if you or other mobs fall into the smeltery while it has liquid in, it causes damage, leaving a layer of blood in the smeltery. This can be used in creating Pig Iron, as well as some alloys added by ExtraTiC. Blood can also be poured into an empty Casting Table to make Congealed Blood. Blood can also be obtained by smelting Rotten Flesh or pushing mobs into the smeltery while it contains a molten liquid. Other liquids can also be obtained in this manner, Horses will give you glue, while Villagers provide Liquified Emerald which is also needed for Pig Iron, and Iron Golems provide Iron.

Materials

The Smeltery is a multi-block construct requiring you to have at least 84 Seared Bricks, or 19 Seared Brick blocks, a Smeltery Controller (not to be confused with a Smeltery Furnace Controller), and either a seared Tank, Seared Window, or Seared Glass for a single-tiered Smeltery.

As of the 1.7.0 versions, the Smeltery can be any rectangular shape up to 7 blocks per side (not counting corners, as the smeltery does not recognize them).

If you already have access to a Smeltery or are adding additional layers to your own Smeltery Seared Stone may be made and used in place of Seared Brick blocks.





Building

Begin construction by placing a 3x3 base of Seared Bricks. Typical Smeltery construction has the base laid into the ground rather than on top of the ground.

Add walls one layer above the Smeltery base in a 5x5 perimeter. The corners are not necessary for the functioning of the smeltery and may be left out. Any blocks placed in these corners will not count as a component of the Smeltery. (E.g. drains will not function)

To complete the Smeltery, replace two of the wall blocks with a Seared Tank and a Smeltery Controller. The Smeltery Controller should begin glowing, indicating successful Smeltery construction. Right-clicking the Smeltery Controller will allow you to access the Smeltery GUI. Note that you can only have one Smeltery Controller in a smeltery.

You can continue to add layers to your Smeltery walls. Every layer that you add will give you an additional 9 processing slots (9 slots for each 3x3 space inside the smeltery). The smeltery walls can be constructed out of any variety of Seared Brick, Seared Glass, or Seared Windows.

You will also need to add Smeltery Drains and Faucets to your Smeltery. When you place a Smeltery Drain, it does not matter which side the hole faces. If your Smeltery is a 5x5 with no corners, you cannot place the drain in the empty corners; it must be placed in one of the walls. You can place the drains at any level up and down the Smeltery; however, keep in mind that they will require a Casting Basin or Casting Table placed directly underneath the faucet to work. These faucets will also pour into Buildcraft-compatible tanks and pipes. Liquid metal can also be sucked out by a wooden pipe from Buildcraft or fluiducts (formerly known as liquiducts) from Thermal Expansion.





How to use

To use the Smeltery, you must first add some lava to the Seared Tank, Seared Window, or Seared Glass (Either manually by right-clicking with a bucket of Lava or piping it in using Buildcraft compatible pipes). This will heat up the interior of the Smeltery to allow you to process materials. Once your Smeltery has some lava powering it, right-click on the Smeltery Controller to bring up its GUI.

The left side of the GUI shows your processing slots, with 9 slots added for every layer of empty space inside your smeltery.

The middle of the GUI is the storage tank where the liquid metals are stored. This allows you to see how much liquid metal is inside the Smeltery, what kinds of metal, and in what order they will be drained (starting from the bottom). In 1.6+ versions of TiC, you can change the order by clicking on the desired liquid. (unsupported in 1.5 versions)

The bar along the right side of the GUI is how much lava the Smeltery currently has left. Having less lava means the ores heat up slower. No lava prevents any smelting from occurring.

To use the liquid metal, you must drain the liquid into a Casting Basin or a Casting Table. Place a Seared Faucet onto the small hole on a Smeltery Drain, and place a Casting Basin or Casting Table underneath the drain. To activate the Faucet, right-click on it. A Casting Basin will allow you to create blocks. Metal blocks require 9 ingots, but other smeltable materials, like Obsidian or Glass and Sand, require the same amount of material that was placed into the smeltery. The Casting Table will allow you to create casts out of Aluminum Brass or Gold to create other metal items using the casts you have previously made.





Storing your liquid metals

If you want to keep your metals aside for later, or if you have less than 1 ingot in the Smeltery and would like to save it, place a tank below the Seared Faucet, or hook up a Buildcraft-compatible pipe to the Smeltery drain, and you can pull your molten metals out into a tank for later use.

(However, if you have half an ingot of certain metals, you may find it simpler to either just cast a tool rod of that material and then smelt it down later, or to pour it into a basin and breaking the basin for easy clearing of your smeltery)

To get your metals back into the tank, you must pipe the liquid back into the smeltery. The only methods available with just Tinker's Construct is detailed below:

Satherian Method: Place a Casting Channel on the Smeltery Drain, then the tank you want to drain out of will be placed one block up and one block over. The faucet is then placed on the tank and above the channel. [Note: using this only allows for one ingot to be transferred at a time]

ThermX Method: Remove one of the top ring blocks of the Smeltery, and replace it with a drain facing up. The tank is then placed one block away and the faucet on the tank, over the drain.

Using these, it's possible to create a temporary storage buffer.

iron

Molten metal to Smeltery: ThermX method

A storage buffer using Seared Glass 1/3 Add photo

A method gained by also using Thermal Expansion is by using Fluiducts. Fluids drained from the Smeltery are extracted from the bottom layers. Fluids inserted are added to the top. You can use this feature to cycle small amounts of liquids from the bottom to the top of the Smeltery by draining into a Fluiduct (long enough to contain all of that particular liquid) then reversing the Fluiduct to add it back on top of the other liquids or by pointing the other end of the Fluiduct pipe into another drain, or the same drain if on a corner. Repeat this process until the liquid you need is at the bottom. (If you use a Fluiduct and some sort of tank instead of a single long Fluiduct, you may end up cycling two liquids instead of one—one in the tank and one in the Fluiduct.)

If you have the space and resources, a less complicated method is to use filtered Fluiducts to pipe molten metals into tanks for longer-term storage, or a Casting Basin, allowing the automatic creation of metal blocks. This can be used as an efficient method of ore processing, just beware of alloys!

Notes

Be careful disassembling the Smeltery if you have molten metals in it. Removing the Smeltery Controller will delete all of the liquid stored inside of it. (This feature may be useful, however, if you have odd amounts of metals or unwanted alloys leftover). You can, however, remove every other block, so as long as the controller stays where it originally was, you can completely change the configuration of your smeltery. Moving may be a bit harder...

It is possible to have multiple metals within the Smeltery at once, but make sure they are not alloy metals (e.g. Aluminium and copper to make aluminum brass) unless you mean to mix them. You can store molten metals into a Tinker Tank and they will not alloy.