Tutorial: Crucible Smelting

The crucible is a critical component of NTM's earlygame. As such, it is important that the player learns how to use it effectively. This page will guide you through the steps of creating your first crucible smelting setup, showing you how to cast copper into cast copper plates, likely the player's first unavoidable instance of crucible smelting.

Prerequisites

To begin crucible smelting, you first need to craft the crucible in a steel anvil. The anvil is relatively easy to obtain, but the crucible and all foundry-related blocks require firebricks. Firebricks are smelted from fireclay, which is made with 3 clay and 1 aluminium powder or aluminium ore. Alternatively, to save aluminium, fireclay can be crafted from 2 clay, 1 sand and 1 limestone.

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In total, to make the simplest possible foundry setup, you will need:

• 1x Crucible
• 1x Heating oven (or firebox)
• 1x Shallow foundry basin (If you are casting a block, steel pipes or any 9x mold you will need a normal foundry basin)
• 1x Blank foundry mold
• The raw material to be casted (in our case, copper)
• Any furnace fuel, such as coal or wood

Steps

1. Creating the foundry mold

First, we will turn the blank foundry mold into a mold for the item being casted. To do this, place 1 of the desired shape item into the first slot of any tier anvil, and 1 blank foundry mold into the second slot. For this tutorial, we will use a cast iron plate.

The reader may notice that one cast plate is required to create the cast plate foundry mold. This would make cast plates unobtainable, but for this reason the cast iron plate has a simple (yet inefficient) crafting recipe:

Now, with the mold created, we can move onto step 2.

2. Building the setup

The back face of the crucible with a green channel outlet.

To build a basic foundry, first, clear a 4x3 block area for the setup to be built in. A 1 block space around the side is advised for easy access to all sides of the crucible.

Then, place down the heating oven (or firebox) on the block closest to you. Then you may place the Crucible on top. After that, move around to the back of the crucible, and place the shallow foundry basin on the ground directly beneath the green channel outlet. Finally, right click the basin with the mold to place it inside. If you wish to change the mold at any point, you can either break and replace the basin, or use a screwdriver to pop it out. This completes the assembly of the basic foundry setup.

3. Operating the foundry

To operate the foundry, first insert your chosen furnace fuel into the heating oven. Do not worry about wasting burn time, as the fireboxes and crucible do not passively lose TU (thermal units). Then, insert your chosen material (in our case, copper) into the 9 slots inside the crucible, and after a moment it should start smelting it into molten metal. After the crucible fills up with sufficient metal (3 ingots in the case of cast plates) it will automatically pour out into the mold at the back. After a second or so, the molten metal will solidify into the desired shape, and you can right click the basin to pick it up. After this, it will automatically cast another item.