I've started the process for upsg all the different produ lio 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 produ of three gauges of steel wire to be used as a precursor for steel balls. That produ is being added onto the side of the existing steelworks casting area in the b pound. Adding oruder maes, irling eo support them, and the additional building spae 26 days. The ball presses are going to be made and automated in a new building in the b pound, but everything else is going to end up built at the dam, and the electro-separation facility is going to be pletely 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 stru 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 particur intermediate size of ball bearing for use and rept in our existing assemblies that use bearings. There are quite a few bearings being used in a few different locations, and while the bcksmiths keep up with their produ thanks to various mae assisted methods, I think it'd be better for us long term if we instead mass produce them with minimal effort.

  Designing a meically automated system to cut steel wire, move it to a die, press it into a ball, then move that ball to a grio remove deformities like burrs from them, all took quite a lot of time. From doing some model testing to building the final automated produ lines, I spent 97 days. Each line ends up produg about the same mass in pleted steel balls each hour, sihe the smaller balls take less meical energy to shape. The only work that any demon w here o do is bring in steel wire, feed it into an initial wire feed, and i pleted products for defects.

  We 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 rgest 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 rge ovens also powered by fluorite crystals to get the metal hot enough for queng.

  I khe 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 ihe walled in area. Until the b area have it's own above-ground crystal again, this is probably the extent of mana I pull from the air here. On a stagnant day, or a day where the wind blows in a liween any two of the major mana using buildings, we experiehe equivalent of a brown out, and produ 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 pnned produ line. When using these balls for milling, the balls that e out end up being quite a bit more polished than the ohat went in, and a rge part of that is that some of the minerals in basalt have a higher hardhan steel. So, for a ball bearing produ line, I io utilize the abrasive nature of the leftover crushed basalt in a final polishing step in a mae before the waste powder is dumped in the o.

  Since we added the aqueduct there is a signifitly rger 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 recyg a siderable amount of the water we use through multiple steps in my pnned 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 relocate aspects of the facility to the o instead, and use sea water, but that would be far more plicated of a process, as we'd need pumps.

  The first stage of this new stru was dismantling the old hydroelectric facility and draining the reservoir to allow for expansion and restru on the dam to aodate my pns for the new stru facility. Safely draining the reservoir took three months, leavih just under four months to build everything we'd need. There would normally be a rge 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 stru teams to work on the project, sihis will probably end up being one of the rare ces we get to make improvements, expansions, and ihe dam and we only have until spring to actually make those improvements. The first of the major ges 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 pnned. These were quite massive tubes that didn't actually drain water from directly o 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.

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

  In addition to the extra height, we're repg the old valves with multiple new valves. We're adding multiple redundant valves, along with emergency spillways, rge grates in multiple pces to prevent rge sticks and debris from building up, and other simir safety measures that were g 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 oute as if there wasn't a dam there. Now, if it were to fail, it'd be far more catastrophic, so it really does o have more of it's own safety measures installed.

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

  With the help of so many stru teams, we were able to get the necessary ges dowo months before spring. Afterwards, I had only oeam left to help build the actual processing facility. Regardless of how useful it would be to have stirling engines ruhing, it'd be a waste to not take advantage of the rge amount of water that we have access to to power maes when we already o use some of the water for a few steps in the process.

  The facility pn sists of multiple stages of produ. I decided to use the water power to drive the first stage which sists of rock crushers. I chose that, rather than having it power the eleags, sihe rock crushers are the pohat we will likely use the least, redug the demand on water overall. In a lot of ore processing situations, we were already crushing rocks in crushers before transp them, so I expect that trend will tinue.

  The sed stage are the twe ball mills. While a tinuous process would have a better throughput, for aion this size, we ck a lot of the necessary trol equipment to easily manage such a process, so everything is being done in batches. Each mill is a rge rotating der 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 frinding material, should be able to grind about 650 cubic feet of rock down at a time, and will run for 18 hours per batch.

  Ohe rock from e mill is ground down it will be straio 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 produ. Each of the small mills will have access to water to be sprayed into the tank before they're opened and simirly straio recover the balls.

  Then, it will be moved as a slurry to one of eight rge, ft, ical drying chambers which will have fluorite ptes installed to aid in evaporation of the water. Ohe water has been pletely evaporated, it will be released through a chute to be run passed aromago be separated into one of three lines: mage, unknown magic material, and non-magibsp; Extra care will be taken in designing the eleag area to allow as little dust escape as possible, so that our valuable meical pos aren't damaged, and that workers aren't harmed.

  After magic separations, all three kinds of dust will once agaited before sending them to their final destinations. Mage will be sent to be smelted into iron, the unknown magic will be stockpiled until I figure out what it is, and the non-magic material has two pnned destinations.

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

  A small amount of it though will be kept in some ste tanks. Specifically, I pn on making some k operated spreader maes that throw out the wetted dust so that farmers put it into our crop fields. We don't want to put too mu, 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 stant help from at least one stru 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 oeel balls would eat up a signifit amount of that iron produ, but given our separatiohod, most of it should be recovered and recycled.