Factorio Forums

Hi, I have a problem with crafting steel and all related stuff which requires steel somewhere in the tree.

I have research steel, a few other researches below steel but still cant craft it or anything other.

Is there any special way how to craft it? Or any condition which I dont met?

Smelt iron plates to get steel

You put the iron plate in the stone furnace. I didn't know how either until I read this.

I tend to have a "raw materials" loop which ends up containing coal, iron ore and copper ore.

The furnaces feed out onto my finished goods loop, which has all my factories and such.

I put a furnace on the inner loop with a filter inserter set to coal and iron ore, it places the plates on the raw materials loop and they find their way into the furnaces that feed the outer loop.

Works very nicely.

I suspected that you might need to put iron in a furnace to get steel, but when I try it this is what I get (red oval added for emphasis): Is this a bug or am I missing something?

Grolleter wrote:I suspected that you might need to put iron in a furnace to get steel, but when I try it this is what I get (red oval added for emphasis):

Is this a bug or am I missing something?

Steel needs to be researched first. THEN you'll be able to put it in a furnace.

Oh, duh. I must have assumed I had already researched steel because I had access to a recipe that required it. Thank you.

It does say in the research description that the research will allow you to smelt iron into steel

Yeah, I had researched steel in one game, noticed that it didn't appear in my inventory crafting list, and figured it probably had to be smelted ... but then I abandoned that factory without ever actually trying to make steel. Then in a later attempt, I researched Military 2 without researching steel first, and wondered why I couldn't smelt the steel to make the advanced bullets. Not one of my brighter moments ...