The recipe you will actually run
Modular Frames are the first item in Satisfactory that forces you to split one ore line three ways. The default recipe unlocked at Tier 2 – Part Assembly is:
| Recipe | Inputs | Output | Machine | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Modular Frame (default) | 3 Reinforced Iron Plate (3/min) + 12 Iron Rod (12/min) | 2 Modular Frame (2/min) | Assembler | 60 s |
| Bolted Frame (alternate) | 3 Reinforced Iron Plate (7.5/min) + 56 Screws (140/min) | 2 Modular Frame (5/min) | Assembler | 24 s |
| Steeled Frame (alternate) | 2 Reinforced Iron Plate (2/min) + 10 Steel Pipe (10/min) | 3 Modular Frame (3/min) | Assembler | 60 s |
One Assembler on the default recipe consumes 3 Reinforced Iron Plates and 12 Iron Rods every minute and produces 2 Modular Frames per minute. You can also hand-craft at a Crafting Bench at 15 seconds per batch, but at 8 frames per minute of manual clicking it is only worth it for the very first batch you need to unlock a milestone.
Both alternates come from Hard Drive research: Bolted Frame after you have Tier 2 unlocked, Steeled Frame after Tier 3 – Basic Steel Production.
A complete 16/min line from raw ore
Here is the full machine count for 16 Modular Frames per minute, every number computed from the recipes above:
| Step | Rate needed | Machines | Inputs consumed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Modular Frame | 16/min | 8 Assemblers (2/min each) | 24 Reinforced Iron Plate + 96 Iron Rod |
| Reinforced Iron Plate | 24/min | 5 Assemblers (5/min each) | 144 Iron Plate + 288 Screws |
| Iron Plate | 144/min | 8 Constructors (20/min each) | 216 Iron Ingot |
| Screws | 288/min | 8 Constructors (40/min each) | 72 Iron Rod |
| Iron Rod | 168/min (96 + 72) | 12 Constructors (15/min each) | 168 Iron Ingot |
| Iron Ingot | 384/min | 13 Smelters (30/min each) | 384 Iron Ore |
That is 54 machines fed by a single 384/min iron ore belt. Two things jump out of the table, and both shape how you should build:
- Screws are a rod furnace. 288 screws per minute converts to 72 rods per minute on top of the 96 rods the frame Assemblers drink directly. Your rod line feeds two consumers, which is why it needs 12 Constructors — more than the frame step itself.
- The Reinforced Iron Plate step is the real bottleneck. 24 plates per minute sounds small until you notice each plate is 6 Iron Plates plus 12 Screws. The plate line and its screw line together outweigh the frame Assemblers by more than two to one.
If you only have one normal iron node nearby (120/min), it supports roughly 5 frames per minute — each frame costs 24 ore across the full chain. Scale the whole table proportionally instead of building 8 Assemblers and starving them.
The two alternates, and when each one wins
Bolted Frame is a speed trade. At 5 frames per minute per Assembler it is two and a half times faster than the default, and one Bolted Assembler replaces two and a half default ones. The cost is screws: 140 per minute per machine. Because Screws convert from Iron Rods at 4 screws per rod (one rod every 6 seconds), each Bolted frame quietly consumes 7 rods’ worth of iron per frame against the default’s 6. Bolted Frame wins when you want maximum frames from a small footprint and your screw supply has headroom — for example when you have already built a large screw line for Rotors. It loses when iron ore is your scarcest resource.
Steeled Frame is an iron trade. It produces 3 frames per minute from 2 Reinforced Iron Plates and 10 Steel Pipes. Per frame, that is 0.67 plates plus 3.33 pipes — the pipe half moves your cost onto the steel production line, where each Steel Ingot costs 1 Iron Ore plus 1 Coal in a Foundry. In ore terms Steeled Frame spends roughly 13 iron plus 5 coal per frame where the default spends about 24 iron — close to half. Once your coal and steel infrastructure exists, Steeled Frame is almost always the better default; the catch is that it needs a working steel line, which you will not have during early Tier 2.
The practical plan: run the default recipe for your first line, then swap Assemblers to Steeled Frame after Tier 3 and keep Bolted Frame for compact hard-drive-project lines.
Where the frames go
Modular Frames are a mid-game gateway item. Their heaviest consumer is the Heavy Modular Frame: the default recipe turns 5 Modular Frames plus other inputs into 1 Heavy Modular Frame every 30 seconds at a Manufacturer, and later Space Elevator phases demand both by the dozen.
They also appear in equipment and building recipes across the mid-game, and dissolving spare frames in the AWESOME Sink yields 408 points each — useful, but wasteful compared to sinking cheaper intermediates. The AWESOME Shop also sells a crate of 50 frames for 4 coupons if you need a bridge amount while rebuilding a line.
Common mistakes
- Under-building the rod line. New players size rod production for the frame Assemblers alone and forget screws eat rods too. Size rods for frames + screws combined.
- Feeding plates and rods from one unsplit belt. The frame Assembler needs both inputs every cycle; starve one belt and the machine idles at partial efficiency even though the ore is flowing.
- Chasing Bolted Frame too early. Before you have Tier 2 throughput on screws, Bolted Frame just relocates the bottleneck to your screw line.
- Hand-crafting past the first milestone. At 15 seconds per batch, manual crafting caps out far below any automated line; automate as soon as the Assembler is available.