Smelting

The smelting interface for the furnace, blast furnace, and smoker is quite similar. It consists of several slots and indicators. In the upper left corner, there is a slot where the item to be smelted is placed. Below that is the fuel input slot, where the fuel item is placed. On the right side, there is a slot where the resulting smelted items accumulate and can be collected by the player. Flames above the fuel slot serve as a gauge, indicating the gradual consumption of the fuel item, while an arrow in the middle fills up gradually to show the progress of smelting the current input item.

To initiate smelting, the player needs to place an input item and fuel into their respective slots. Once the smelting process starts, it continues even if the player closes the interface. The furnace visually indicates that it is still operating by displaying flames and fire particle effects. The furnace consumes one fuel item at a time, taking approximately 10 seconds or 200 game ticks to burn. The fuel gauge shows the remaining burn time of the current fuel item. As each fuel item is fully consumed, another one is automatically taken from the fuel slot, and the gauge starts again.

Smeltable input items are processed one at a time but remain in the input slot during the smelting process. The arrow indicates the progress of smelting. When the arrow is completely filled, the input item is removed from the input stack, and an output item is added to the output stack. Immediately after, the smelting of the next input item begins.

The smelting process stops under the following conditions:

• When the furnace runs out of smeltable items: This means the input slot becomes empty.

• When the furnace runs out of fuel: The fuel input slot is empty, and the current fuel item is fully consumed (the fuel gauge becomes empty).

• When the output slot becomes full: Either the slot contains a full stack of output items or it contains the wrong output item for the current input item. In such cases, smelting is paused (but fuel consumption stops) until the output slot becomes available, typically when items are removed by a player or a hopper. If a fuel item is completely burned out in this condition, a new one will not be used until the output slot becomes available again.

• When the furnace is broken: This results in the loss of all slot contents, accumulated experience, and the furnace block itself. If a fuel item is burning at the time, it is removed from the fuel slot before the furnace breaks. However, the furnace block may not be dropped if it was destroyed by an explosion.

• If smelting stops while a fuel item is still burning (which is normal), the furnace visually appears to be running but no further input items are processed. If the fuel is depleted (and the fuel gauge is empty) while an item is partially smelted, the smelting progress is reversed at double speed, and the item remains in the input slot.

Smelting is temporarily suspended if players move far away from the furnace, including when they enter another dimension, causing simulation to cease in the chunk where the furnace is located. The smelting process resumes once the player returns. If a player sleeps in a bed while the furnace is in the process of smelting items, the furnace's progress remains unchanged as if no bed was used and no additional time had passed. This is because sleeping in a bed does not advance the game's time; it simply sets the time of day to morning.

The furnace keeps track of the experience gained for each item as it completes the smelting process. This experience is accumulated in a hidden counter. Even if a hopper is used to remove items from the output slot, the furnace remembers the total earned experience. When the next player manually removes items from the interface, they will be awarded the accumulated experience. After that, the counter is reset. If a player takes some of the output items but leaves some in the slot, the furnace retains the corresponding experience for those items and does not award it to the player.

All smelting recipes can be utilized in the furnace, while specific subsets of recipes are available in the blast furnace and smoker. When using the blast furnace or smoker, the smelting process occurs at twice the speed, taking only 5 seconds or 100 game ticks. However, the amount of fuel consumed remains the same across all three types of furnaces.

When it comes to fractional experience values, a calculation is performed. First, the fractional experience value is multiplied by the number of smelted items that are removed from the furnace. The resulting value is then separated into its whole-number part, which represents the awarded experience points for the player. If there is a fractional part remaining after the division, it signifies the chance of an additional experience point.

For instance, let's consider the smelting of 1 coal ore and the subsequent removal of the coal. In this case, the fractional experience value is 0.1. Therefore, on average, every ten coals that are removed will grant the player one experience point. Similarly, if we take the example of smelting 5 sea pickles and removing all 5 resulting lime dyes, the fractional experience value is 0.2. By multiplying this value by 5, we obtain 1. This means that only one experience point is granted in this scenario.

It's important to note that any remaining fractional experience stays within the furnace if the final total is not an integer. This leftover experience is carried forward and attributed to the next round of smelting.

