Elegant solutions to automated AE crystal growth

[GreenZombie]

In direwolf20.
I know that direwof20 has used SFM to grow crystals, but I consider that mod just a bit too powerful. I far rather prefer to build sensors than just program them.
I was looking for an AE centric solution to the problem - I want to use formation and annihilation planes if possible, but timing / detecting when the crystals are ready to remove seems to be the problem.

 

[ratchet freak]

make a spiralling channel of water going down

Then the seeds will stay in the water a while until they reach the bottom for pickup where you can filter completed crystals out.

 

[desht]

Here's one fully-AE solution, which I've used successfully in the past: http://imgur.com/a/NhLB9 (not mine, I hasten to add).

 

[epidemia78]

In direwolf20.
I know that direwof20 has used SFM to grow crystals, but I consider that mod just a bit too powerful. I far rather prefer to build sensors than just program them.
I was looking for an AE centric solution to the problem - I want to use formation and annihilation planes if possible, but timing / detecting when the crystals are ready to remove seems to be the problem.

The problem with annihilation planes is that they cannot be filtered. An easy way around that is to simply have an export bus filter the crystals into a buffer of some sort and then get imported into the main ae system. I used that trick to automate botania livingrock/wood as well.

 

[desht]

The problem with annihilation planes is that they cannot be filtered. An easy way around that is to simply have an export bus filter the crystals into a buffer of some sort and then get imported into the main ae system. I used that trick to automate botania livingrock/wood as well.

The example I posted above works around this by continually importing unfinished seeds and re-exporting them into the water channel. It's arguably a little lag-inducing since there's a lot of item entity creation/destruction going on. It does make crystals very quickly, though.

An alternative design might be to have the annihilation plane attached to a separate AE network which only stores finished crystals (e.g. a formatted storage cell). The annihilation plane won't absorb what it can't store on its network. That subnet could then export the finished crystals back to your main AE network to fulfill the crafting contract.

 

[GreenZombie]

The example I posted above works around this by continually importing unfinished seeds and re-exporting them into the water channel. It's arguably a little lag-inducing since there's a lot of item entity creation/destruction going on. It does make crystals very quickly, though.

An alternative design might be to have the annihilation plane attached to a separate AE network which only stores finished crystals (e.g. a formatted storage cell). The annihilation plane won't absorb what it can't store on its network. That subnet could then export the finished crystals back to your main AE network to fulfill the crafting contract.

Now this. This I am going to try.