Simple, Tileable EARLY SMELTING Designs | Factorio 0.18 Tutorial/Guide/How-to

FACTORIO MASTER CLASS
This series of Tutorials and How To Guides help you become a better Factorio Engineer
Each video serves as a beginner's guide but also contains tips and tricks for both veterans players

Before each video I am conducting a Factorio Workshop on Twitch with my community in order to refine and optimise the builds presented.

Schedule:
1 video / week

Playlist from the beginning:

Save games:
Many different maps are used to showcase these videos.
Save games are available to Patreons in my Discord

0:00 Introduction
1:21 Copper/Iron Smelting
7:18 Stone Bricks
8:07 City Block Alignment
8:55 Steel Smelting
13:40 Upgrading to Red Belts
17:07 Conclusion

#Factorio #FactorioMasterClass #Tutorial

[Nilaus]

All Master Class Blueprints are available on FactorioBin
(Pastebin links no longer work)

[canebro]

This is probably one of the greatest Factorio series. While I may design mine a little different, I do love how you explain your design decisions and why you chose them.

[Soandnb]

6:00 for those of you wondering about the math behind this: if you look at the info panel of any furnace, you'll notice it has Energy Consumption (Burner), the stone furnace having 90kW. If you look at the info panel of other fuels, when you get to that stage in the game, you'll notice their Energy density. In the case of Coal, it's 4MJ. A Watt is a Joule per Second, so essentially 90kW = 90kJ/s. Using that, you can figure out how long an individual fuel lasts, and how much of any type of fuel you will need for smelting arrays.
For an individual furnace, the duration the fuel lasts is:

"Fuel Value" in Joules / Furnace's "Energy Consumption" in Watts = Duration

And the amount of fuel for an array you need will be:

# of Furnaces / Duration

[Borthralla]

Personally I like to rush electric furnaces so that by the time I need to run trains to larger patches I can use on-site smelting and transport the plate instead of the ore.
Once the starting patches are depleted I remove the smelters at my base except for steel and stone brick. For steel and stone brick, I only smelt as needed and the rest of the iron/stone goes to the bus.
I like this way of doing things because it makes the main base less cluttered. It also doubles train capacity since plate can be stacked to 100.
For the early game though I really like these blueprints.

[Cassin]

Just passed 440h on the game, and I'm still learning. This steel setup is awesome !

[Chaosrising]

Well I hoped to see how to make max compression blue belts with electric furnaces, but still thank you for your effort to make this one. Personally I prefer to hook furnaces for iron straight to steel furnaces, since 1 iron plate is 3.2s, 1 steel requires 5 irons and produced in 16, so it's pretty effective that way

[Em]

That steel column is awesome! Never seen that way before it's brilliant!

[powerpc]

For the steel, you can also build the first column to only make iron plates but feed the middle belt downwards towards the input at the bottom of the column, let it hop over into the second column to make steel from it. That way, you have both separated and you don't have to swap the direction of the inserters to work from a middle belt outwards like you did here. And you also keep the same width of both smelter columns.

[Nortonius_]

Tightest way of bringing coal into this columns I’ve seen you do yet!

[theBlind]

If you use the filter splitter in the steel setup to filter out iron ore instead of filtering in coal, the design becomes multifuel capable.

[YellowGoddess]

You can also take the coal for the steel with a sideways underground belt that only takes from the coal side. You don't need the filter splitter at all. That way it fits next to any other smelting column.

[kevingallineauii]

Excelent video. I am about to watch the late game smelting one instead. I love how they fit perfectly into the city blocks. I am going with a different design and need a beaconed electric furnace smelter for stone bricks. Thanks for the videos though!

[KuchenSalat_]

I am a new Factorio player and watchef a lot of your videos, 2 days ago i askef myself when you will do a smelting masterclass, well there you go :D

[nicheman]

I use this design religiously in early game(discovered the design before this video) but I've never figured to load coal from the side, I always bring it up along with the ore, and I must say I think I like your way better

[shadowhenge]

I do stone brick in a single column. You can get a full belt out of 2 input stone belts on a single column.

[klonanbrown]

Your contents are well explained and super helpful! Thank you!

[TheSauceBoss]

I really think this one should come before the circuits in the playlist..

[artwork]

I created a cool setup for steel. It's basically the standard setup for smelters but I made it double wide. So 2 sides of iron plates fill belts on one side and the coal is fed from the standard setup onto the iron plate belt. Then the inside smelters grab coal and iron plates and feed them into the inside smelters and then I have a single belt of steel coming out.

This way is probably a simpler set up but really long. My setup is more wide. Idk what is better but I like it

[marcusc]

I've been looking forward to this

[pauljs]

A slightly different spacing with two furnaces between power poles can cut the power poles needed for a stone or steel furnace line in half. Other than that, it's the same. Sometimes handy if one doesn't want to spend as much time chopping wood early game or if trees aren't nearby in a desert starting area. Makes the production line a little longer lengthwise, but in most cases that's negligible.