A semi-automatic furnace is a practical and inexpensive solution for smelting various materials in Minecraft. By utilizing hoppers and a simple design, players can automate the smelting process, optimizing resource usage and saving time. This article provides a step-by-step guide on constructing a semi-automatic furnace, explores variations and enhancements, and highlights other automatic furnace designs available for players to maximize their gameplay efficiency.

Building Instructions

To construct a semi-automatic furnace, gather the following materials: 8 cobblestones, 15 iron ingots, and 12 logs of wood (48 planks). The construction requires 3 chests, 3 hoppers, and 1 furnace. Follow the step-by-step instructions below:

• Place a chest on the ground. This chest will serve as the container for the smelted/cooked items.

• Attach a hopper to the chest.

• Position the furnace on top of the hopper.

• Place one hopper on the top and another on the side (left, right, front, or back) of the furnace. The top hopper will insert items into the furnace for smelting, while the side hopper will supply burnable fuels.

• Attach a chest on top of each hopper connected to the furnace.

Enhancements and Variations

Players can customize their semi-automatic furnace design by incorporating additional features. One option is to add switches to control the hoppers. Switching off the bottom hopper prevents it from removing items, allowing players to collect experience points from smelting. Switching off the top hopper enables the accumulation of various items in the top chest, reducing fuel waste by smelting partial stacks. The fuel hopper on the side can remain active without the need for switching.

Multiplayer Considerations

In multiplayer environments with chest and furnace protections, players might need to unlock these protections to enable the interaction of hoppers with the chests and furnaces.

Alternate Automatic Furnace Designs

For players seeking more advanced automation, there are alternative automatic furnace designs available. These designs seamlessly integrate into existing item sorting systems and operate autonomously. One such design incorporates an item filter that collects specific items, smelts them in an internal furnace, and transports them back to the main hopper line using a dropper item elevator. This setup ensures smooth operation and efficient storage of smelted items.

Expanding Production

To further increase smelting efficiency, players can consider building multiple furnaces. Having multiple furnaces significantly boosts production rates. For this setup, place a chest on top of each furnace to hold the items to be smelted, and position a fuel chest at the back to provide a steady supply of burnable fuel.

Tiny Charcoal Generator

Another noteworthy design is the tiny charcoal generator. This innovative setup allows a furnace to produce charcoal and automatically feed it back into the furnace as fuel. By placing one piece of charcoal (or any other fuel) in the chest to initiate the process, players can sustain the fuel supply indefinitely. If there are abundant wood resources, an additional chest can be placed on top of the upper hopper to accommodate more input. This design utilizes a comparator, requiring access to nether quartz.

All food recipes can be utilized in a furnace, smoker, or campfire. Additionally, food items can be cooked on a campfire, which doesn't require any fuel. Cooking an item on a campfire takes 30 seconds or 600 game ticks. Although it is faster than using a furnace when cooking at the maximum capacity of 4 items, it does not award any experience. However, it is slower compared to using a smoker.

Here are some food items along with their respective ingredients, experience points, and descriptions:

Cooked Porkchop

• Ingredient: Raw Porkchop

• Experience: 0.35

• Description: Fills 8 hunger points, whereas raw porkchop only fills 3 hunger points

Steak

• Ingredient: Raw Beef

• Experience: 0.35

• Description: Fills 8 hunger points, whereas raw beef only fills 3 hunger points.

Cooked Chicken

• Ingredient: Raw Chicken

• Experience: 0.35

• Description: Fills 6 hunger points, whereas raw chicken only fills 2 hunger points. It also has a 30% chance of giving the Hunger status effect.

Cooked Cod

• Ingredient: Raw Cod

• Experience: 0.35

• Description: Fills 5 hunger points whereas raw cod only fills 2 hunger points.

Cooked Salmon

• Ingredient: Raw Salmon

• Experience: 0.35

• Description: Fills 6 hunger points, whereas raw salmon only fills 2 hunger points.

Baked Potato

• Ingredient: Potato

• Experience: 0.35

• Description: Fills 5 hunger points whereas a raw potato only fills 1 hunger point.

