People often use the terms "melting" and "smelting" interchangeably. Melting is the process of turning solid metals into liquid form for molding. Smelting is when you convert metal ore into its purest form. The easiest way to look at is by considering the mining process. Miners collect gold ore and smelt it to collect the metal for use in jewelry and electronics. Melting is recycling and reforming metal that has already been refined from ore. Smelting requires higher temperatures as well. This is because you must extract the pure gold from the ore.