Please clue me in as to what I'm doing wrong

[Grantypoo]

I want to automate my ore handling. Right now I have a quarry run, it transfers through an item tesseract to my base. I used pipes and diamond pipes to route everything to chests.

At this point, in the old Tekkit (which I havent played for almost a year) I would have redstone filters I think they were called that pulled from the chests and put the ore into a macerator and went from there.

I see nothing like that in the new Tekkit. I set up a Pulverizer, that was easy, but I cant figure out a good way to automatically place items into it in a timely manner. I've tried setting up a engine on a pipe between the chest and the pulverizer, sure that works, but the pipe floods with items then starts spitting out onto the ground.

What am I doing wrong? What piece of equipment do I need to automate grabbing items from a container and moving them to a pulverizer and other like machinery, without overflowing?

Again, I'm new to the new Tekkit and the mods it added. I dont need a super detailed explanation, but a point in the right direction would be great. All these YouTube videos for "automating" a pulverizer just show someone manually dropping in stacks of 64 items, and I dont want to do that, that isnt automated at all to me, all they are doing is automating the output to a container.

[Gildan27]

Take a look at the Applied Energistics mod (http://ae-mod.info/ME-Network/). Once you have a network set up, you can insert your items (I put in my quarry items via an Item Tesseract/ME Interface). Then use one of the flavors of the ME Export Bus to put items into the machines. An ME Interface or ME Import Bus can pull the items back into your network. If you need more details or have questions, feel free to ask.

[weirleader]

Yep, Applied Energistics (http://wiki.technicpack.net/Applied_Energistics) is a great way to go, though resource-intensive to start out.

The only way I know of to currently handle item overflow is to have a loop in your pipe so items that can't drop into the Pulverizer go around and make another pass. Using an Iron Pipe let's it be a one-way loop. But that's not a great solution for huge quantities (like from a Quarry).

If you decide to go the AE route, these video tutorials are very useful (although they're not Tekkit-specific).

[jakalth]

Otherwise, you can use an intermediate setup.

Split out just the ores, coming out of the item tesseract, using a diamond pipe and route those to a separate chest(chest A). Pull the ores out of chest A and route them towards a pulverizer. Use an insertion pipe(easiest), or diamond pipe(with the ores sorted into the pulverizer) to place them into the pulverizer. Route a second pipe off this pipe and connect it back to chest A, to act as overflow control.

Now, output everything from the pulverizer into another chest(chest . Pump the dusts out of chest B and route them towards your furnace. Once again, use an insertion pipe or a diamond pipe(with the dust sorted into the furnace) to place the dusts inside the furnace. Route a second pipe from this as well and connect it back to chest B, at act as overflow control.

Now just output from the furnace to your storage system. This setup is not the fastest setup, but it is compact and scalable. It also requires relatively little power until you've had time to upgrade your power systems. I also recommend converting to an Applied Energistics network to do this. But having this setup gives you enough time to get your AE network figured out before adding refining to the network.

So, happy smelting.

[weirleader]

ah, right -- forgot about the insertion pipe since I've still not gotten around to using them (and now that I'm using AE they've not been necessary).

[Grantypoo]

Thanks for the quick replies. I currently have TONS of resources, I've ran four quarries now with chunk loaders going, all 64x64 and powered by lava and magmatic engines from the nether and using energy tesseracts. So I've got basically unlimited power and unlimited resources, now I just need a way to handle those resources.

So lets say in the meantime before I learn AE, I set up the loop pipe system. So here's how I envision it...

Chest with a pipe coming out of it with a motor on the pipe pulling objects out. Extend that a couple pipes, then send it up two spaces then back to the chest. At the point where it goes up, I would also have it continue on into the pulverizer. So you're saying if it cant go into the pulverizer, it will just travel back down the pipe until it hits the spot where it goes up, then travel up there and back into the chest?

And I have an obsidian chest full of 64 stacks of ore... that seems like a lot of items to have running around inside a pipe. I guess it wont hurt anything though?

I'll start learning AE. It's slightly frustrating, I had amazing systems worked out in the older Tekkit that would churn through my ores and what not in no time and I'd have a finished ignot chest where I could pull from. I had it down to where I could build a HV solar array every 8 minutes, it was crazy. Now I feel like a complete noob again not able to do anything.

