Ore Processing: 2x to 5x

Ore processing in Mekanism is a chain of machines that will turn one ore into two, three, four or five ingots, with each tier adding new machines in front of the line you’ve already built. Doubling only needs an Enrichment Chamber and a smelter, whereas 5x needs eight machines in a row and three different chemicals piped into them.

The full chain works on seven metals, which are Iron, Gold, Copper, Osmium, Tin, Lead and Uranium. Those multipliers are counted from an ore block though, so raw ore will always come out at two thirds of the tier’s number, and the chart further down has every case side by side.

The Four Tiers

Each tier is named after what you’ll get from a single ore block, and none of them replace the tier before. A 3x line is a Purification Chamber and a Crusher placed in front of your 2x line, and 4x is one more machine in front of that, so nothing you build early on is wasted.

An ore going through the whole 5x line will pass through every one of those machines in turn. It’s dissolved into a slurry, washed, turned into a Crystal, then a Shard, a Clump, Dirty Dust, clean dust and finally an ingot. Every step after the first machine is one item in and one item out.

Iron Shard

→

4

Iron Clump

→

3

Dirty Iron Dust

→

Iron Dust

→

2

The viewer above only shows the item going into each machine, as the chemicals don’t have items of their own. Shards are made with Hydrogen Chloride and Clumps with Oxygen, and they’ll use around 200 mB of it for each item, which is covered in the chemicals section below.

Ore Processing Chart

This is the number of ingots you’ll end up with from each kind of input, once it has gone all the way down the line. The first row is an ore block that was mined with Silk Touch, and the other two are the raw ore that a normal pickaxe drops.

So raw ore is worth 1.33 ingots each at 2x, then 2, 2.67 and 3.33 as you move up. The 2x, 4x and 5x machines will only take raw ore 3 at a time as well, which means one or two left in the slot won’t start, whereas the Purification Chamber takes them singly.

2x: Enrichment Chamber

Doubling is the first tier and it doesn’t need any chemicals. The Enrichment Chamber will turn an ore block into 2 dust, or 3 raw ore into 4 dust, and that dust can then be smelted in an Energized Smelter or even a normal Furnace.

2x Line

Iron Ore

1 block

→

Enrichment Chamber

→

Iron Dust

x2

→

Energized Smelter

→

Iron Ingot

x2

You’re able to build this as soon as you have Steel and Basic Control Circuits, and the two machines only use 40 FE/t (100 J/t) between them. A single Heat Generator is enough to keep both of them running, so most players will have this line going within their first hour or two.

3x: Purification Chamber

For tripling, a Purification Chamber goes at the front, which will turn an ore block into 3 Clumps or a single raw ore into 2. The Clumps are then put through a Crusher to become Dirty Dust, and the Enrichment Chamber you already have will clean that into normal dust.

3x Line

Iron Ore

1 block

→

Purification Chamber

Oxygen

→

Iron Clump

x3

→

Crusher

→

Dirty Iron Dust

x3

→

Enrichment Chamber

→

Iron Dust

x3

The dust is smelted the same way as on the 2x line.

It needs Oxygen to work, which you’ll make by splitting Water in an Electrolytic Separator. Dropping Flint into the chamber’s chemical slot will work as well, but each one is only 10 mB, so you’d be using around 18 Flint for every ore.

4x: Chemical Injection Chamber

The Chemical Injection Chamber is the only new machine for 4x, and it sits in front of the Purification Chamber. It will turn an ore block into 4 Shards, or 3 raw ore into 8, and each of those Shards is then purified into a Clump, which carries on down the 3x line.

4x Line

Iron Ore

1 block

→

Chemical Injection Chamber

Hydrogen Chloride

→

Iron Shard

x4

→

Purification Chamber

Oxygen

→

Iron Clump

x4

The Clumps carry on down the 3x line from the Crusher.

This one runs on Hydrogen Chloride, which is where the tier gets harder. You’ll need Chlorine to make it, and that comes from Brine out of a Thermal Evaporation Plant, so the plant has to be built before 4x is possible. Salt in the chemical slot only gives 2 mB each, which works out at about 90 Salt per ore.

