My Quarry Macerating/Smelting Factory. [Images]. Could it be simpler?

[blsmith2112]

This (sample sized) system imports 5 core types of ore found in quarries: Iron, Silver, Gold, Tin, and Copper.

1. The items are teleported in via phased item transport pipe.
   
2. Pulled into a filter.
   
3. Sorted through an item sorter.
   
4. Shipped to their respective painted areas.
   
5. Put into a macerator to turn the item into dust.
   
6. A receiver pulls the dust into a pneumatic pipe which then puts the item into the top of an electric furnace.
   
7. The smelted ingot is then pulled by a retriever into a chest.
   
8. The ingot is pumped (via redstone engine) into a phased transport pipe once again.
   
9. The ingot's ending destination is our base.
   

Could this be simpler? I feel like it could be. I hate using timers in my server, but if its required I'm willing to bite the bullet on this one. The tesseract is connected to my Nuclear Power Plant, I tried using a phased conductive pipe but the connecting pipe kept exploding.

[Lethosos]

I'm trying to remember the specific logic block, but you can wire up an AND gate and something that only powers on for a specific amount of time once to the timer and trigger it with a button. It'll keep timer activity down while you're around--I've used it in the past for a safe cobble generator in the past.

[Hostileca]

You could do a lot simpler using thermal expansion, can easily do a setup with a pulverizer linked to 2 or 3 powered furnaces, then pulled out straight into a ender chest so you can link it to your base. Also you can power you sorting machine, and use it to generate it's own redstone signal, which will pull items out of the chest without having to use any retrievers. I don't have screenshots for my old setup with thermal expansion, but it's easy to figure out.

If you have enough materials, with lots of quartz, you can upgrade everything to applied energistics. I switched everything, and now I can process ores from 4 quarries running full speeds with one macerator, one pulverizer and one electric furnace. Like This. I just have the ME Cable connected back to my main systems. (The Extractor is just there to process sticky resin, it's not part of the ore processing)

[blsmith2112]

Wow I haven't even thought about those two mods yet. We do have tons of materials to use and would probably go with applied energistics. I have never used the mod's items yet though so it'll be all about the experimentation over the next few days.

[lukeb28]

If you want to keep with redpower you could get away with having one macorator and one furnace. Just have the dusts and ingots feed back into the sorter and have a colour for fully processed materials. It's what I use!

[MrKekson]

btw, the easyest way is with a router + me interface + me import bus

slam the interface down, and install the crafting patterns ( eg: furnaces smelting iron/gold bronze etc )

put a router under it, with stack upgrade

install furnaces under it ( of course you can install any machine here, just make shure it's only 1 type eg just furnaces ) for good measure i usually install 10 of it

put me import buses on the side, give em power and a redstone signal, if its ic

and bamm 2k iron ignot in less then a minute with 10 furnaces + overclockers

and the pest bart is that its universal, so you dont need to build a lots of it

just one for every type of machinery ( eg furnaces, macerators, alloy furnaces )

i will post some pics of my system on this weekend

[Industrial Miner]

What I do is make an Enderchest Input point where the journey of the sorting and processing starts.

First of all, the machines which always need a number of items to work (TE Induction Smelter needs sand), get supplied. After that, everything which goes to the Main Storage gets sorted using a massive parallel array of Sorting Machines and the rest goes to the Misc Storage using a restriction tube.

Back to the Main Storage. What I want to store gets stored in the storage (I start with laying out the slots with items to decide the amount I want to store) and what doesn't fit goes down the line to another array of Sorting machines which sort the items into their respective processing machine. ( Wood goes to the Sawmill, ores to the Macerator, sticky resin to the extractor etc.)

After that they get put back into the Enderchest Input point and all of this happens again. If it happens that an item which gets sorted into the Main Storage doesn't have any place in the Main Storage and also doesn't have to get processed any further, it goes further down the path to a restriction tube, which leads to a transposer (So items from the Misc Storage don't go to the Main Storage) which goes to the Misc Storage.

And that's about it.

Why do I lay out the slots in the Main Storage you say? Why don't I store all the crap at all?

Well, what do I need with my storage getting filled up with a surplus of something which I don't even use that much, leaving no space for other items which I use more of?

And for transport I mainly use RP tubes and Routers from Factorization. I'm sick of timers.