[jakalth]

Image of a simple setup.

If it loops back into the chest there is less issues with the pipes.

[weirleader]

So lets say in the meantime before I learn AE, I set up the loop pipe system. So here's how I envision it...

Chest with a pipe coming out of it with a motor on the pipe pulling objects out. Extend that a couple pipes, then send it up two spaces then back to the chest. At the point where it goes up, I would also have it continue on into the pulverizer. So you're saying if it cant go into the pulverizer, it will just travel back down the pipe until it hits the spot where it goes up, then travel up there and back into the chest?

Just make sure you use an Insertion Transport Pipe and what can't fit in the Pulverizer will return to the chest.

I'll start learning AE. It's slightly frustrating, I had amazing systems worked out in the older Tekkit that would churn through my ores and what not in no time and I'd have a finished ignot chest where I could pull from. I had it down to where I could build a HV solar array every 8 minutes, it was crazy. Now I feel like a complete noob again not able to do anything.

Yeah, it's starting over, but I have to say that the AE system is totally worth it. Wait 'til you get to the Molecular Assembler Chamber!

[Grantypoo]

Ah, is that the purple pipe in the supplied picture? Thanks for the graphic btw, that helps so much more than trying to explain by words. I've never even heard of an insertion pipe, nice to know they exist.

I look forward to working with AE. I had such amazing factories and stuff built (worked out in Excel EXACT timing on all kinds of stuff and had huge factories all timed perfectly so they didnt waste a second and cranked out some crazy stuff) and now it's all not usable, it almost makes me want to go back to the old Tekkit. But the whole reason I started playing Minecraft again was to see the new Tekkit stuff, so I figure I shouldnt go back, what would the point be

Anyway, I'll work on learning AE through the week. I hope to get some use out of all these resources.

I'm kind of already seeming stuck, I've got all these resources and nothing to do with them. Before, I dumped it all into making super expensive armors and weapons and tools, but now I've already got the power armor and all the energy I could want from lava in the nether, so I'm kind of at a dead end as to what I should even use all my resources for. I dont know any high end stuff to try to make.

[jakalth]

There are two insertion pipes. The purple one shown is the BC one, Thermal expansion has a second one that is blue. Both work equally well. Just have different material requirements. pick your flavor.

High end stuff to make... How about colonizing the moon? Building a huge space station? Atomic Science! Or, just try paving the world flat with iron and call it Core Prime?(lets see who gets the reference)

[Grantypoo]

Ah cool.

That's the problem with this version, it seems like the high end stuff is all just building blocks into shapes. There is no super high end items. The old red armor from EE or whatever it was, that took days to save up for each piece. I had all kinds of contraptions running to get me to that point. There is nothing like that in this version. I've made all I want to make from blocks, that is old news. I want new cool items to use, not just building blocky structures.

Hell, I even programmed in lua last time I was using minecraft heavily and had turtles that would build my structures for me. I built enormous cities over about the course of 2 real time days, with 20-30 turtles going at once that I just had to run around and resupply. Granted, a lot of the buildings were similar but I didnt care, it was still a vast city.

Long story short, I'm done building "stuff" and just want cool new items and things to try out. The AE items look neat, I'll give those a look. Also, is the Ender dragon still in the game? Is there any other big bosses like that? And yes, I'll try going to the moon, I guess I should give that a shot.

[Grantypoo]

Wow... I watched one video last night on my iPhone while falling asleep, I think it was Direwolf who cast it, part one of three parts about applied energistics.

That mod is amazing. Seriously... crazy. Just in part one he explained the import/export which totally would do what I want, then also like 6 or 7 other parts and he said this is the simplest stuff you can do, it only gets more complicated from here. Looking forward to working with this mod I didnt get to play much yesterday so I didnt try anything but man I'm really looking forward to this and I havent even see the "cool" stuff yet.

I laugh at how much Direwolf says "nice" in his videos. He's a decent caster, I hadnt seen one of his vids before but he did a good job.

[Dewfire]

Wow... I watched one video last night on my iPhone while falling asleep, I think it was Direwolf who cast it, part one of three parts about applied energistics.

