I''ve started the process for upscaling all the different production lines to allow us to produce a meaningful amount of iron at a time, but it''s taking a long time.  I''ve started with the peripheral production of three gauges of steel wire to be used as a precursor for steel balls.  That production is being added onto the side of the existing steelworks casting area in the lab compound.  Adding on the extruder machines, new stirling engines to support them, and the additional building space took me 26 days.  The ball presses are going to be made and automated in a new building in the lab compound, but everything else is going to end up built at the dam, and the electro-separation facility is going to be completely rebuilt.  All in all this project is going to take quite a bit of time, and I''ve already put in a request from Zeb for a construction team to help at the dam.


    The reason I''m going with three gauges of wire to start, rather than just the two we need for milling, is because I also want to have a particular intermediate size of ball bearing for use and replacement in our existing assemblies that use bearings.  There are quite a few bearings being used in a few different locations, and while the blacksmiths can keep up with their production thanks to various machine assisted methods, I think it''d be better for us long term if we can instead mass produce them with minimal effort.


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    Designing a mechanically automated system to cut steel wire, move it to a die, compress it into a ball, then move that ball to a grinder to remove deformities like burrs from them, all took quite a lot of time.  From doing some model testing to building the final automated production lines, I spent 97 days.  Each line ends up producing about the same mass in completed steel balls each hour, since the the smaller balls take less mechanical energy to shape.  The only work that any demon working here needs to do is bring in steel wire, feed it into an initial wire feed, and inspect completed products for defects.


    We can make up to 400 2-inch steel balls an hour, which is just under 500 lbs of steel processed, per assembly line, per hour.  Each line is powered by 3 of the largest size stirling engines we make, meaning it draws a lot of mana from the air, much like a lot of the other facilities in this area.  Rather than use fire to heat the balls before tempering, we use large ovens also powered by fluorite crystals to get the metal hot enough for quenching.


    I knew the facility would end up using a lot of mana, so I built it as far as possible from the other buildings that use mana, while still remaining inside the walled in area.  Until the lab area can have it''s own above-ground crystal again, this is probably the extent of mana I can pull from the air here.  On a stagnant day, or a day where the wind blows in a line between any two of the major mana using buildings, we experience the equivalent of a brown out, and production slows quite a bit.


    The final product out of the building is smooth enough to be used in a ball mill, but it''s not yet polished enough for use as a ball bearing.  For that, I have another planned production line.  When using these balls for milling, the balls that come out end up being quite a bit more polished than the ones that went in, and a large part of that is that some of the minerals in basalt have a higher hardness than steel.  So, for a ball bearing production line, I intend to utilize the abrasive nature of the leftover crushed basalt in a final polishing step in a machine before the waste powder is dumped in the ocean.


    Since we added the aqueduct there is a significantly larger total flow rate of water through the dam and reservoir, so I''m not too worried about using too much of our water on the process.  We''ll also be recycling a considerable amount of the water we use through multiple steps in my planned processes, so I don''t think we''ll be causing too much strain on our water supply.  If we make enough iron and it ends up being an issue that we''re using too much water, we can relocate aspects of the facility to the ocean instead, and use sea water, but that would be far more complicated of a process, as we''d need pumps.


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    The first stage of this new construction was dismantling the old hydroelectric facility and draining the reservoir to allow for expansion and reconstruction on the dam to accommodate my plans for the new construction facility.  Safely draining the reservoir took three months, leaving me with just under four months to build everything we''d need.  There would normally be a large amount of water still draining through the reservoir, but I took a month making a diversion for the stream and aqueduct so that we could fully drain the reservoir.


    I ended up pulling five construction teams to work on the project, since this will probably end up being one of the rare chances we get to make improvements, expansions, and inspect the dam and we only have until spring to actually make those improvements.  The first of the major changes to the dam were the new drainage pipes that I installed in the reservoir that would be funneled directly into the various parts of the processing facility I have planned.  These were quite massive tubes that didn''t actually drain water from directly next to the dam, but instead pulled from a minimum of 20 feet of depth in the reservoir itself, which for the current dam would be half the depth.The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    However, over the years, as we''ve cut more and more into the mountainside to expand the reservoir, it''s also resulted in more and more of our work going to cutting stone from the hillside that doesn''t result in any expanded capacity.  So, one of the big plans is to heavily reinforce the dam, and expand it''s height up to 60 feet, which will greatly expand it''s existing capacity, and let us operate it comfortably above 20 feet of depth year round.  Meaning that if we have a drought one year, we''ll hopefully have enough water to last us quite a while.


