How do you get and pump molten steel?

[speckle21]

Apologies if this is a noob question: How do you melt steel and pump it? 

Some of the crazier builds use metal refinery to produce ultra-high temperatures to do amazing things. But they need molten steel. How do you melt it first and pump it? Wouldn't a steel liquid pump melt itself or entomb itself before it can pick up the molten steel?

Thanks in advance. 

[Zarquan]

To get molten steel, my favored method is using magma in a metal refinery to melt iron metal tiles, then use iron in a metal refinery to melt steel metal tiles.  Be careful here though, as you don't want to break or melt the pipes.  Obsidian is a good pipe material for this.  So is tungsten (for radiant pipes), but not all maps have tungsten.

One important thing to remember is that the pump doesn't need to run for too long if you are using it for a metal refinery, so the overheat temperature is irrelevant.  The pump will break, but that's OK because it is working before it does.  Steel is weird in that the solid->liquid transition happens at around 2450 C, but the liquid -> solid transition happens at about 1085, so you can safely cool the molten steel to about 2000 C and stick a steel pump in to pump it out without the pump melting.  Wolframite also works, but not all maps have it.

Steel pumps can be "safely" used with iron without melting.

There is an exploity way to do this as well that doesn't melt.  This is detailed in the following thread.

Keep in mind that you want to build all of your buildings that use molten metals in a vacuum and on airflow tiles with a spot of liquid in the right place to cool them.  The molten steel within a building is treated as debris in one of the tiles on bottom of each building.  I don't remember off the top of my head which tile it, but this can be discovered through experimentation fairly quickly in sandbox mode.  Just build a metal refinery in a vacuum with all but one tile as airflow.  If the non-airflow tile heats up, then that is the tile where the contents are held.  If not, switch the tile to airflow and a different airflow to tile.

Once you know which spot on the building holds the material, simply put water some other conductive liquid on any of the other tiles.  You can also put an aluminum or steel metal tile under the water.  Then, apply cooling to the water and metal tile to cool the metal refinery.  As long as there is no water in contact with the molten steel in the refinery or what ever buildings you are working with, it should be fine.

[speckle21]

2 hours ago, Zarquan said:

Keep in mind that you want to build all of your buildings that use molten metals in a vacuum and on airflow tiles with a spot of liquid in the right place to cool them.  The molten steel within a building is treated as debris in one of the tiles on bottom of each building.  I don't remember off the top of my head which tile it, but this can be discovered through experimentation fairly quickly in sandbox mode.  Just build a metal refinery in a vacuum with all but one tile as airflow.  If the non-airflow tile heats up, then that is the tile where the contents are held.  If not, switch the tile to airflow and a different airflow to tile.

Once you know which spot on the building holds the material, simply put water some other conductive liquid on any of the other tiles.  You can also put an aluminum or steel metal tile under the water.  Then, apply cooling to the water and metal tile to cool the metal refinery.  As long as there is no water in contact with the molten steel in the refinery or what ever buildings you are working with, it should be fine.

Wow thanks, i had no idea this was an issue! good thing i asked.

[psusi]

Someone posted a video a few weeks back about using it to burn down gravitas.  Easiest method to get molten steel ever was shown: build an ice maker out of steel in vaccum and let it run until it melts.  Sit in on top of mesh tiles so the molten steel falls through to insulation below.

 

[Satyrical364]

9 minutes ago, psusi said:

Someone posted a video a few weeks back about using it to burn down gravitas.  Easiest method to get molten steel ever was shown: build an ice maker out of steel in vaccum and let it run until it melts.  Sit in on top of mesh tiles so the molten steel falls through to insulation below.

 

I think kilns work too. Any machine that builds up heat with operation while also not having an overheat temperature where it breaks. If in a vacuum, the machine will keep heating up until whatever its composed of turns to liquid.