That mod is amazing. Seriously... crazy. Just in part one he explained the import/export which totally would do what I want, then also like 6 or 7 other parts and he said this is the simplest stuff you can do, it only gets more complicated from here. Looking forward to working with this mod I didnt get to play much yesterday so I didnt try anything but man I'm really looking forward to this and I havent even see the "cool" stuff yet.

I laugh at how much Direwolf says "nice" in his videos. He's a decent caster, I hadnt seen one of his vids before but he did a good job.

Applied Energistics is amazing. I have mine set up to a point now that running around with my Wireless Interface in my base I can request anything I need on the spot, even if I don't have it, I can queue it up to craft 1 to as many as I have materials for on demand.

Direwolfs videos are perfect for getting a good start on this mod, but your creativity and time are the only limits!

[badkruka]

Another easy way is to use gates to control the pulls from the chest.

In the pics I have two chest but pretend the right chest are the pulverizer, same gate rule.

You place a wooden transporterpipe next to the chest and on that one you place an "autarchic iron and gate". On the transportergate that goes into the pulverizer you place an "Iron and gate". Connect the two gates with red pipe wire, config them as shown on the pictures it will automatic draw stuff from the chest as soon the pulverizer are empty and when you have blocks in the pulverizer it will stop pulling out more blocks from the chest.

http://imgur.com/a/THFMZ

If you dont know how to use gates you can use a sorter like the one Im currently using.

http://imgur.com/a/aahLD

In pic one I are the two chests I put the stuff in depending of what I need. Since for an exampel cobblestone can be pulverized or cooked in the furnace Im using two chests. One only for the furnace and the right one for the rest.

In pic two are the two tesserace hooked up the the chest above.

In pic three are the sorting pipe system. Its a mess and impossibe to see since its made of "1000 patches" but not that hard to build. Just direct the stuff to the right machine

Pic four shows the factory room above my sorting pipe mess. I use hoppers as a buffer so now I can send 6 stacks without nothing jumping out of the pipes.

Pic five shows the sorting pipes under my chests I store stuff in.

[Grantypoo]

Very nice stuff, thanks. I'll take a look more in detail into it when I get home.

I didnt know about buckets either, that's new to me. I saw those in the tutorial I watched last night. If I understand correctly, they are just like a chest but they display on the outside what is contained inside? I can see how that might be nice but also with having applied energistics storage I'm not sure I have any use for buckets. Or is it barrels? Whatever it is.

[Ovinomancer]

My pre-AE setup (takes awhile to get enough quartz) is to split incoming ores off the feed directly into processing by using diamond pipes, and dumped into a two high stack of vanilla hoppers that attach to the pulverizer input to handle overflow. If you're pulling directly off even two full speed quarries, two hoppers handle the overflow/queue quite nicely (provided you have a fully powered pulverizer). Repeat for the furnace. If you're going for more capacity, add more pulv/furnace combos. This is more compact than pipe overflow loops, and alows you to pull from/insert into the pulv/furnace queues easily by just accessing the hoppers.

I spent a lot of time optimizing a BC pipe (non logistics) setup before I got into AE. It just takes so much quartz to set one up that I still find BC pipes to be very useful until around late-mid-game.

[Grantypoo]

I'm confused as to powering pulverizers, mine sure seems slow... I have tons of power being dumping into a pulverizer, 100MJ I think is what comes out of my redstone energy cell. Those redstone power lines leech 5% power, right? And a pulverizer only wants 4MJ? So shouldnt it be running at top speed? Or is there some way to speed up a pulverizer? and I suppose the same question applies to the other machines in that mod.

The problem is that my pulverizer is only handling about 1 ore every 4-5 seconds it seems like, which is way to slow to keep up with 2 100MJ quarries.

[Dewfire]

Grantypoo, the best setup for that is dedicated machines, 1 Pulverizer and 1 Furnace per Ore and Dust. Especially with a couple quarries running.

[Grantypoo]

I got a very rudimentary system going using AE. My setup is as follows...

