So I have worked around the three furnaces at Tech Cominco for a month now. I understand how the electrodes create so much heat that the ore forms a pool of liquid 4' deep and as wide and as long as a house. This pool of molten lead forms a coating on top much the same as on your chocolate pudding with the slag off the top running into the slag fuming furnaces and the hot liquid lead on the bottom running into the CDF (Continuous Drossing Furnace), again with the top skin being taken off there. From there it runs like rivers into large molds which are trucked far and wide. I get that, but after a month and as I near the end of the job, it occurred to me that I had no idea where or how the ore gets into the furnace. So adventuring I did go tonight and (as I warmed myself) on top of the reaction shaft roof, I found what was I was looking for marked "Feed". So then, floor by floor, conveyer by conveyer and hopper by hopper, I climbed the stairs to floor 18 until I figured it out. It wasn't until the general caution signs turned to Warnings and Do Not Enter signs that I stopped. Actually it was the one that said "Radio Active: You should be dead by now" that finally turned me around. My conclusion: the ore comes from a big conveyer way up in the sky.
