Sorting+Processing Plant/ Storage Room Setup

[jumpfight5]

So, I have a sorting system set up, it's not fancy. It's pretty basic and takes all my ores and turns them into ingots. It'll also do things like smelt beef, smelt cactus, and pulverize cobblestone.

My problem lies with multiple of these things, but Cobblestone is my biggest problem. It gets it from a quarry (or an igneous extruder), and it will pulverize it all. Then it will take the sand and feed it into my Induction Smelters. This is...tolerable for my purposes, but what I really want it to do is take a quarter of the cobblestone and send it into storage, and take the rest of it and Pulverize it. When I get sand, I want it to first fill up my Induction Smelters, then take the excess and turn 1/4 of it into glass. I want it to take the gravel (a byproduct of Pulverization), and Pulverize that into flint. I don't want all the gravel, just a quarter of it stored and the rest turned into flint (for ITNT or it's other uses). How would I go about this? I also want to do this for lots of other items. For example, I want some of my tin turned into tin cells while some of it kept as ingots. Iron-->Refined Iron, but maybe an eighth.
If I put Cobblestone in multiple compartments of the sorting machine, it'll only go to one place. I am building underground, so I have a lot of space, but I am not sure I want a huge thing, so taking 1 chest and turning it into two and equal ways apart would not work because that's only half. If I wanted to continue with that, I'd have to turn 1 of those two chests into 2, so I'd have 3/4 going one way and 1/4 going another way. That would end up being huge and I don't want to do that.

Also, when my stuff is done, it gets sent into a storage room. This storage room is just a ton of barrels and a few extra chests where stuff that can't be sorted goes into. My goal is to use chests, but that may be hard, so I was thinking of a mixture. Stuff like cobblestone goes into a barrel, and stuff like ingots go into chests. It takes up a lot less space this way. What I really would like to see is your personal storage room setup, with screenshots. I just want everything to be organized with an easy to understand layout, but I am no good at that.

 

[1ManleyMiner]

You can use Diamond pipe to split sorting by percentages. Put three (3) of one thing in one direction slot color and one (1) of another to make a 75/25% split.

 

[jumpfight5]

Oh yeah, I'm afraid of those though. I can handle the price, but buildcraft automation? I don't even understand logic gates and stuff, and that throws items away when there's no room left in chests. But that will work, I'll need to find a workaround to my problems.

 

[Neirin]

You could also use RP systems. Routing your items through sorting machines fulfilling 1 row at a time with the correct ratios would work, for instance. That sort of system would easily clog up if it were pulling directly from your drop box, so you'd want to have a 2nd sorting machine that all your cobble gets routed through, for instance. It's not quite as clean as a diamond pipe, but if you want to stick to RP, that's the way to do it.

If you're using an RP system, but you're not against using a bit of BC piping, you could use a relay to convert from tubes to pipes long enough to use a diamond pipe to get things in the right configuration, then use another relay to get the items back into your tube network. This is ultra-messy, but it works.

You could also use equidistant valid inventories in your tube network and have several of them route their outputs together. For example, you could have 4 relays at the end of a tube. 3 of them would immediately meet back up and continue in a single unified tube, but the 4th would go its own way. That way you'd get your 1/4th split.

Sorting into chests is easily done either with a diamond pipe connected to each chest or colored tubes being sent colored items from a sorting machine. You can also use filters to define 9 items that can be passed into chests (face the output towards the chest rather than using it as a way to suck out of the chest).

 

[Zjarek_S]

Here is BC system without gates and risk of overflow. However pipe positioning is very important:

Cobblestone goes from the right, storage is in the back.

The first element of this system is pulverizer:

There are two sides marked as input to the pulverizer, on the first cobblestone pipe branch half of the items will go into pulverizer and half will go to the top pipe. Top pipe goes again to the pulverizer, so half of half (1/4 th) of initial cobblestone will go into pulverizer and rest goes to the back to storage.

Bottom output from the first pulverizer is gravel output which goes to the second pulverizer like this:

Similar principle guarantees that this pulverizer will get 3/4th of the produced gravel. Output goes to the right, bottom and left is input.

Sand goes to the induction smelter:

Diamond pipe is set to red -> sand. Both yellow and black are default routes. This guarantee that all sand will go to smelter if possible, if not it will choose one of the available default routes (blue is not available, because sand enters from there) with equal chance, in this example 50 %.

Finally, production of glass:

This time 1/4 of excess sand goes to the powered furnace and 3/4 to storage.

Every excess material will go to storage, without spilling on the floor. You can use redstone control on machines to disable them if storage for given item is full.

 

[jumpfight5]

Neirin, I don't quite understand your first paragraph. I may be talking about something completely different than you're explaining...but...
I take Cobblestone, and put it into two different columns of the the sorting machine. Then when it goes through, it'll only be colored one color. If I put it for green for pulverizing and blue for storage, it'll go straight to pulverizing (because there are less pipes?).

Your relay-pipe-relay-tube configuration could work, though it is messy as you say. It could be a "last resort" method, due to its messiness.


Using inventories to make the split could be annoying. What if it's a pipe and there are two relays? It would only go to the closer one, unless you did:

RLAY=Relay, Pneumatic Tube=PIPE
 
    PIPE
PIPE PIPE PIPE
RLAY      RLAY

Which would take up even more space.
Filters for chests would be cheaper than Sorting machines for each one, but if I wanted one chest to hold more than 9 items, I'd have to use the sorting system, correct?

