Fluiducts - How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Pneumatic Servo

[Silmenume]

With tremendous support, Googling, forum diving and hours of tinkering I finally got my Fusion Reactor energy system up and running.  The greatest single impediment turned out to be Liquiducts.  I could not extract the liquid deuterium from the Chemical Extractor, I could not extract the liquid deuterium from an Ender Tank nor could I extract the steam from the Steam Funnels.  (Actually I is was getting the tiniest hint of a vapor animated in the Liquiducts).  I has used the wrench to set the connects to pump out fluids - the red arrow was visible.  I was instructed several times that I need to use a Pneumatic Servo but I did not understand all that entailed.

 

To get a Liquiduct to pump efficiently on must have a Pneumatic Servo installed into the Liquiduct at the connection.  This is accomplished by right clicking on said Liquiduct connection with the Pneumatic Servo in hand.  You will receive a message in the bottom left of the screen indicating success or that there was one already present.  Easy, yes?

 

Note - there is no visual difference to the Liquiduct when the Pneumatic Servo is installed.

 

If you haven't already set the Liquiduct to pump do so now.

 

Now to activate the GUI for the Liquiduct connection you must right click on it with an EMPTY HAND!  Nothing else will open the GUI.

 

Here is the part that really beat me to death.

 

The Liquiduct has a Redstone Control on the Liquiduct when the Pneumatic Servo is installed - and it is set to the "off" position by default!!!  So for just plain pumping installing the Pneumatic Servo isn't enough - you either have to "Disable" the Redstone Control or set it to "Low" - otherwise it won't work.  I was distracted by the White List/Black List GUI and didn't see the little Redstone icon on the upper right until spending an hour looking for liquid deuterium in NEI in game and on the various internet forums.

 

In short for general Liquiduct pumping -

 

1.  Attach Liquiduct to device you wish to pump from.

2.  Install the Pneumatic Servo.

3.  Use a wrench to set direction of flow/function to pump.

4.  Use an empty hand on the connection to open the GUI.

5.  Click on the Redstone icon in the upper right hand corner of the GUI and either "disable" Redstone control or set Redstone control to "low."

 

Once this was done all my problems went away.  I could now pump my deuterium fluids around and I could extract steam from the Steam Funnels.

 

The only place I found indicating the presence of redstone controls and their default "high" redstone signal setting was here - http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/direwolf-20-1-6-4-public-beta.35476/page-15#post-498515

 

(Typo corrections)

Edited March 3, 2014 by Silmenume

[fulvus]

I just wanted to say thank you for laying it out like this. I needed the breakdown on pneumatic servos & now I have them on many pipes.

[Brigadon]

actually there IS a visual telltale when a pneumatic servo is installed AND the pipe head is set to export items. It is simply a rather subtle red outline at the very end of the pipe head.

[Silmenume]

Brigadon,

You are correct in that the red pump arrow "lights up" when it is on e.g., when the pneumatic servo is installed, the connection is set to pump AND the redstone control is set either to "disabled", "low", or "high" with a redstone signal source applied.

However, when the liquiduct is not "actively" in pump mode there is no visual indicator of the presence of the pneumatic servo. We can infer its presence when the pump is pumping because that is the only was it can pump - but the mere presence of the pneumatic servo is not indicated visually.