Best use for smelted ores

[white_bear_84]

Hey guys, so im looking at trying out some new stuff on minecraft and not entirely where to start!

I was just looking at redpower as one of the first mods to try out (think we have it on server?) - I like the idea of being able to send objects through tubes long distance - saves having to run back up to my foundry while i am still mining!

Ideally it would be cool to mine materials, send them up to the foundry and have them processed straight away.. ..is this possible? e.g. Use a block breaker, transposer or filter to provide the ore, send up via tubing, exits tubing to furnace and automatically smelts...

Id be interested to hear what kind of operations you guys all have set up..

I have a heap of ore which is currently not doing alot - so i would like to start exploring uses for it

[white_bear_84]

Update - ok so i did some more research and understand buildcraft a bit better courtesty of their wiki.. ..so im understanding that what i can do is use wooden pipes to transport items and fuel to my furnaces - i can use one of the blocks to split where the contents travel (i think?) so i can send lava to the bottom slot of the furnace and ore to be smelted to the top, and engine powered wooden tube on the side should transport items out of the furnace and to my desired location..

[Obsi]

Yes it is possible.

I'm only very minimally into machines (compared to some people on the server) and I've had a few automated processes set up.

My old dig site I had a setup where the stuff coming from the quarry was filtered with diamond pipe - cobble was sent off into a double chest, which had pipes coming off each side, one leading to a macerator then a furnace, the other leading off to a furnace - both of those then piping into a storage chest. So all my cobble was being processed into either glass or refined stone.

I've also got a system where I can dump ore blocks into a chest, which feeds into a macerator, then into another chest, then into a furnace and out into a storage chest. I've yet to work out a system to allow me to put all ore blocks in at once, so at the moment I just dump in ore blocks of the one kind at a time.

The main thing to be aware of is that you may need to handle overflow or things may get backed up in pipes and drop to the floor (and you'll lose them if you're not there to pick them up - and they cause lag)

For example my rotary macerator processes an ore block into 2 dust faster than my electric furnace can smelt 1 dust into an ingot - so I have to feed the dust into a chest, and from there feed it into the furnace, with an overflow pipe so that if the furnace is full, the dust gets sent back to the chest. Some people use "gates" I believe to achieve this neatly. I've not yet worked out how to do that, so my temporary solution is a diamond pipe connected to the furnace, set to allow the dust into the furnace - because that channels the dust down into the furnace (because that's the direction dust is told to go) but if the furnace is full, then it will divert it along the other pipe, which goes back into the chest.

[D3lthar]

I always find youtube to be the best place to find tutorials on minecraft these days.

[white_bear_84]

Originally Posted by Obsi

My old dig site I had a setup where the stuff coming from the quarry was filtered with diamond pipe

For example my rotary macerator processes an ore block into 2 dust faster than my electric furnace can smelt 1 dust into an ingot - so I have to feed the dust into a chest, and from there feed it into the furnace, with an overflow pipe so that if the furnace is full, the dust gets sent back to the chest.

Yeah this sound good - from the looks of it you can use multiple diamond pipes to filter ores into various chests. Maybe you can send a signal back that a chest is full so that ore gets diverted or the system shuts down..

First though i need to find diamond!!

[Sorontar]

Also, make sure that the piping isn't too long. Long piping adds to the lag. Long piping can mean that the chunks at either end may not be loaded at the same time, depending how far you are transporting the materials.

While I am not an expert on piping, I believe that the AdditionalPipes mod helps minimise some of these problems by teleporting the pipe contents from one pipe to another.

As Obsi said, the speed of processing of engines needs to be considered, but also the speed of the pipes. Some pipe designs are faster than others.

Sorontar

[white_bear_84]

Originally Posted by Sorontar

Also, make sure that the piping isn't too long. Long piping adds to the lag. Long piping can mean that the chunks at either end may not be loaded at the same time, depending how far you are transporting the materials.

Will bear this in mind with the design. I currently have a vertical shaft under my plot, so will probably be shortest to just send it straight up.

In the mine itself i am probably going to stick with minecarts for transportation

[Obsi]

Using gold pipes speeds up the stuff traveling through it, so the less time stuff is in pipes, the less lag it causes. -- Something else to think about.

from the looks of it you can use multiple diamond pipes to filter ores into various chests.

Yup - the main problem is that a furnace will only burn one type of thing at a time, so it can happily start stacking up on iron dust and work on smelting that, but then if a copper dust gets to the furnace, it can't stack with the iron dusts so it would just stay in the pipe or need to be diverted elsewhere.

I could add extra furnaces to smelt the overflow, and/or divert each type of ore into a different furnace, but that would be extra machinery and extra diamond pipes that I don't want to waste. I find it easier to just work on a single ore at a time.

[white_bear_84]

Yeah good thinking. I currently have a workshop with 4 furnaces so i was thinking of having 4 diamond pipes to pick out particular ores and deposit the rest in a chest - if the tube to a 5th furnace is relatively short i.e. 1/2 in length then could you allow items to stack in the 2 sections without having much of an impact in lag? This way you essentially set up a queue for your furnace without queuing dozens of items... does that make sense??

[OranjeJus]

Whitebear, I'll take you for a trip to my ore-processing machine so you can see how it's done

I don't use advanced machines, only basic ones as the time factor is essentially a non-issue for me, so the facility doesn't take too long to get the mats for.


- OJ