Cooked Mutton

• Ingredient: Raw Mutton

• Experience: 0.35

• Description: Fills 6 hunger points, whereas raw mutton only fills 2 hunger points.

Cooked Rabbit

• Ingredient: Raw Rabbit

• Experience: 0.35

• Description: Fills 5 hunger points, whereas raw rabbit only fills 3 hunger points.

Dried Kelp

• Ingredient: Kelp

• Experience: 0.1

• Description: Fills 1 hunger point (whereas uncooked kelp is inedible. It is commonly used to craft dried kelp blocks.

All ore recipes can be used in a furnace or blast furnace. Here are the different ores along with their respective ingredients, experience points, and descriptions:

Copper Ingot

• Ingredient: Raw Copper

• Experience: 0.7

• Description: Used to craft various items, including spyglasses, lightning rods, and copper blocks.

Iron Ingot

• Ingredient: Raw Iron

• Experience: 0.7

• Description: Used to craft various items, including blast furnaces, anvils, iron blocks, iron nuggets, rails, buckets, cauldrons, chains, compasses, crossbows, flint and steels, heavy weighted pressure plates, hoppers, iron trapdoors, minecarts, pistons, shears, shields, iron armor, iron tools, stonecutters, and tripwire hooks.

Gold Ingot

• Ingredient: Raw Gold

• Experience: 1

• Description: Used to craft various items, including netherite ingots, gold blocks, golden apples, gold nuggets, clocks, golden armor, golden tools, powered rails, and light weighted pressure plates. It is also used as a currency for bartering.

Gold Ingot (Nether)

• Ingredient: Nether Gold Ore

• Experience: 1

• Description: Used to craft various items and as a currency for bartering with piglins. Nether gold ore can only be obtained by mining it with a Silk Touch pickaxe.

Netherite Scrap

• Ingredient: Ancient Debris

• Experience: 2

• Description: Used to craft netherite ingots, which can be used to upgrade diamond gear and craft netherite blocks, as well as lodestones.

The following ores can also be smelted, although it is more efficient to mine them with the appropriate pickaxe. Mining them saves fuel, and yields more product and experience, especially if the pickaxe has a Fortune enchantment. However, smelting allows for obtaining them from an automatic device. The ore blocks themselves can only be obtained with the Silk Touch enchantment:

Copper Ingot (Copper Ore)

• Ingredient: Copper Ore

• Experience: 0.7

• Description: Used to craft various items.

Diamond

• Ingredient: Diamond Ore

• Experience: 1

• Description: Used to craft various items, including enchanting tables, jukeboxes, and diamond blocks. When mined, it normally drops 1 diamond and can yield 3–7 diamonds with the Fortune enchantment.

Gold Ingot (Gold Ore)

• Ingredient: Gold Ore

• Experience: 1

• Description: Used to craft various items and as a currency for bartering with piglins.

Iron Ingot (Iron Ore)

• Ingredient: Iron Ore

• Experience: 0.7

• Description: Used to craft various items.

Lapis Lazuli

• Ingredient: Lapis Lazuli Ore

• Experience: 0.2

• Description: Used for enchanting and crafting blue dyes and lapis lazuli blocks. When mined, it normally drops 4–8 lapis lazuli.

Redstone Dust

• Ingredient: Redstone Ore

• Experience: 0.3

• Description: Used to craft various items, redstone blocks, and as redstone wire. When mined, it normally drops 4–5 redstone.

Coal

• Ingredient: Coal Ore

• Experience: 0.1

• Description: Used as a fuel and to craft torches, campfires, and coal blocks. When mined, it normally drops 1 coal and can yield 0–2 additional coal with the Fortune enchantment.

Emerald

• Ingredient: Emerald Ore

• Experience: 1

• Description: Used for trading and to craft emerald blocks. When mined, it normally drops 1 emerald and can yield 3–7 emeralds with the Fortune enchantment.

Nether Quartz

• Ingredient: Nether Quartz Ore

• Experience: 0.2

• Description: Used to craft various items and quartz blocks. When mined, it normally drops 1 nether quartz and can yield 2–5 nether quartz with the Fortune enchantment.

