A reliable Stationeers furnace run is not a memorized ice recipe. It is a live match between one valid reagent recipe, its temperature window, its pressure window, and the output name shown by the Furnace. Read those values in Stationpedia before ignition, make one controlled change at a time, and pull the lever only when the intended ingot is named.
This guide was rechecked on August 7, 2026 against the public Steam branch through the Sanitation Update, version 0.2.6403.27689. Stationeers is still in Early Access. The March 2026 Gases Update renamed Volatiles to Methane and made combustion specific to each fuel-and-oxidizer pairing, so old fixed ice counts, fuel ratios, alloy windows, and copied scripts are not numeric authorities for the current client.
Before ignition, freeze the recipe and gas plan
Open the Stationpedia entry for the ingot you intend to make. Record the ingredient proportions and both ends of its temperature and pressure ranges. Then open the pages for the fuel and oxidizer you plan to use. Their current Combustion Info panels show the relationship, auto-ignition behavior, and products for that pairing. A legacy guide that says “Volatiles” can reveal an old method, but replacing that word with “Methane” does not update the method’s numbers.
Separate four questions before touching the Furnace:
- What is loaded? The reagent proportions must describe the intended ingot. Extra ore cannot repair a missing ingredient, and leftovers from a previous batch can change the recognized recipe.
- What will burn? Name the fuel and oxidizer and verify their current relationship. An unlabeled tank or an unanalyzed shared pipe is an unknown input.
- Where can the chamber go? Know which line adds gas and which route can recover or remove it. Do not discover the exhaust destination after pressure has already overshot.
- What proves success? The live temperature and pressure must overlap the Stationpedia window while the Furnace preview names the target output.
Plumb the basic Furnace while it is empty. Gas enters through the inlet; the other gas connection permits flow in either direction, while condensed material leaves through a separate liquid port. The device also exchanges heat with the surrounding atmosphere. Put it outside, in a managed industrial room, or in an enclosure whose heat and exhaust you are prepared to control. Give the gas output a valve, pump, or storage destination instead of an open stub, and make sure the liquid route is not capped by a full or frozen downstream network.
Loose ice is acceptable for a first manual run, but it is a coarse input. A cold Furnace may hold a solid chunk in the input slot instead of melting it. Press the front control once for each remaining chunk that needs forced melting; a blocked slot at this stage is an input-state problem, not proof that the alloy recipe is wrong.
Commission steel with the basic Furnace
Use one modest steel batch to commission the bay. The purpose is not maximum yield. It is to prove that the recipe, combustible atmosphere, chamber response, output preview, and exhaust route all work in the same run.
- Start from a known chamber. Analyze or clear leftovers, close any outlet that would silently drain the test, and verify that the recovery line has somewhere safe to send gas.
- Prepare the exact current recipe. Split the ingredients to the proportions shown in your Stationpedia. Do not scale an old community fuel count with the ore batch.
- Introduce only the verified fuel pair. With either ice or prepared gas, keep the first charge small enough that you can observe its completed reaction before adding more.
- Let the chamber answer. After ignition and ingredient loading, wait for the temperature and pressure trend to settle. Ore processing and gas movement can change both gauges, so an instant reading is not the final state.
- Read the output, not just the color. Hover the Furnace. Eject only when the preview names steel and both live values are inside the current steel window.
- Close the loop. Route the remaining atmosphere to known storage or a safe exhaust, then note the starting chamber, the input you added, and the state at which steel became valid.
If the gauges enter the expected window but the preview names nothing useful, stop changing temperature and pressure. Recheck the ingredient ratio, material form, and leftovers. Chamber conditions cannot turn an invalid reagent load into steel.
If the lever produces Reagent Mix, the materials are not automatically lost. A mixture whose ingredients describe a valid recipe can be reheated after the chamber is corrected. Use a Centrifuge when you need the raw ores back. Do not add a second recipe on top of the failed batch; that removes the clearest evidence of what went wrong.
