Electric Blast Furnace

The Electric Blast Furnace (EBF) is a critical multiblock machine that must be made in late LV in order to progress, as it is the only way to process Aluminium at that tier. It smelts metal dusts into ingots at higher temperatures than can be attained in simpler furnaces, at the cost of high Electricity usage.

The EBF is often the first GT multiblock new players make, and as such is a common source of frustration and issues. Unlike single block machines, the Electric Blast Furnace has multiple valid configurations and if incorrectly built will void its recipe ingredients, wasting resources and power. Its recipe capabilities are determined by both the Coil block used and Energy Hatch(es) it's built with.

How to Build
The Electric Blast Furnace is a multiblock structure, requiring many blocks placed in a specific way to form a single machine. It is 3x3x4 in size; four blocks tall with a 3x3 footprint. While the EBF is not affected by rain, any Generators or Battery Buffers connected to it can catch fire and explode if exposed, so it's best covered or placed indoors. Use F9 to check chunk borders and ensure the EBF is contained in a single chunk. Partially loaded multiblocks are prone to deforming or exploding.

Requires:
 * Electric Blast Furnace - the Controller block
 * 16x Cupronickel Coil Block
 * 1x Input Bus (LV+)
 * 1x Input Hatch (LV+)
 * 1x Output Bus (LV+)
 * 1x Maintenance Hatch
 * 2-3x Energy Hatch (LV+)
 * 1x Muffler Hatch (LV+)
 * 1x Output Hatch (LV+, optional)
 * 9-11x Heat Proof Machine Casing
 * 2-4+ Amps of power supply

Bottom Layer
 * Place the controller in front center of the bottom layer.
 * The Input Hatch, Input Bus, Output Bus, Maintenance Hatch, and Energy Hatches can go anywhere on the bottom layer.
 * Fill the rest of the 3x3 with Heat Proof Machine Casings.

Middle Layers
 * The second and third layers of the EBF are rings of x8 Cupronickel Coil Blocks, each.
 * The center of both layers should be empty.

Top Layer
 * The muffler goes in the center of the top layer, facing upwards. Wrench to rotate if needed.
 * It 'must' have an empty air block above it.
 * The Output Hatch, if used, goes in any of the other eight positions.
 * Fill the rest of the 3x3 with Heat Proof Machine Casings.

Component Explanation
LV is the minimum tier for hatches and busses, but they can be upgraded later for more capacity or greater effect. The Input Bus is for supplying solid items and the optional control circuit or Ghost Circuit, while the Input Hatch holds liquids or gasses. The EBF cannot be supplied with Fluid Cells in the Input Bus; liquids and gasses must go into the Input Hatch's tank. The Input Hatch can hold a reserve of fluid cells and will automatically empty them as it drains, capacity allowing. It cannot empty cells that have more fluid in them than it can hold at once.

The Output Bus is where finished items will be deposited after processing. If a valid inventory is placed adjacent to the Output Bus's output face (dark grey square with orange triangles), it will automatically push items into the inventory, no Conveyor needed. Otherwise items will accumulate in the Output Bus until emptied. The Output Hatch is optional and will collect waste gasses for some recipes (C02/CO/SO2, mostly ore dusts. The amount collected is based on the tier of the Muffler Hatch and at LV it will get nothing (0%); a MV Muffler recovers 13% of the possible total.  The quantities shown in NEI are for the 'best' Output Hatch (UHV).

The Muffler Hatch gives a bonus reduction to pollution output and determines the percentage of waste gas recovered for some recipes. By default an LV Muffler Hatch has no reduction or gas recovery, but is still required to successfully form the multiblock. A Portable Scanner will show the current pollution reduction afforded by the Muffler, or look at the tooltip in NEI.

The Maintenance Hatch is where any maintenance issues need to be addressed. There are no tiers for this block.

Each Energy Hatch accepts up to 2A of its tier. Since even the most basic EBF recipes require 120 EU/t, it needs to be supplied with 4A of LV to reach MV energy tier. If there's even a single maintenance issue, the EBF can still run but will need three LV Energy Hatches accepting a total of 5A of LV power. Fixing any maintenance issues promptly is far less costly in the long run.

Coils determine what recipes the EBF can do, and how well it does them. Some recipes will require more heat than Cupronickel coils provide. For instance, Energetic Alloy requires 2200K, while Cupronickel Coils only provide 1800K- thus, a EBF cannot smelt Energetic Alloy until its coils are upgraded.

Bonus Heating An extra bonus value will be added to your EBF's heat capacity of 100K * (energy tier - 2), where LV is tier 1, MV is tier 2, etc. This will allow some items to be smelted more efficiently at certain tiers, as described below. The basic setup of two LV Energy Hatches @ 2A each is MV level energy, which simply wipes out the - 2 penalty. With an HV Energy Hatch or two MV Hatches, the EBF has a 100K heat bonus. The Portable Scanner can be used to read an EBF's heat capacity and energy tier.

Making Your EBF Work
Next, you will need to perform maintenance, set up the power supply, inputs and outputs, and then finally start it up. Use a Soft Mallet to turn the EBF on if it doesn't power up automatically. If it voids a recipe, the EBF will disable itself to avoid wasting more resources.

Circuits
Many recipes require a programmed Circuit or Ghost Circuit to be set. When using a programmed circuit item, place it in the Input Bus along with the other recipe ingredients. It is not consumed in the process. Make sure to have the right one for the recipe. To set a ghost circuit, right/left click on the box in the lower right corner of the Input Bus to change the number, or shift-right click to choose a circuit setting directly.