Quarry running out in the distance using a Energy Tesseract and an Item Tesseract to transport back. The items all come back to my base and go into a chest. Off the chest is an Import Bus, which then goes onto my storage drives. I have an Fuzzy Export Bus hooked to a pulverizer (actually two Fuzzy Export bus now since I had more than 8 different ore types to suck into it) and then an Import Bus to bring the pulverizer dusts back into my system. Then I have an Export bus into a electric furnace (the exact name escapes me, but its the electrical version of a furnace, induction something or other maybe) which is pulling in all the dusts and melting them into ingots. Then from there, Imported back into my AE network.

So far, very cool. I dont have to do anything now, I just set up a quarry and I know that automatically any ores will go to a ingot state within not very long. The system keeps up pretty well with two 64x64 quarries running. My concern now is power... I've been pulling in lava via an Item Tesseract from the nether and using Magmatic Engines to pump out MJ to my power system. Is there a better, more sustainable way to do this? I only ask because I finally ran out of lava in the spot I was pumping from. I realized my "stuff" all quit working and was trying to figure out why and eventually figured it was that the lava flow had stopped. I thought something/someone broke my setup in the nether, but it turns out it just had drained the entire area of lava, which I didnt even know was possible. So I set up again, but I'd like a 100% no maintenance solution if there is one?

TL;DR - What's the lowest maintenance "green" solution for gathering/outputting MJ energy?

[weirleader]

What's the lowest maintenance "green" solution for gathering/outputting MJ energy?

Easy -- an MFR farm hooked into a BioReactor which then supplies BioFuel to your BioFuel Generator. It quickly becomes a self-sustaining source of a ton of energy. The key for maximum production is to have variety, so set up MFR Planters with each type of sapling, with potatoes, carrots, wheat (only the seeds feed the Reactor); you can also throw in pumpkin and melon seeds, cactus green (which means you have to cook it), and even bone meal. A single BioReactor can support half a dozen or more BioFuel Generators (others have taken the time to figure it out more exactly but I haven't paid close enough attention).

EDIT: Just to be clear, you have to pipe all the resources gathered (via an MFR Harvester) back into the BioReactor...

[Grantypoo]

Ah, this sounds good. I watched a video on the farming equipment, I think Direwolf again was the caster, where he had something in the center planting, then stuff on the outside harvesting. I dont think I watched anything on a bioreactor though.

Sounds like this takes up more space than my lava from the nether solution, and I assume also only works during the day so I would need some pretty big battery banks to keep power up at night?

[PessimiStick]

It works all the time. I have a 9x9 plot of Netherwart/Potatoes/Carrots/Wheat, and then another 9x9 plot of 4 different types of trees, serviced by 2 planters, 2 harvesters, 2 fertilizers, 4 sewers and 4 composters (each sewer fed by 24 cows), and a separate plot of pumpkin with just a harvester. This produces *thousands* of materials for the Bio Reactors, which can each power 10 Bio Generators. My current setup has 40 active generators, and can power my EE at full (500 MJ/tick) with my AE system, various support machinery, the farm itself, and a quarry. If I need more power (f.ex. when I update to 1.5.1 and have mining lasers) I will just add more generators/reactors as needed.

Honestly, Biofuel is pretty OP and could stand to be nerfed a bit.

[Grantypoo]

Two questions... What is an EE?

And so I guess I need to watch videos specifically relating to this, but do you dump both 9x9 plots into one bioreactor? Or do you have multiple reactors?

Also, mining lasers? Man, sounds cool, I need to look into it.

[PessimiStick]

I meant EI - Energetic Infuser, the item charging block from Thermal Expansion. I only mentioned it because as far as I'm aware, it has the highest power draw of anything in Tekkit (500 MJ/tick).

All 3 of my plots (plants, trees, pumpkin) feed into a Tesseract that fills a chest hooked up with 3 precision import buses, and one basic import bus (to pull any random stuff from farm/quarry that I don't have in the precision filters already). Then I just have a precision export and a basic export on each Bio Reactor (8 items from precision, 1 from basic), and they feed the biofuel into tanks/Liquid Managers (from Steve's Carts). I was using tanks before I realized how much you can fit in a LM, and just haven't bothered to update it yet since the tanks are all full and there were other things I was working on.

[weirleader]

I would recommend this video -- it's a bit long, but has a lot of great content.