Correct the chamber from its temperature-pressure position
Temperature and pressure are coupled, but they are not interchangeable. Fuel can add energy and matter. Adding gas changes pressure and may heat or cool the chamber. Removing gas also exports some of the chamber’s energy. Make one small change, wait for the new trend, and compare the result with both edges of the target window.
| Live chamber state | What to stop doing | Controlled next move |
|---|---|---|
| Temperature and pressure are both below the window | Do not change the reagent ratio to solve a missing chamber state. | Add one measured pulse of the verified combustible mix or a planned hot-gas input, then wait for the response before repeating it. |
| Temperature is low but pressure is already high | Stop feeding loose ice or cold gas; it can increase pressure without giving you the needed temperature. | Isolate the inlet. Recover a small amount of chamber gas, reduce the batch, or reset with a known hotter input. Recheck temperature after every removal. |
| Temperature is high but pressure is low | Do not light another uncontrolled burn just to raise pressure. | Pause and let temperature approach the window. Change pressure only with a known gas that belongs in the current plan; if you cannot name that gas, cool and reset. |
| Temperature and pressure are both above the window | Adding fuel, ore, or pressurant is not a correction. | Close the inlet, route gas to a controlled recovery line, and let the system cool. Keep clear until the chamber is back inside the current device limits. |
| Both gauges are valid, but the output name is wrong | Stop adjusting the atmosphere. | Audit the loaded reagents and clear contamination from the previous batch. Recover Reagent Mix rather than burying the mistake under more material. |
When a valid window flashes past faster than you can use it, the problem is control resolution. Move from loose ice to a prepared canister or tank so fuel production is separated from smelting. Analyze the tank and the line; pressure alone does not describe an identical gas quantity at every temperature. Only add separate hot, cold, fuel, or pressurant storage when each line solves a named part of the correction. More pipes also create more residual gas, heat loss, and possible liquid blockage.
The March combustion rewrite makes this progression more important. Combustion is data-driven for each fuel and oxidizer, and the March 26 hotfix corrected complex mixtures that had only partially burned. Recheck the live Combustion Info panels after an update instead of preserving an old mixer setting because it worked in a previous save.
Move the proven cycle into an Advanced Furnace
The Advanced Furnace is useful when the alloy window needs finer gas control. Its powered inlet and outlet pumps let you approach pressure in smaller steps, and its data network exposes states such as pressure, temperature, recipe, reagent quantity, total moles, combustion, error, power, and pump settings. Those controls do not repair an unknown fuel tank or a wrong reagent load.
Commission the Advanced Furnace manually before writing IC10:
- Connect power, known inlet and recovery networks, and a usable liquid route. Set both pumps to zero.
- Analyze the chamber or empty it. Load one small, exact recipe from the current Stationpedia entry.
- Feed a measured amount of the planned gas. Stop the inlet, let combustion finish if it is part of the method, and observe the complete temperature-pressure response.
- Trim with short inlet or outlet movements. Wait after each movement; do not alternate the pumps faster than the gauges can show the result.
- Export only when the live recipe state names the intended alloy and both conditions overlap its current window.
- Repeat the same small batch from the recorded starting state before scaling the load.
Automation should enforce the successful manual run, not search for one. At minimum, make the controller obey three hard interlocks:
- The inlet stays at zero when the recipe is unknown, the device reports an error, or the chamber is approaching the current pressure limit.
- Output is allowed only while the intended recipe identity and both live condition checks are valid.
- An unexpected state stops both pumps and raises an alarm. It must not “fix” the batch by adding random fuel or ejecting an unnamed output.
Keep recipe windows and fuel rules in one editable section of the controller and label it with the client build used to verify them. After a Stationeers update, rerun the small steel batch before trusting an advanced-alloy queue. That regression run tells you whether the physical chamber still reaches the same valid state before a larger batch consumes more material.
The furnace cycle is complete when the intended output is named, the current temperature and pressure checks are simultaneously valid, and you can repeat the small batch from a known starting chamber. If any one of those is missing, preserve the batch as Reagent Mix or recover it, correct the specific missing state, and retry without changing the other variables.
Sources and build check
Game identity, Early Access status, the public build boundary, and the 2026 combustion changes were checked against the official Stationeers Steam page and its official announcement feed. Durable device behavior was cross-checked against the community wiki pages for the Furnace, Advanced Furnace, and fuel handling. Their legacy numeric tables were not used.