Zjarek:
Oh! That makes so much sense! It seems quite useful, and doesn't seem to take all that much space. That would probably be a cobblestone only setup, and all my other stuff would go elsewhere in another setup.

How would that make 1/8 though? It's not a huge deal, though. I was planning to have stuff like this for not only Cobblestone, but for Tin (tin cells), Logs (Planks), Stone (Stone bricks), Gold Nuggets (from a Zombie Pigman farmer, some to ingots and some to golden apples), Rubber (Copper wires), Iron (Refined Iron), and it would only be partial. Things like Copper wires, Gold nuggets, and Refined iron would be 1/8 or even 1/16.

I think cobblestone is the most complex one, with Stone, Stone brick, Chiseled Stone brick, Sand, Glass, Gravel, Flint, and Cobblestone itself being the products I want made. In this case, I'd probably end up using multiple setups from multiple Igneous Extruders to make all these items.
Also, what if I used two filters? One that had 16 cobble and one with 48? Every stack of cobble would be transferred into these amounts and can be sent on their way. Would that work?
Finally, what of Managers and Routers, from RP2 and Factorization, respectively? They are talked about all the time, but I don't know what they do or how they work.

 

[Neirin]

There's a mode for sorting machines where it will only output items when it can fulfill the requirements of a column and will then rotate through the columns. If you have the first column designated as 1 cobblestone and label it Yellow and the 2nd column designated as 3 cobblestone and label it orange the sorting machine will output 1 Yellow Cobble, 3 Orange Cobble, 1 Yellow, 3 Orange, etc. If you color the receiving pipes appropriately it will work. It doesn't help that the mode icons on sorting machines aren't terribly descriptive. If you're only working on a single item - i.e. just distributing cobble -you can use either of the settings that have a circle-looking arrow (anystack sequential or allstack sequential). If you want multiple items to go to the same place, you should use the mode that has a purple bar on the left with a circle-looking arrow coming from it (allstack sequential).

The multiple relays strategy is exceptionally messy and uses a huge amount of space, but it's the lowest-tech solution to the problem. I really wouldn't recommend it unless you like evil pipe spaghetti monsters. I only mentioned it because it technically works and doesn't require fiddling with machines.

The 2 filter strategy would work if you had a sequencer alternate them. They'd have to pull out of a chest, though, I think. They wouldn't work in-line.

Managers are really just meant to keep items stocked in an inventory while allowing overflow. They're actually quite excellent for storage systems because they also let you pull out of the inventory as well as keep stuff stocked. They can also keep track of a huge variety of items. However, they are expensive to make, require blulectricity, and I've rarely gotten any use from them I couldn't achieve with clever use of sorting machines or filters.

Routers are both incredibly powerful and annoying to get working correctly. Getting them to consistently access the correct chest has always been tricky for me. For storage systems they're really only practical with barrels imo so there's no chance of them messing up and putting items in the wrong place. That said, I have seen some absolutely amazing router+barrel storage systems and as far as I know routers can handle an infinite number of inventories. I've seen people swear by them, but I'm definitely the wrong person to ask about routers.

 

[jumpfight5]

So for the anystack sequential, it sees cobble in yellow and orange, and sends 1 yellow and then 3 orange? What if I want to have other items in the same sorting machine? Will that be a problem?

 

[Neirin]

So for the anystack sequential, it sees cobble in yellow and orange, and sends 1 yellow and then 3 orange? What if I want to have other items in the same sorting machine? Will that be a problem?

Yes, unfortunately. If you had, say, gravel in column 3 it would wait to pass on the gravel before going back to column 1 to send out more cobble. If you had the gravel in column 2 (with the 3 orange cobble) in anystack mode it would skip pushing out the 3 cobble on any round it pushed out gravel. In allstack mode it would stick until it had the gravel to push it out.

Allstack sequential is mostly for sending things out to be crafted in specific amounts. For example, column 1 might send 3 copper and 6 rubber to 1 crafting table, column 2 might send 2 redstone and a refined iron to a 2nd crafting table. The assumption being that the output of the 1st column would be crafted into wires and then sent to the 2nd crafting table to make a circuit. Making sure you only fulfill one column at a time ensures you don't end up with too many wires or an overflow of redstone or something like that. Using it to distribute items as they come in isn't really what it's intended for, we're just using it as a kludge.

 

[jumpfight5]

I liked my 2 filter idea, too bad it can't work inline which I'm surprised about. I guess I will use build craft diamond pipes attached to relays, though I don't like it. I would still like to learn about routers and managers, even if they are complex and pricey.

 

[Neirin]

You know, given a night to think it over, I'm actually not 100% sure the filters wouldn't work inline. I'll have to test it in my creative world. I'll report back after I've messed around a bit.

EDIT: Okay, so I went and tested it. Inline filters appear to only look at what item is being passed to them, not stack size. Placing 3 cobble in an inline filter will allow it to still output 1 at a time. Moreover, placing 2 filters on the same piece of tube - 1 w/ a single cobble, the other w/ 3 - will result in a 50/50 split instead of the desired 25/75.

 

[jumpfight5]

Unfortunately, I can't test this stuff, but you know how there's 9 slots in a filter? What if you put in 3 pieces of cobble in 3 different slots? Would it work then?

 

[Neirin]

Unfortunately, I can't test this stuff, but you know how there's 9 slots in a filter? What if you put in 3 pieces of cobble in 3 different slots? Would it work then?

The different slots aren't additive, they're just other options.