Maintenance


The controller will tell you what maintenance needs done. 5 of the 6 maintenance items are done with basic tools, while the 6th requires a soldering iron. Alternatively, duct tape can be used to fix all of them at once. If you do not have a soldering iron, you can run the EBF with one maintenance problem not fixed, but will need 3 energy hatches.)

To maintain your EBF, tools must be used on the Maintenance Hatch. The controller's GUI will have a list of the maintenance problems. When first built, the EBF will require all maintenance to be done, and maintenance problems will periodically (but rarely) pop up after that. The "Better than Duct Tape" quest has a list of all the maintenance problems and what tools fix them. Open the Maintenance Hatch GUI and click on the slot in the center with the appropriate tool. The IC2 Tool Box can be used to hold multiple tools and use them all at once by right-clicking the Maintenance Hatch.

The "Circuitry burned out" message is the hardest to deal with. It requires a charged Soldering Iron with at least 10k EU and soldering material; tin, lead, or soldering alloy fine wire or rod. Tin fine wire is recommended, as it's easy to produce and commonly available. The rest are easy, and only require a small amount of durability from an appropriate GT tool. Alternatively, duct tape can be used on the Maintenance Hatch to fix all 6 problems at once.

Power
The EBF requires 120 EU/t to make aluminium or steel. If you do not have the "Circuitry burnt out" maintenance fixed, it will instead require 132 EU/t.

Each energy hatch can accept a maximum of 2 amps, which is 64 EU/t. Thus, you will need 2 energy hatches, or 3 if you don't have all maintenance problems fixed.

When powering your hatch, use as few cables as possible. If you have more than two blocks of cabling, cable losses will deplete your power to 29 EU/t- 4 amps of that is only 116 EU/t, and your EBF won't run.

Keep in mind that you will need cables that support at least 2 amps.

You can use battery buffers to make life easier. Each buffer needs at least 2 batteries to provide 2 amps. Buffers are HIGHLY recommended for use with steam turbines, due to their inconsistent nature. They are not necessary for combustion generators or gas turbines, but can be useful.

Automation
Thankfully, automating an EBF is extremely easy. Input hatches accept fluids from any pipe, or manually in the GUI using cells. Input buses accept items from item pipes or hoppers. Output hatches will automatically output fluids into pipes, but will void them automatically if the hatch is full. Output buses will automatically output items into any container in front of them, or into an item pipe or hopper, but will void any new outputs if completely full.

Troubleshooting
The EBF runs for a while, or for only a second, and then turns off, usually deleting inputs in the process


 * Make sure you are giving it enough power. See "Powering your EBF" for details.

The EBF will not start, or flashes a green light but does nothing when turned on


 * Hit the EBF with a Soft Mallet to enable it.
 * Double check the recipe using NEI. The correct ghost circuit must be set or a programmed integrated circuit provided together with the dust/items inside the input bus. Make sure you have the correct processing gas.
 * Make sure the Muffler Hatch is not blocked by another block.
 * Make sure the Muffler Hatch is facing up.
 * It could also be caused by the EBF not getting any power at all.
 * Make sure you have the proper programmed circuit / ghost circuit set in the input bus.

Upgrading
Now that you've got your EBF running, it's time to upgrade it to make it run faster and more efficiently!

Power
The Electric Blast Furnace running at 120 EU/t is at its most efficient. Keep in mind that upgrading the voltage will decrease the efficiency, but often shorten processing time.

Cabling

With a functional EBF, redstone alloy cables can be made which are completely lossless. Make a few; the minor efficiency boost will add up when running the EBF for hours at a time.

Using an MV generator

A MV generator can be used to power the EBF instead of 4 LV power sources. If choosing to do so, ensure there is only ONE MV Energy Hatch instead of two, otherwise it will not work. Multiple MV Energy Hatches will cause the EBF to expect overclocking, the same way it did when initially set up with two LV Energy Hatches.

Upgrading the Voltage

120 EU/t is insufficient power to smelt many recipes, the most important one being stainless steel. The EBF must be supplied with 4 amps of MV into two MV Energy Hatches to achieve 480EU/t, the required power for stainless steel. Keep in mind that running 120 EU/t recipes (such as aluminium or steel) will consume TWICE as much power at 480 EU/t. It may be desirable to set up a second EBF dedicated to higher power recipes if resources allow.

Useful information
As with all other GregTech multiblock machines:
 * Insufficient energy supply will destroy the currently processed material.
 * When the Output Bus is full, the Electric Blast Furnace will continue to work and will destroy all newly produced items. Put a diamond chest on the output to capture items. Note that the bus checks each slot so later on this may produce some lag.
 * If you add an output hatch to the top layer, you can capture output gases for processing.
 * Do NOT build a multiblock machine over chunk borders. Doing so can lead to unpredictable behavior. If you have NEI installed (which you should), chunk borders can be viewed by pressing F9 (by default).
 * Before using the Electric Blast Furnace for the first time, maintenance must be performed.
 * To activate or deactivate the Electric Blast Furnace, hit its control block with a Soft Hammer.
 * EBFs can share walls, just like the BBF. They can also share input and output hatches. Energy hatches sometimes work if shared, so recommendation is to not share them.
 * There can also be more than one input hatch or bus. This way you can dedicate one hatch per input gas.
 * Large fluid cells (search for large*cell in NEI) can be placed in the input hatches to do large batches of items.
 * Because of the high pollution levels, keep your muffler upgraded to the highest tier available.
 * Do not mix different types of Heating Coils.
 * EBF on FTB Wiki Electric Blast Furnace