These recipes can be used in a furnace or blast furnace to recycle unneeded gear such as tools, weapons, armor, and horse armor. Here are the gear recycling recipes:

Iron Nugget

• Ingredient: Tools, armor, and horse armor made from iron, chainmail armor

• Experience: 0.1

• Description: Can be crafted into lanterns, chains, or iron ingots.

Gold Nugget

• Ingredient: Tools, armor, and horse armor made from gold

• Experience: 0.1

• Description: Can be crafted into golden carrots, glistering melons, or gold ingots.

By smelting these unneeded gear items, you can obtain iron or gold nuggets, which can then be used for crafting various other items. Recycling gear in this way allows you to repurpose the materials and gain a small amount of experience in the process.

These recipes can only be used in a furnace. Here are the exclusive furnace recipes:

Glass

• Ingredient: Sand

• Experience: 0.1

• Description: Used to make transparent structures. Also used to craft glass panes, glass bottles, stained glass, end crystals, daylight detectors, and beacons.

Stone

• Ingredient: Cobblestone

• Experience: 0.1

• Description: Used as a building material. Also used for crafting stone pressure plates, stone buttons, stone bricks, grindstones, stonecutters, redstone repeaters and comparators. Can be smelted into smooth stone.

Smooth Sandstone

• Ingredient: Sandstone

• Experience: 0.1

• Description: Used as a building material. Also used for crafting smooth sandstone slabs and stairs.

Smooth Red Sandstone

• Ingredient: Red Sandstone

• Experience: 0.1

• Description: Used as a building material. Also used for crafting smooth red sandstone slabs and stairs.

Smooth Stone

• Ingredient: Stone

• Experience: 0.1

• Description: Used as a building material. Also used for crafting smooth stone slabs, armor stands, and blast furnaces.

Smooth Quartz

• Ingredient: Block of Quartz

• Experience: 0.1

• Description: Used as a building material. Also used for crafting smooth quartz slabs and stairs.

Brick

• Ingredient: Clay Ball

• Experience: 0.3

• Description: Used to make bricks and flower pots.

Nether Brick

• Ingredient: Netherrack

• Experience: 0.1

• Description: Used to make nether bricks, nether brick fences, and red nether bricks.

Cracked Nether Bricks

• Ingredient: Nether Bricks

• Experience: 0.1

• Description: Decoration block.

Smooth Basalt

• Ingredient: Basalt

• Experience: 0.1

• Description: Decoration block.

Terracotta

• Ingredient: Clay

• Experience: 0.35

• Description: Decoration block. Also used for crafting dyed terracotta. Can be smelted into glazed terracotta.

Cracked Stone Bricks

• Ingredient: Stone Bricks

• Experience: 0.1

• Description: Decoration block.

Cracked Polished Blackstone Bricks

• Ingredient: Polished Blackstone Bricks

• Experience: 0.1

• Description: Decoration block.

Deepslate

• Ingredient: Cobbled Deepslate

• Experience: 0.1

• Description: Decoration block.

Cracked Deepslate Bricks:

• Ingredient: Deepslate Bricks

• Experience: 0.1

• Description: Decoration block.

Cracked Deepslate Tiles

• Ingredient: Deepslate Tiles

• Experience: 0.1

• Description: Decoration block.

Glazed Terracotta

• Ingredient: Dyed Terracotta

• Experience: 0.1

• Description: Decoration block. Can be pushed by pistons but does not stick.

Green Dye

• Ingredient: Cactus

• Experience: 1 (JE) / 0.2 (BE)

• Description: Used as a dye.

Charcoal

• Ingredient: Log, Stripped Log, Wood, or Stripped Wood

• Experience: 0.15

• Description: Used to craft torches, soul torches, campfires and fire charges, and as fuel for smelting or for a minecart with furnace. Input must be an Overworld log or wood, not sticks, planks, or stems.

Popped Chorus Fruit

• Ingredient: Chorus Fruit

• Experience: 0.1

• Description: Used to make purpur blocks and end rods. Cannot be eaten.

Sponge

• Ingredient: Wet Sponge

• Experience: 0.15

• Description: Used to soak up water. Drying a sponge allows it to be reused. If an empty bucket is in the fuel slot when smelting finishes, it becomes a water bucket. Wet sponges can also be instantly dried when placed in the Nether.