    In addition to the extra height, we''re replacing the old valves with multiple new valves.  We''re adding multiple redundant valves, along with emergency spillways, large grates in multiple places to prevent large sticks and debris from building up, and other similar safety measures that were lacking previously.  When I first built the dam, the purpose was to improve safety within the valley after torrential rains flooded everything out.  Back then, if the dam failed due to excessive rains, it was essentially the same outcome as if there wasn''t a dam there.  Now, if it were to fail, it''d be far more catastrophic, so it really does need to have more of it''s own safety measures installed.


    Overall, the dam and reservoir should be able to better regulate the downstream flow while also easily providing the planned facility with all the water it needs to operate for at least a few months a year.


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    With the help of so many construction teams, we were able to get the necessary changes done two months before spring.  Afterwards, I had only one team left to help build the actual processing facility.  Regardless of how useful it would be to have stirling engines run everything, it''d be a waste to not take advantage of the large amount of water that we have access to to power machines when we already need to use some of the water for a few steps in the process.


    The facility plan consists of multiple stages of production.  I decided to use the water power to drive the first stage which consists of rock crushers.  I chose that, rather than having it power the electromagnets, since the rock crushers are the component that we will likely use the least, reducing the demand on water overall.  In a lot of ore processing situations, we were already crushing rocks in crushers before transporting them, so I expect that trend will continue.


    The second stage are the two very large ball mills.  While a continuous process would have a better throughput, for an operation this size, we lack a lot of the necessary control equipment to easily manage such a process, so everything is being done in batches.  Each mill is a large rotating cylinder with an internal diameter of 12 feet and a length of 30 feet.  Each will be charged with about 36,000 2-inch steel balls for grinding material, should be able to grind about 650 cubic feet of rock down at a time, and will run for 18 hours per batch.


    Once the rock from one large mill is ground down it will be strained to remove the grinding balls, then transferred into four smaller stirred mills where it will run for 42 hours.  That means we''ll have sixteen of the smaller mills to keep up with production.  Each of the small mills will have access to water to be sprayed into the tank before they''re opened and similarly strained to recover the balls.


    Then, it will be moved as a slurry to one of eight large, flat, conical drying chambers which will have fluorite plates installed to aid in evaporation of the water.  Once the water has been completely evaporated, it will be released through a chute to be run passed an electromagnet to be separated into one of three lines: magnetite, unknown magnetic material, and non-magnetic.  Extra care will be taken in designing the electromagnet area to allow as little dust escape as possible, so that our valuable mechanical components aren''t damaged, and that workers aren''t harmed.


    After magnetic separations, all three kinds of dust will once again be wetted before sending them to their final destinations.  Magnetite will be sent to be smelted into iron, the unknown magnetic will be stockpiled until I can figure out what it is, and the non-magnetic material has two planned destinations.


    The first destination is actually to be used as polishing material for bearings.  A small additional facility is planned to be attached that will polish the 1-inch steel balls to make bearings.  The balls that came out of the test mills were far shinier than when they went in, so it reasonably follows that we can probably use that to purposefully polish them if we''re smart about it.  Any excess non-magnetic material, and any that has already been used in at least one pass of polishing, will be sent down a planned buried stone pipeline and released into the ocean.


    A small amount of it though will be kept in some storage tanks.  Specifically, I plan on making some crank operated spreader machines that can throw out the wetted dust so that farmers can put it into our crop fields.  We don''t want to put too much in, but finely ground minerals are a good source of various hard-to-get elements and I''ve already seen how using pulverize in our fields improved their yields.


    It''ll take me a year at least to get the whole facility built, given the scale of the process, and that estimate is if I have constant help from at least one construction team.  However, my rough estimate on final product is about 45 cubic feet of useful iron a day.  Normally, I''d be worried that the wear and tear on the steel balls would eat up a significant amount of that iron production, but given our separation method, most of it should be recovered and recycled.