Machine Heat

All Terumetal mod machinery runs on heat energy as shown by a meter with a flame icon.

Early and simple machines have a fuel slot in the upper-left for providing heat to them directly. Only two items in the Minetest world currently can give enough direct heat for powering machinery:

• Buckets of Lava
• Heated Thermese Blocks

Buckets of lava are fairly self-explanatory; they will provide a large boost to heat and return the empty bucket at the cost of losing the lava.

Heated thermese blocks are a renewable source of heat, but are a bit slower because they provide less heat than lava itself. When used as a heat source in a machine, the Thermese Block drained of its heat is returned.

External Heaters

External heaters are necessary for more advanced machinery as they do not have the space to spare for fuel-using machinery themselves. On the plus side, machines that are created solely for the purpose of generating heat are more efficient at doing so.

All heaters are capable of transferring their own heat to adjacent heat machines and will do so automatically. If multiple eligible machines are adjacent, the heat they transfer each tick will be shared evenly. This will happen unless adjacent heat transfer is deactivated specifically by the transfer button on the Heater's UI or on the target machine's UI.

The three External Heaters are as follows:

• Tier 1: Furnace Heater - Generates heat from any furnace fuel
• Tier 2: Solar Heater - Generates heat from sunlight
• Tier 3: EEE Heater - Generates heat by leeching from the surrounding environment (blocks)

Heat Storage and Distribution

Once Tier 2 or Tier 3 machinery are within your grasp, it is likely you have many machines and the capacity to generate great amounts of heat energy as necessary.

The simplest way to distribute heat via adjacent connections are the Thermobox and Thermal Distributor. The Thermobox also acts as a high-capacity battery for heat storage.

The next level of heat distribution is over Heatlines, controlled by a Heatline Distributor. This allows short and medium range transfer of heat quickly and efficiently.

The most expensive and long-distance way to transfer heat is via the HEAT Ray Emitter and HEAT Ray Reflectors which can send large amounts of heat energy through the air to a machine at the destination of its ray.