Lime Dye

• Ingredient: Sea Pickle

• Experience: 0.1

• Description: Used as a dye.

These furnace-exclusive recipes allow you to transform various materials into useful blocks and items for building, decoration, and crafting purposes. Smelting these ingredients in a furnace unlocks their potential and provides experience points in the process.

Here is a list of fuels that can be used in furnaces in Minecraft, along with their burning time and other details:

Lava Bucket

• Burning Time: 1000 seconds

• Number of Operations per Fuel: 100

• Number of Operations per Stack (64) of Fuel: 100

Notes: If a lava bucket is used as fuel, an empty bucket remains in the fuel slot.

Block of Coal

• Burning Time: 800 seconds

• Number of Operations per Fuel: 80

• Number of Operations per Stack (64) of Fuel: 5120

Dried Kelp Block

• Burning Time: 200 seconds

• Number of Operations per Fuel: 20

• Number of Operations per Stack (64) of Fuel: 1280

Blaze Rod

• Burning Time: 120 seconds

• Number of Operations per Fuel: 12

• Number of Operations per Stack (64) of Fuel: 768

Coal

• Burning Time: 80 seconds

• Number of Operations per Fuel: 8

• Number of Operations per Stack (64) of Fuel: 512

Charcoal

• Burning Time: 80 seconds

• Number of Operations per Fuel: 8

• Number of Operations per Stack (64) of Fuel: 512

Notes: Charcoal can also be used as a dye.

Any Boat (Java Edition only)

• Burning Time: 60 seconds

• Number of Operations per Fuel: 6

• Number of Operations per Stack (64) of Fuel: 6

Notes: Any type of boat can be used as fuel.

Any Boat with Chest (Java Edition only)

• Burning Time: 60 seconds

• Number of Operations per Fuel: 6

• Number of Operations per Stack (64) of Fuel: 6

Scaffolding

• Burning Time: 2.5 seconds

• Number of Operations per Fuel: 0.25

• Number of Operations per Stack (64) of Fuel: 16

Hanging Sign

• Burning Time: 10 seconds

• Number of Operations per Fuel: 1

• Number of Operations per Stack (64) of Fuel: 16

Bamboo Mosaic

• Burning Time: 15 seconds

• Number of Operations per Fuel: 1.5

• Number of Operations per Stack (64) of Fuel: 96

These are just a few examples of the fuels that can be used in furnaces in Minecraft. The burning time and number of operations per fuel may vary for different versions or mods of the game.

Automating the smelting process using hoppers can greatly streamline your furnace operation in Minecraft. Here's how you can set up an automated furnace system using hoppers:

• Place a furnace on the ground or any solid surface.

• Put a hopper on top of the furnace. This hopper will be used to input the items to be smelted.

• If you want to use fuel like coal or blaze rods, place another hopper on the side of the furnace. This hopper will supply fuel to the furnace.

• For lava buckets, you can skip this step as the empty buckets will come out of the bottom hopper.

• Place a chest or another container on top of the hopper that will supply items to be smelted. This chest will act as the input storage.

• If you have a third hopper for fuel, place a chest or container on top of it to store the fuel.

• If you want to automate the collection of smelted items, place a hopper underneath the furnace. This hopper will collect the output items.

• Connect the hoppers by right-clicking on them while holding shift, starting from the input storage chest and ending at the output hopper.

• Ensure that the hopper beneath the furnace is connected to a chest or any other storage system where you want the smelted items to go.

• Finally, fill the input storage chest with the items you want to smelt and the fuel storage chest with the desired fuel.

• With this setup, the items in the input storage chest will be automatically fed into the furnace, and the fuel (if using a separate hopper) will be supplied as well. As the items smelt, the resulting products will be collected in the output hopper below the furnace.

It's important to note that when using hoppers or minecarts with hoppers to remove items from the furnace, any experience gained from the smelting process is saved within the furnace. The experience is awarded to the next player who manually removes an item from the furnace's output slot, in addition to the experience gained from removing the item itself.

This automation setup allows you to continuously smelt items without manual intervention and ensures that no items or experiences are lost during the process.