Steel chest — Factorio Production Calculator
Steel chest is crafted in the assembling machine in 0.5 seconds, producing 1 per craft from 8 × Steel plate. At 60 per minute you need 1 assembling machine, and the chain behind it draws on 1 raw resources: iron ore.
Production chain for 60 Steel chest / minute
| Item | Per minute | Machines | Machine |
|---|---|---|---|
| Iron plate | 2,400 | 128 | Furnace |
| Steel plate | 480 | 128 | Furnace |
| Steel chest | 60 | 1 | Assembling machine |
Raw materials
| Resource | Per minute |
|---|---|
| Iron ore | 2,400 |
Machine counts are not rounded up. Add a little headroom in game — belt throughput and inserter speed usually mean you want 5-10% more than the exact number.
Steel chest recipe
| Machine | Crafting time | Output | Ingredients |
|---|---|---|---|
| Assembling machine | 0.5 s | 1 | Steel plate × 8 |
What the whole chain needs
60 steel chests per minute pulls in 2 intermediate products, and the whole tree comes to 257 machines across 2 machine types, fed by 1 raw resource. The table above already sums demand across every branch — if copper cable is used by two recipes, you see the total, not one of them.
Belt check: the busiest input here moves 2,400 per minute, which is 2.67 of a yellow belt's 900 per minute. Above 1.0 and you need a second belt (or a faster tier) before the machines themselves become the limit.
What uses steel chest
5 base-game recipes consume steel chest, sorted by how much each one takes:
- Active provider chest — 1 per craft
- Buffer chest — 1 per craft
- Passive provider chest — 1 per craft
- Requester chest — 1 per craft
- Storage chest — 1 per craft
What steel chest is made from
- Steel plate — 8 per craft
FAQ
How many assembling machines do I need for 60 steel chests per minute?
1 assembling machine. One at standard speed produces 60 per minute, so 60 ÷ that number is the count. The calculator above rounds nothing — add 5-10% headroom for belt and inserter losses in a real factory.
How much raw ore does steel chest take?
At 60/min the chain consumes 2,400 iron ore per minute. Those numbers are the theoretical minimum — mining productivity research and productivity modules both reduce them.
Is steel chest needed for science packs?
Not directly. It feeds Active provider chest and Buffer chest, and those in turn feed the science packs. Open the science pack page to see the demand that lands on this recipe.
Machine counts assume bare machines at standard speed. Recipe data comes from the game's own prototypes (PlayerCalc, Factorio 2.0 base game). Not affiliated with Wube Software.