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Guides/Metal Treatment

From A Wiki in the Desert

NOTE: You must have Tongs to remove anything from a Chemical Bath without dumping the acid.

Note: Chemical treatment values have changed drastically in T8; the base values for the metals are unchanged. The updated values appear below under Treatment Values.

The goal of metal treatment is to impart certain attributes to the metal placed in a chemical bath. For example, treating metal with cactus sap will increase its corrosion resistance, and will decrease its strength.

The closer a substance's values are to the current values of the metal being treated, the greater the effect it will have. For example, arsenic has a corrosion value of 72 (corrosion-proof). A metal whose corrosion value is 50 will respond much more quickly to arsenic than a metal whose corrosion value is 12. It will take much more arsenic to move the second metal's corrosion value. Treating metal efficiently will require using multiple substances with values close to the current value of the metal, rather than dumping tons of one substance into the tank.

Somebob's Example Recipes and Theory Behind Them

Note: This recipe is unlikely to work for your tank exactly as written due to varying k-values, but will help to explain some of the concepts behind treatment, and should be easily tweakable to work

For the first example, a relatively straightforward recipe will be used to make Hard Corrosion-Resistant Cobalt for the purposes of building a Steam Shovel.

Cobalt doesn't start all that far from where we hope to end up - Corrosion-Resistance can easily be imparted, but increasing the Strength is slightly trickier. The first ingredient that suggests itself is Salt. It has favorable values for both Corrosion and Strength. We'll only see a little movement in Corrosion from this ingredient, but the increase in Strength is key from this treatment.

10 seconds - the maximum amount of time you get for 1 deben of an ingredient - moves Corrosion bar as far as the ingredient is able to take it, but Strength still has a ways to go, so I need more than 10 seconds. Because in many instances there is little harm from letting a treatment go on slightly too long, and round numbers are easier to type, I treat it for another 10 seconds, which is perhaps a second or two more than strictly necessary - total 20 seconds of Salt.

At this point Strength is getting pretty close to where we want it to be, and Corrosion is on its way, too. The next ingredient of choice is Saltpeter - this again moves both Corrosion and Strength in the directions we want to go, though it will move Strength considerably more quickly. Saltpeter is quite cheap, so a total of 30 seconds was used to max out Strength, and leave Corrosion pretty near where we want to end

Next up, there's a variety of ingredients that will move Corrosion in the direction we need it to go - but none will move it as quickly as Cactus Sap, nor will any stop exactly at Corrosion Resistance. Cactus Sap also has a very *low* value for Strength - meaning that while it will try to move Strength in the wrong direction, the treatment value is simply too far away from the high value of what's in the tank for us to lose any Strength. A total of 10 seconds of Sap is sufficient to do the trick, leaving me with the Cobalt having the attributes Hard, Corrosion Resistant, and Purity of 8. Purity doesn't matter for this use, but does for several other uses of treated metal, so it's a good thing to make note of.

My complete recipe for Hard Corrosion-Resistant Conductive Cobalt is thus 20 seconds Salt, 30 seconds of Saltpeter and 10 seconds of Cactus Sap. As this is a relatively simple recipe, it likely will work in your tank with only minor tweaks.

The tongs metal example will be left as an exercise to the reader - one thing that will make it easier is to note that once a metal salt is added to a chemical bath, the chemical bath will remain set to that metal salt type untl the acid is emptied from the tank. So you only have to account for the effects of adding Salts of Gold *once* per filling of your Chemical Bath. And if you've borrowed a pair of tongs to start yourself off, you need never actually empty the acid bath! Changing salt types in the tank can be accomplished by adding N+1 deben of a new salt to the tank, where N is the debens of salt used to set the current metal salt type (check the wiki elsewhere, I'm only *mostly* sure it works like this)



Metal Attributes and Properties

Property Very Low
<=11.5
Low
11.5<X<=21
Very High
>61
Tensility Brittle Ductile
Lustre Tarnished Shiny
Strength Plastic Hard
Corrosion Stainless Corrosion-Resistant Corrosion-Prone
Conductivity Insulative Conductive
Toxicity Nontoxic Toxic
Plating Plated


Note: Stainless will not suit a project that requires Corrosive-Resistant (T9: tried Stainless Insulative Nontoxic Purity 8 steel sheeting to create a Pig sty)

Treatment Values

  • T10 values -- Updated by Anien ( If someone wants to verify)
Treatment Tens Lustre Stren Corr Cond Tox Purity Plating
Arsenic 16 40 48 72 0 56 8 (2) 32
Cabbage Juice 8 24 32 56 64 16 40 (6) 48
Cactus Sap 24 64 8 16 32 72 56 (8) 0
Coal 48 56 0 40 72 24 16 (3) 8
Gravel 32 16 24 0 8 40 72 (10) 64
Lime 56 72 40 64 48 0 24 (4) 16
Potash 0 8 64 24 16 32 48 (7) 40
Salt 72 48 56 32 40 8 64 (9) 24
Saltpeter 64 32 72 8 24 48 0 (1) 56
Sulfur 40 0 16 48 56 64 32 (5) 72

Metal Salts Treatment Values

  • Purity value changes to 72 when the metal salts matches the metal being treated.
Treatment Tens Lustre Stren Corr Cond Tox Purity Plating
Salts of Aluminum 24 40 32 48 48 40 8 8
Salts of Antimony 24 40 32 48 48 40 8 8
Salts of Copper 24 40 32 48 48 40 8 8
Salts of Gold 24 40 32 48 48 40 8 8
Salts of Iron 24 40 32 48 48 40 8 8
Salts of Lead 24 40 32 48 48 40 8 8
Salts of Magnesium 24 40 32 48 48 40 8 8
Salts of Platinum 24 40 32 48 48 40 8 8
Salts of Silver 24 40 32 48 48 40 8 8
Salts of Tin 24 40 32 48 48 40 8 8
Salts of Zinc 24 40 32 48 48 40 8 8

Untreated Metal Values

Treatment Tens Lustre Stren Corr Cond Tox Purity Plating
Aluminum 21 36 36 22 28 29 54 4
Antimony 20 43 37 36 14 29 54 4
Brass 25 43 31 43 31 29 54 4
Bronze 25 40 35 43 31 29 54 4
Cobalt 24 43 43 36 61 29 54 4
Copper 28 43 44 58 32 36 54 4
Electrum 53 36 51 58 48 43 54 4
Gold 22 54 51 36 30 29 54 4
Iron 36 29 41 36 18 29 54 4
Lead 16 14 24 36 12 50 54 4
Magnesium 19 29 37 22 24 36 54 4
Metal Blue 37 43 52 61 59 29 54 4
Moon Steel 21 29 34 36 25 29 54 4
Nickel 16 36 30 36 16 36 54 4
Octec's Alloy 34 43 51 54 13 29 54 4
Pewter 19 36 29 36 13 43 54 4
Platinum 32 54 39 36 18 29 54 4
Silver 23 47 36 50 32 29 54 4
Steel 35 43 45 36 20 29 54 4
Sun Steel 18 58 39 36 27 29 54 4
Thoth's Metal 46 36 53 58 15 43 54 4
Tin 19 36 26 36 17 29 54 4
Water Metal 16 47 30 36 36 29 54 4
Zinc 25 22 40 29 22 29 54 4