Steel plate — Factorio Production Calculator
Steel plate is crafted in the furnace in 16 seconds, producing 1 per craft from 5 × Iron plate. At 60 per minute you need 16 furnaces, and the chain behind it draws on 1 raw resources: iron ore.
Production chain for 60 Steel plate / minute
| Item | Per minute | Machines | Machine |
|---|---|---|---|
| Iron plate | 300 | 16 | Furnace |
| Steel plate | 60 | 16 | Furnace |
Raw materials
| Resource | Per minute |
|---|---|
| Iron ore | 300 |
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 plate recipe
| Machine | Crafting time | Output | Ingredients |
|---|---|---|---|
| Furnace | 16 s | 1 | Iron plate × 5 |
What the whole chain needs
60 steel plates per minute pulls in 1 intermediate product, and the whole tree comes to 32 machines across 1 machine type, 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 300 per minute, which is 0.33 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 plate
58 base-game recipes consume steel plate, sorted by how much each one takes:
- Rocket silo — 1000 per craft
- Nuclear reactor — 500 per craft
- Artillery turret — 60 per craft
- Centrifuge — 50 per craft
- Heavy armor — 50 per craft
- Modular armor — 50 per craft
- Tank — 50 per craft
- Roboport — 45 per craft
- Artillery wagon — 40 per craft
- Power armor — 40 per craft
- Flamethrower turret — 30 per craft
- Locomotive — 30 per craft
- Cargo wagon — 20 per craft
- Discharge defense — 20 per craft
- Exoskeleton — 20 per craft
- Laser turret — 20 per craft
- Personal roboport — 20 per craft
- Fluid wagon — 16 per craft
- Combat shotgun — 15 per craft
- Oil refinery — 15 per craft
…and 38 more, mostly buildings and equipment that use one or two each.
What steel plate is made from
- Iron plate — 5 per craft
FAQ
How many furnaces do I need for 60 steel plates per minute?
16 furnaces. One at standard speed produces 3.8 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 plate take?
At 60/min the chain consumes 300 iron ore per minute. Those numbers are the theoretical minimum — mining productivity research and productivity modules both reduce them.
Is steel plate needed for science packs?
Not directly. It feeds Rocket silo and Nuclear reactor, 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.