Friction Heater

The Friction Heater is a RotaryCraft machine that consumes Shaft Power to increase the temperature of an adjacent machine. It can also be used to power a standard Furnace without consuming standard fuel.

Usage
When a Friction Heater is placed facing a RotaryCraft machine and given power, it will quickly and significantly increase the temperature of that machine, if the machine has a temperature value relevant to its function. This is most commonly important to the Blast Furnace.

The other primary use of the Friction Heater is to heat and power a conventional Furnace. A Furnace heated by a Friction Heater will not consume fuel and will operate significantly faster than it would normally. Additionally, a Furnace heated by a Friction Heater is the only way to smelt Tungsten Flakes into Sintered Tungsten Ingots, although this process requires a temperature of 1350C.

The Friction Heater can be operated with a simple Steam Engine and no Gearbox, however it can be operated significantly more effectively by using Gearboxes to make its input torque and speed equal. (A Steam Engine alone will heat a Furnace to 575C; if that Steam Engine's power is fed through a Gearbox to make its speed and torque equal, the Furnace will be heated to 625C. For a Blast Furnace, 570C will not smelt HSLA Steel Ingots, but 625C will.)

The temperature formula for the Friction Heater is 12*log2(torque)*log2(speed) + 30, rounded down to the nearest multiple of 4 modulo 2. A Furnace Heater must be able to reach a temperature of 300C in order to power a Furnace and a temperature greater than 500C in order to accelerate a Furnace. After exceeding 500C, the Furnace's working speed will be accelerated by a percentage equal to the square root of the temperature above 500C divided by 100.

At a temperature of 600C, the acceleration will be equal to sqrt((600-500)/100)*100% = sqrt(100/100)*100% = sqrt(1)*100% = 100%, double speed. At a temperature of 900, the acceleration will be equal to sqrt((900-500)/100)*100% = sqrt(400/100)*100% = sqrt(4)*100% = 200%, triple speed. The maximum possible speed-up before a Furnace will try to melt is therefore sqrt((1999-500)/100)*100% = sqrt(1499/100)*100% = sqrt(14.99)*100% = 387%, slightly below 5x normal speed, causing each smelting action to take 1.05 seconds, or 21 ticks.

Friction Heaters have only one notable danger to them, and that is that if they are over-powered, they can heat furnaces to the point at which they would melt down. This occurs at a temperature of 2000C.