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[Great Cthulhu]

Hi all,

I'm currently in my first fortress with magma. Naturally, I'm already making plans for using the aforementioned implement of fiery death, and these plans happen to require the use of magma-safe mechanisms.

Since I don't expect to find any bauxite or adamantium on this particular map, I don't want to become dependent on the dwarven traders (I plan to become the mountainhome), and I don't want to cheat, I have decided to be productive and define a reasonable MELTING_POINT and BOILING_POINT for as many minerals as I can find data for.

Now sadly, while I have found a fair bit of data on melting points, I haven't been very successful in finding boiling points. Do any of you know whether these are necessary for magma-safety? I would test it myself, but my fortress still has quite a way to go before I can do so.

Edit: the changes have now been compiled into the mod Molten Rocks.

[SolarShado]

I wouldn't think boiling point affects magma-safety... i dunno for sure tho

[LegoLord]

The default boiling point for stone is extremely high, so don't worry about that.  All you need to do is make its melting point equal to or greater than that of magma's.  Which, unfortunately, doesn't apply to many stones.

[Great Cthulhu]

Ah, great. That should work out well then.

I too thought that few stones would be magma-safe, but if the wiki is right in that magma is 1300-1400 C, and if the sources that I found on the web are reliable, then there are actually quite a few.

The most common ones are dolomite (2570-4660 C), limestone (1517 - 2442 C), flint (1723 C), hematite (1475- 1565 C), olivine (1760 C), kaolinite (1750 C), calcite (1612 C), and alunite (2050 C). Besides these I've also found a handful of less common stones.

This really changes the situation, and makes limestone, in particular, really shine, as it comes in layers, is a flux, and now magma-safe to boot.

[LegoLord]

That's very interesting.  It opens new realistic modding opportunities as well.

[i2amroy]

Magma's temperature in-game is exactly 12568 in dwarven units, as confirmed by the wiki and some independent testing I have done.

[Blakmane]

Ah, great. That should work out well then.

I too thought that few stones would be magma-safe, but if the wiki is right in that magma is 1300-1400 C, and if the sources that I found on the web are reliable, then there are actually quite a few.

The most common ones are dolomite (2570-4660 C), limestone (1517 - 2442 C), flint (1723 C), hematite (1475- 1565 C), olivine (1760 C), kaolinite (1750 C), calcite (1612 C), and alunite (2050 C). Besides these I've also found a handful of less common stones.

This really changes the situation, and makes limestone, in particular, really shine, as it comes in layers, is a flux, and now magma-safe to boot.

*edit*

nevermind, read the first post wrong

[Great Cthulhu]

Magma's temperature in-game is exactly 12568 in dwarven units, as confirmed by the wiki and some independent testing I have done.

Thanks for the info. At about 1427 C, that's a bit hotter than I was expecting based on the magma-safe page, but fortunately, the rocks that I mentioned before can still handle this temperature.

[LegoLord]

You should post this mod, Cthulhu.  I can never get the numbers right when converting real temperatures into DF units.

[Great Cthulhu]

Done and done. I've called it Molten Rocks.

The DF units are indeed a pain, especially if you're used to using Celsius or Kelvin. If it wasn't for Excel and the conversion formula at the wiki, I wouldn't have gone through the trouble.

[Myroc]

Woo, finally i got a use for all that alunite. Now i don't have to import bauxite all the time.

Maybe you should add this on the wiki page for Magma-safe.

Also, maybe we should take a look at various metals and check if some of them in reality are magma safe, and if so, implement it.

[Great Cthulhu]

Indeed. I have 150 or so alunite rocks lying around, and I know just what to do with them now.

I'd be glad to link my mod somewhere on the wiki, but I'm not sure I should do so on the magma-safe page. I get the impression that the pages on general game concepts are meant to refer to vanilla DF only.

Vanilla DF actually already comes with melting and boiling points for the (smelted) metals, and some of them, such as iron, are indeed magma-safe. You can't use any of those for mechanisms though. They need to be constructed from rocks, and the only rocks in vanilla DF that are magma-safe are bauxite and raw adamantium.

I should add that even with my mod, most ores (the metal rocks) don't yet have melting/boiling points. I haven't had much luck in finding data for most of them.

[0x517A5D]

I should add that even with my mod, most ores (the metal rocks) don't yet have melting/boiling points. I haven't had much luck in finding data for most of them.

I know that some ores don't melt -- they decompose into simpler molecules.  Once that happens, it's really hard to predict what will happen to the mixture.  You get into non-eutectic mixtures, and slurries, and outgassing, and solubility equilibria, and heat-driven chemical reactions, and it's a real mess.

So many rocks just don't have melting points.

It's too late in the evening for me to dig for an example, though.

[Ampersand]

Limestone is a rather good example. The temperature at which Calcium itself melts, limestone being calcium carbonate, is 1115 degrees kelvin, or a mere 841.85 degrees Celsius. However, in this particular situation, the Calcium and Carbon, when exposed to this sort of heat, would oxidize, becoming Calcium Oxide, or Quicklime, and Carbon dioxide. Calcium Oxide has a very high melting temperature and would probably just float on the surface of the magma.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Modding in tungsten is a possibility. Tungstic acid could be created from wolframite in a distillery (with the addition of water), and then reduced in a smelter, into tungsten.

http://books.google.com/books?id=QFQMAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA429&lpg=PA429&dq=how+is+tungstic+acid+made+from+wolframite&source=bl&ots=V0xi6zle4b&sig=5QZRbZcEBPditBkKGzK6d9RkvNQ&hl=en&ei=tDC-SemmO5-ytwe0itz3Cw&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result

The resulting metal would be extremely heavy, dense, and amazingly heat-resistant (it'll even survive thermite).

It can also be alloyed with steel, successfully.

It was discovered post 1400AD, but it's pretty straightforward, as far as modding it in goes.