Applied Energistics and Boilers

[Herrozerro]

Is there anyway to get an export bus to export directly into a solid fuel firebox? At the moment I have it going into a chest with a RP timer outputing it into the boiler, but I'd rather have it go directly into the firebox so I can skip the RP buffer.

I've tried putting export buses and interfaces but no luck. any ideas?

 

[Freakscar]

What solid fuel do u use in your boiler?

 

[LastElf]

A boiler will automatically stock itself from an adjacent chest.

 

[Herrozerro]

Charcoal.

The reason why i'd like to get ride of a buffer is because then i could use level emitters to control my charcoal production. I guess I could use a chest and fill it with something the firebox wont except.

 

[Omicron]

You might want to freshen up on how boilers work a little bit

As LastElf stated above (but I'll expand on), a feature that's been Railcraft for quite some time is the fact that soild fuel boilers will restock themselves from adujacent inventories. That means, your buffer chest with redpower timer might as well be sitting right next to the boiler with no redpower stuff at all.

You know what else can sit right next to the boiler? A ME interface. Tell it to keep 1 charcoal exported, and the boiler will see the chaorcoal and grab it.

Then, make sure your ME network knows a crafting pattern for 1 charcoal.

What will happen is that the ME interface will try to export 1 charcoal, but fails because there is none available. This triggers an autocraft request for 1 charcoal, using the pattern provided (for example, it could insert 1 log into a furnace). The system waits until the furnace is done processing, imports the charcoal back into the network and uses it to fulfill the ME interface's request for 1 charcoal. Voila, the interface now has 1 charcoal exported... which the boiler immediately steals for itself. The ME interface will be left without charcoal again, and it will go trigger another autocrafting request.

This will repeat until the boiler's four internal slots are all filled with 64 charcoal each. Then, it will no longer take the charcoal out of the ME interface, which is thereby satisfied and stops requesting more charcoal to be crafted. Until, of course, the boiler finishes consuming another unit and restocks itself.

 

[PonyKuu]

ME interface is indeed great for boilers ^_^

Also, I use a bit more simple build: a set of Sawmills that fed with logs by export buses and level emitters which are on when network has more than 64 planks and thus turning off the sawmills. And there are ME interfaces near my boilers that exporting a stack of planks each. Works perfectly ^_^ Sawdust autocrafted into that little chunk via Xycraft fabricator and then smelted into charcoal in a powered furnace.

 

[Jeff Fisher]

A boiler will automatically stock itself from an adjacent chest.

O.O ... Well I feel dumb I have a Managaers keeping my peat stocked in mine.. Omg I could have just put the chest next to the boiler.. WHY Didn't I know this sooner lol..

 

[quantumllama]

Once again machines prove to be more intelligent than us puny humans.

 

[Juanitierno]

I use an export bus directly attached to the fireboxes and it works great.

I have several self-regulating block production setups in my base (like cobble, smoothstone, glass, sand, etc), one of them is set to keep 4000 charcoal in my network at all times automatically.

 

[Poppycocks]

I prefer to not use AE for always running machinery.

a) In case of energy shortage
b) Item transfers cost energy

You could simply place a tesser next to the boiler. Seriously though AE is awesome, don't get me wrong, it's not the tool to end all tools though.

 

[PonyKuu]

If you are running your AE network by a boiler, you can feed that boiler with that network ^_^

 

[Poppycocks]

If you are running your AE network by a boiler, you can feed that boiler with that network ^_^

Yeah and then one of your steve's carts vanishes and you're too busy IRL to logg in for two days, your wood supply runs out and all of your boilers go out.

Or whatever. It's just not a good idea. Shit happens, it's better to build with shit happening in mind.

Of course, you're free to build any way you want .

 

[PonyKuu]

You have the point, but meh... I play SSP and, honestly, AE is so convenient... I don't want to use something else...

 

[AlanEsh]

Yeah and then one of your steve's carts vanishes and you're too busy IRL to logg in for two days, your wood supply runs out and all of your boilers go out.

What is it about an AE fed boiler that makes it more susceptible to this? Seems like any boiler wood fed system will fail if your tree farm cart goes away

 

[KirinDave]

You have the point, but meh... I play SSP and, honestly, AE is so convenient... I don't want to use something else...

You can still do it safely if you just be aware that this can happen. Keep a reserve supply of wood by using level emitters to disable exporters. My next build will buffer boiler fuel into barrels and use ME storage busses, so that I can keep huge supplies of planks onhand w/out fear of storage cells filling up.

 

[EternalDensity]

I stuck two exporters (exporting stacks of planks) on the side of my firebox and it worked just fine with no thought required at all. Yes it's very simplistic (and wouldn't be enough for more complex systems) but it worked fine for me, given it was my first use of AE for anything really.

(Yes, my tree farm did fail but that's because I made a larger one and didn't get to test it properly. The smaller one was working fine but wasn't well placed to hook up to AE easily)

 

[Milaha]

I use a single exporter into a Tesseract, and just put a destination tesseract next to the firebox on each of my boilers. An interface is a much better solution for one boiler, but tesseracts are not expensive outside ender pearls (easy to get lots of by mid-game) and have no maintenance cost.

 

[KirinDave]

I use a single exporter into a Tesseract, and just put a destination tesseract next to the firebox on each of my boilers. An interface is a much better solution for one boiler, but tesseracts are not expensive outside ender pearls (easy to get lots of by mid-game) and have no maintenance cost.

King Lemming may hate you for this use, but it's a good solution and I like it. The only other clean way with 0 recurring cost and no perilous danger to your server is via routers.

 

[Milaha]

King Lemming may hate you for this use, but it's a good solution and I like it. The only other clean way with 0 recurring cost and no perilous danger to your server is via routers.

I have absolutely fallen in love with tesseracts for boilers/combustion engines recently. In addition to this trick, you can do a similar thing with liquids, but in that case it works even better since you only need 1 tesseract for both water and fuel if you put it right next to the boiler/engine. Normally you run into issues trying to get both liquid types out of the destination, but since the boiler/engines have filtered tanks they happily fill both up from a single tesseract and never cause problems. For boilers it just saves a tesseract, but for combustion engines it also means you can make significantly more compact designs, if you are willing to commit to using a lot of tesseracts.

 

[Poppycocks]

What is it about an AE fed boiler that makes it more susceptible to this? Seems like any boiler wood fed system will fail if your tree farm cart goes away

Yeah, but you won't have to come up with a way to get some power to your AE without having access to the tools locked inside. You just gotta restart your wood production.

I dunno, I guess it's the difference between having an extra cart in a chest as opposed to having a few charged cells lying somewhere, but I still think that there's no reason at all to drive your dumb always on production trough your smart sorting, crafting and storage system.