We can not craft any amount of terrasteel because the materials despawn before the process finishes.

We're on build r1.3-138.

Just ran into this issue as well. The book does mention that sparks will speed up the process, but the items despawning off the plate feels like more of a bug than a feature when you run into it in-game. Perhaps it would be worth re-wording the entry to warn about this, as I suspect that many users will expect that items added to the plate will not despawn, like with the Infusion Altar.

Vazkii, I concur with those above. If your book says "should use", then it suggests that the spreader method will work, albeit very slowly. I recommend you either cause the items the items to not despawn, or change the wording.

It clearly says in the book you should use sparks.

Well, while that is an issue, its generally because you don't have enough mana transfer to the plate lol. A friend of mine tried it and it despawned the first time. He then moved on to using sparks to transfer mana for making terrasteel.

the spark solved it.

But, its still annoying that we tried it 4-5 times and does not worked.