Helve hammer

The Helve hammer is a mechanism used to automatically refine iron blooms and blister steel into their respective ingots , and smith any type of metal ingot into metal plates .

Creation

A helve hammer requires 3 components to construct: the helve hammer base, the helve hammer itself, and a wooden toggle. Additionally, an anvil and a source of mechanical power are required to operate the hammer. Optionally, a brake or a transmission & clutch setup can be used to stop the helve hammer when not in use.

Helve hammer

The raw material used to create the tool head determines the crafting process required:

• Casting (200 units): Bronze alloy
• Smithing (2 ingots): Iron, Bronze alloy

Unlike other hammers, the helve hammer has no durability, so the material used to make the head has no effect on smithing. Possible metals for the helve hammer head include the following:

Material
Tin Bronze
Bismuth Bronze
Black Bronze
Iron
Meteoric Iron
Steel

After creating the tool head, the helve hammer needs to be assembled in the crafting grid:

Ingredients	Crafting Recipe
1x Helve hammer head 8x Board

Helve hammer base & toggle

The helve hammer base holds the helve hammer, while the toggle connects the hammer arm to the power train.

Ingredients	Crafting Recipe
Base: 1x Hammer 1x Chisel 3x Board 1x Resin

Ingredients	Crafting Recipe
Toggle: 1x Hammer 1x Chisel 8x Board 1x Wooden axle 4x Resin 1x Fat

Usage

See also Mechanical Power

The helve hammer is used for automated smithing . It can only be used to:

• Process iron blooms into ingots,
• Process blister steel into steel, and
• Produce metal plates from metal ingots.

Note: Sometimes an iron bloom doesn't have enough voxels of metal to complete an ingot. Helve hammers will "repair" iron blooms that are missing voxels, whether due to user error or this quirk of insufficient metal. This is true only of iron blooms; a helve hammer can only complete a metal plate if 2 hot ingots are added and no more than three voxels of metal are removed.

Manual Operation

The helve hammer cannot be used without mechanical power, nor can it substitute for the hammer in grid crafting. There's little risk involved in adding your own efforts with a normal hammer while a helve hammer is at work. For example: while it's knocking slag off an iron bloom, you can hit other slag voxels.

Automated Operation

Helve hammers require mechanical power to run properly, and to use them consistently you need a robust power train . Using a windmill with a full complement of sails, the helve hammer will function, albeit slowly, at wind speeds as low as 30%. To make it faster, you can add additional windmills to the power train or move it to a higher elevation.

A minimal helve hammer setup

• Power Input: The helve hammer must be powered by connecting the incoming axle on the left or right of the toggle and cannot be powered by connecting the axle to the top or bottom of the machine.

1. Attach the toggle to a power train. It can be attached directly to a windmill rotor for the simplest and cheapest setup.
2. Place the helve hammer base against the toggle
3. Right click on the base while holding a helve hammer to install the helve hammer. The hammer arm should rest on the toggle. If it is facing the wrong direction then rotate the base.
4. Place an anvil under the hammer head.

• Material Input: Blooms or ingots need to be placed by hand on top of an anvil placed under the helve hammer's head. They need to be heated to the appropriate temperature, just as if smithing by hand - however, with high wind power, the helve hammer will potentially take less time then manual smithing would.
• Material Output: Processed items will simply fall off the anvil after they are finished. Since there is no way to automate the Input, there is no profit in automating the Output, as is possible for instance for the quern .

Technical Details

On each stroke, the helve hammer does the following:

1. Rotate the "blueprint" for the work item to its default rotation. (This means that manually rotating the work item can cause voxels to become out of place.)
2. Search for out-of-place voxels on the work item (either extraneous or missing) in order of top-to-bottom, then north-to-south, then west-to-east.
3. If it is a missing voxel and the work item is not a metal plate, fill it. (This can generate new material.)
4. If it is an extraneous voxel, destroy it.
   1. If the extraneous voxel is not slag, search for missing voxels in order of bottom-to-top, then north-to-south, then west-to-east.
   2. If a missing voxel is found, fill it.

Due to the above, when "assisting" the helve hammer with manual hammering, it is generally most effective to first remove any slag starting from the northwest corner of the top layer. Additionally, avoid rotating the work item to prevent duplicate work.

Combat

While the helve hammer has a 3m attack range, it has no attack power stat and is generally ineffective in combat. It is somewhat useful as a defensive weapon against melee enemies, as it has no wind-up or cooldown on attacks, making it easy to keep attackers at a distance.

Storage

Unlike other tools, the helve hammer cannot be placed on a tool rack . Helve hammers do not stack in inventory or when placed in containers.

See also

• Mechanical power
• Smithing
• Metal plates

Gallery

Fully assembled helve hammer with optional transmission, clutch and brake