5x: Dissolution, Washing and Crystallizing

The last tier adds three machines at once. A Chemical Dissolution Chamber will dissolve an ore block into 1,000 mB of Dirty Slurry using Sulfuric Acid, which then has to be piped into a Chemical Washer, as slurry is a chemical and not an item.

The Chemical Washer cleans it with Water, 5 mB for every 1 mB of slurry, and the Chemical Crystallizer will turn every 200 mB of Clean Slurry into a Crystal. That’s 5 Crystals from an ore block, and they go into the Chemical Injection Chamber to become Shards, then down the rest of the line.

5x Line

Iron Ore

1 block

→

Chemical Dissolution Chamber

Sulfuric Acid

→

Dirty Iron Slurry

1,000 mB

→

Chemical Washer

Water

→

Clean Iron Slurry

1,000 mB

→

Chemical Crystallizer

→

Iron Crystal

x5

The Crystals go into the Chemical Injection Chamber and follow the 4x line.

3 raw ore will dissolve into 2,000 mB, which is 10 ingots by the end, and a block of raw ore gives 6,000 mB. None of these three machines have a factory version, so when the line needs to go faster you’ll be adding more of them or using Speed Upgrades instead.

Chemicals per Ore

The chemical machines don’t take a fixed amount for each item, they’ll use a little on every tick that they’re working. For the Purification Chamber and Chemical Injection Chamber that comes to 200 mB an item at most, and about 180 mB on average, as the amount used each tick is slightly random. The Chemical Dissolution Chamber is twice as fast, so it uses around 100 mB of Sulfuric Acid.

Further up the line, every Shard and Crystal is its own item with its own 200 mB, so the totals grow quickly. These are the amounts to plan a full chain around, counting every machine the ore passes through.

A 5x line will get through far more Hydrogen Chloride and Oxygen than acid, as they’re used again for every Crystal and Shard in the middle. Each 1 mB of Hydrogen Chloride needs 100 mB of Water to be evaporated into Brine first, which is why the Thermal Evaporation Plant usually ends up being the slowest part of the whole setup.

Sulfuric Acid is made from Sulfur Dust, where one dust becomes 100 mB after it has been through a Chemical Oxidizer and two Chemical Infusers. That’s enough for one ore block, and All Mekanism Chemicals and Fluids has the ratios for each of them.

Power and Speed

Every extra tier draws a lot more power than the one before, mostly because the chemical machines use 80 or 160 FE/t each. These figures are for one of each machine with no upgrades, and they don’t include the machines that are making the chemicals.

Most of the machines take 10 seconds for each item, so a single line is held back by whichever step repeats the most. On 5x, the Chemical Washer needs 50 seconds to clean one ore block’s slurry, and the five Crystals that come out take another 50 seconds at each machine after it. That works out as one ore block every 50 seconds, or 6 ingots a minute.

To go faster, the five item machines after the Crystallizer can all be turned into Factories, which will process up to 9 items at once. The Chemical Washer is different, as each Speed Upgrade doubles how much slurry it cleans, so it’s able to keep up with a factory line on its own.

Ores Outside the Chain

Only the seven metals have Clumps, Shards and Crystals, so every other ore stops at the Enrichment Chamber. That’s still worth doing with Silk Touch ore blocks, as Redstone and Lapis Lazuli give 12 each, and it’s the only way to process Fluorite Ore at all.

Netherite

Ancient Debris has a short chain of its own. An Enrichment Chamber will give 2 Netherite Scrap from each one, but putting it through a Crusher first gives 3 Dirty Netherite Scrap, which can then be enriched into 3 clean ones.

Four of those scrap and 40 mB of Gold in a Metallurgic Infuser will make one Netherite Dust, which smelts into a Netherite Ingot. So 4 Ancient Debris become 3 ingots instead of 1, and the Gold for each ingot is 4 Gold Dust in place of 4 Gold Ingots.

The Combiner isn’t a part of any of these lines, even though it’s often described as one. It rebuilds ore blocks out of raw ore and loses metal while doing it. When the 2x line is running and you’re ready for the next tier, the Purification Chamber is the machine to build.

FAQ