The standard casing, in real numbers
Aluminum Casing is the cheapest item in the aluminum tier and the one that gates everything after it. The recipe is a single Constructor step unlocked at Tier 7 - Bauxite Refinement:
| Recipe | Machine | Cycle | Inputs (per craft) | Inputs (per min) | Output |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aluminum Casing (standard) | Constructor | 2 s | Aluminum Ingot 3 | 90 Ingot | 2 casings, 60/min |
| Alclad Casing (alternate) | Assembler | 8 s | Aluminum Ingot 20 + Copper Ingot 10 | 150 Ingot + 75 Copper Ingot | 15 casings, 112.5/min |
“Aluminum Casing: 3 Aluminum Ingot per craft, 2 s in a Constructor, 2 out, 60 per minute” — the row mirrored from the satisfactory.wiki.gg recipe table into
src/data/satisfactory-recipes.json.
60 casings per minute from one Constructor is the number that matters. It is one of the fastest solid-item recipes in the game — a 2-second cycle producing two items — and it means you almost never need more than a handful of machines. The bottleneck is never the Constructor; it is the ingot feed, and the ingot feed is the longest chain in the game.
Each casing costs 1.5 Aluminum Ingot. Multiply that by your target and you have the ingot requirement, which is the only number you need to design the bauxite base around.
Machine counts and the ingot bill
Because 60/min is such a clean rate, the table is trivial — but the ingot column is where the real planning happens:
| Target casings | Constructors | Aluminum Ingot needed | Foundries for that ingot (60/min each) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 60/min | 1 | 90/min | 2 (1.5 rounded up) |
| 120/min | 2 | 180/min | 3 |
| 240/min | 4 | 360/min | 6 |
| 480/min | 8 | 720/min | 12 |
| 1,000/min | 17 | 1,500/min | 25 |
The ingot step is the constraint. The cached Foundry recipe for Aluminum Ingot takes 6 Aluminum Scrap plus 5 Silica and returns 4 Aluminum Ingot in 4 seconds — 90 scrap and 75 silica per minute becoming 60 ingot per minute. So 240 casings per minute is not four Constructors, it is:
- 4 Constructors (60/min each)
- 6 Foundries (60/min each) feeding them 360 ingot per minute
- 540 Aluminum Scrap per minute and 450 Silica per minute into those Foundries
That is the shape of every aluminum build: a small, cheap final step sitting on top of a very large refining base. If you are sizing a bauxite outpost, work backwards from the casing target before you place a single refinery — the bauxite processing guide covers the front half of the chain.
Alclad Casing: less aluminum, more machines
The Alclad Casing alternate is the recipe most players sleep on. It runs in an Assembler, takes 8 seconds, and converts 20 Aluminum Ingot plus 10 Copper Ingot into 15 casings — 112.5 per minute.
Per casing that is 1.33 Aluminum Ingot plus 0.67 Copper Ingot, against 1.5 ingots and nothing else on the standard recipe. The trade is explicit:
| Metric | Standard | Alclad |
|---|---|---|
| Machine | Constructor | Assembler |
| Output per machine | 60/min | 112.5/min |
| Aluminum Ingot per casing | 1.5 | 1.33 |
| Copper Ingot per casing | 0 | 0.67 |
| Machines for 225 casings/min | 4 Constructors | 2 Assemblers |
Alclad cuts aluminum consumption by about 11% and nearly doubles output per machine, at the cost of a copper feed. It is the better recipe whenever your bauxite is the scarce input and copper is not — which is most maps, most of the time, because copper nodes are common and bauxite is not.
Do the arithmetic before you commit. At 225 casings per minute, standard needs 337.5 ingot per minute (5.6 Foundries); Alclad needs 300 ingot plus 150 copper ingot per minute (5 Foundries plus a copper smelter line). You save roughly 0.6 of a Foundry and the scrap and silica behind it, and you spend a copper line. On a big aluminum base that saving compounds; on a small one it is not worth the extra belt.
Where the casings go
Casing demand arrives in a rush at Tier 7 and Tier 8. The cached consumption table, sorted by draw:
| Consumer | Casings per min | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Radio Control System (alternate) | 90 | 60 per craft, 4.5 units/min |
| Fused Modular Frame (standard) | 75 | 50 per craft, 1.5/min |
| Radio Control Unit (standard) | 40 | 32 per craft, 2.5/min |
| Heat Exchanger (alternate) | 30 | 30/min alongside 30 Rubber |
| Battery (standard) | 20 | 1 per craft, 20/min |
| Turbo Rifle Ammo | 15 | ammunition |
| Instant Plutonium Cell (alternate) | 10 | 10/min |
| Iodine-Infused Filter (alternate) | 3.75 | filter alternate |
Two consumers dominate. A single Fused Modular Frame Blender eats 75 casings per minute — more than one full Constructor — and the Radio Control Unit Manufacturer takes 40 casings per minute per machine. Run one of each and you are already at 115 casings per minute, which is two Constructors and 172.5 ingot per minute before you have built anything else.
The Battery line is the quiet one: 20 casings per minute for a 20/min output, a clean one-to-one ratio that makes battery banks easy to size.
Practical layout for an aluminum block
- Build the Foundry row first, casings last. Six Foundries for a 240/min casing line is the normal ratio. Placing the casings first leads to a line that runs at 20% for an hour while you retrofit the ingot supply.
- Feed silica from a dedicated Constructor bank. 75 silica per minute per Foundry at the standard ingot recipe, and silica comes from Raw Quartz at 37.5 per minute per Constructor — see the silica guide for the conversion.
- Keep the casing Constructors close to the consumer. Casings are cheap and fast, so a short belt costs nothing; a long one just adds latency between the Foundry and the parts line.
- Sink the surplus at 393 points. Casings are worth 393 points each at the AWESOME Sink, which is a reasonable overflow for a base that has outrun its parts demand — far better than letting the Foundries back up and stall the whole bauxite chain.
If you are still deciding which alternates to keep, the alternate recipe guide explains how Alclad Casing drops — it requires Tier 7 - Bauxite Refinement as a prerequisite, so it cannot appear in an early Hard Drive scan.