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[dikbutdagrate]

Stainless Steel

From the Chromite raws in game:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

"to actually get chromium, have to heat 'in the presence of aluminum or silicon'
   might use in stainless steel making, but not sure how that should work
[INORGANIC:CHROMITE]
[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:STONE_TEMPLATE]
[STATE_NAME_ADJ:ALL_SOLID:chromite][DISPLAY_COLOR:0:7:1][TILE:'=']
[ENVIRONMENT_SPEC:OLIVINE:VEIN:100]
[SOLID_DENSITY:4795]   Former value was far too low.
[IS_STONE]
[MELTING_POINT:13645]"

Stainless steel, for those reading, is odd, in that it is sort of in the game already, although there is no way of currently producing it.  The metal seems to have ended up getting dropped on the cutting room floor.  However, its raw file can still be found in the material_template for metal itself, where the comments specifically make note of this.

The reason for its lack of inclusion in game is likely due to the tech cut off point.  But I believe that irl has provided a solution for this.

After some cursory research, I learned a bit about ferrochrome.

The section on wiki notes there are no citations for its production section, so take this with a bit of salt.  It states, "Ferrochrome or ferrochromium (FeCr) is a type of ferroalloy, that is, an alloy of chromium and iron, generally containing 50 to 70% chromium by weight. ... Production of steel, especially that of stainless steel with chromium content of 10 to 20%, is the largest consumer and the main application of ferrochrome.

Production
--------------------
Ferrochrome production is essentially a carbothermic reduction operation taking place at high temperatures. Chromite (an oxide of Cr and Fe) is reduced by coal and coke to form the iron-chromium alloy."

So if we're not trying to isolate chromium, we don't have to worry about electrolysis, or overly complicated multistage refinement. And since our final product is an alloy of iron, chromium, and carbon, I think this is an easy enough production chain to work in.

For gameplay purposes, let's just ignore some of the more complicated modern refinement techniques out there, and the various multi-metal alloyed stainless steels which can involve nickel and manganese, etc. and we'll just focus on this 11-15% chromium content steel.

Heres the production chain:
1a.) Steel refinement
1b.) Mine Chromite and smelt ferrochrome. (include metal raws for ferrochrome, which likely isn't great for making things with.)
2.) Refine stainless steel: combine 3 steel bars + 2 ferrochrome bars + coal + flux =  4 stainless steel bars.


Note 1: While the addition of another metal is always neat, until corrosion becomes a thing, it doesn't really serve a whole lot of purpose, unless it does the whole bigger numbers thing better than at least some other metals. That said, corrosion would be really neat.

Note 2: I've already modded it in to mess around with. But I figure it's still worth posting about, since the comments for stainless steel are still included with the current edition of DF's raws.

[Bumber]

Wouldn't you use iron (or pig iron) bars instead of steel? Seems like an excessive amount of processing and flux otherwise.

I haven't looked into its production, but I imagine it's a type of steel, not an "improved" one.