So I've been having a bit of an issue with integrating my industrial blast furnace with my AE network. Placing an export bus on top of a blast furnace block works fine for all the single-ingredient recipes like silicon plates and aluminum, but when I try to make steel or tungstensteel, I need the components to come in from both above and below. Placing an interface or export bus on top of the furnace only supplies items to the top slot. Currently I've worked around this using a diamond pipe and an item tesseract to divert the secondary components to beneath the blast furnace, but it's kind of an ungainly solution. Is there an easier way to synchronize inputs to the top and bottom of a block for a given crafting request?
AE & Multiple Input Processes
- Thread starter CodaPDX
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I haven't tried this but what if you put a second interface/export bus on the bottom side configured for the item that you need to put in? Would that work?
Putting an export bus on the bottom works fine, as long as you're only ever going to craft one recipe in that blast furnace. Three of my four furnaces are set to autocraft aluminum, chrome, tungsten, and silicon, but I reserve this furnace for crafting steel and tungsten steel on demand.
Routers can't insert into both the top and bottom of a block. I suppose I could have the interface connect to a router with thoroughness and a machine filter set to only insert into relays, and then have relays on top and bottom of the blast furnace, but that's not really an improvement,
Routers.
Set your me interface to output to a chest
For each ingredient you would use a network of routers.
1 router would extract from the chest and have a machine filter of chest and item filter of the ingredient(s) and an ejector upgrade to eject into router which inserts into top of blast furnace. Do the same for the bottom.
You could try a single router insert anywhere but it might put it in the output slot I'm not sure
Set your me interface to output to a chest
For each ingredient you would use a network of routers.
1 router would extract from the chest and have a machine filter of chest and item filter of the ingredient(s) and an ejector upgrade to eject into router which inserts into top of blast furnace. Do the same for the bottom.
You could try a single router insert anywhere but it might put it in the output slot I'm not sure
So instead of a router, a machine filter, and two relays, I'd use three routers, even more upgrades, and a chest? Somehow, I'm not seeing the advantage. So far a diamond pipe and two tesseracts seems like the simplest option
What about the Gregtech translocators? Can those filter items into different inputs on a machine?
What about the Gregtech translocators? Can those filter items into different inputs on a machine?
Well the advantage could be that the routers could be hidden underground and connected to the chest via each other and to the blast furnace with a chain of vanilla furnaces. My method would take 4 routers but would ensure the same item type wouldn't end up in both slots and there wouldn't be any Laggy relays or rp tubes
I was going to suggest this too. It would work great. It's just your preference if you want to see tubes or spend time
Making routers for a cleaner look.
Does the blast furnace not process the other materials if coal dust is in the bottom slot?
Simplest method would probably be to have a blast furnace for each bottom slot type. So you export all the dusts that use nothing to one and all the dusts that use coal dust to another.
Edit:
Just checked it. Blast furnace processes empty bottom slot dusts fine if coal/other materials are in the bottom slot.
So you could do a blast furnace for your top slot only dusts and to make steel. Export bus the dusts to the top and coal to the bottom.
Depending on how often you use the carbonate and hot steel recipes you might either make a furnace for each or have them share one furnace and use an interface w/ crafting recipe to pull the supplies from the ME network and deposit them into a chest attached to the interface. I would avoid letting the ME interface output directly to a pipe or relay in case you request 100's of items at a time it can easily overwhelm this secondary network. Also crafting a mix of the two remaining recipes can easily jumble up the top and bottom slot items since new items go into the first available slot and most things pull from that slot -- easy for most systems to get the wrong bottom slot item for the top slot item.
To avoid overflow i would probably just put a chest next to the main interface and then use your favorite transportation network to pull items from the chest in proper ratios for the blast furnace recipes.
Simplest method would probably be to have a blast furnace for each bottom slot type. So you export all the dusts that use nothing to one and all the dusts that use coal dust to another.
Edit:
Just checked it. Blast furnace processes empty bottom slot dusts fine if coal/other materials are in the bottom slot.
So you could do a blast furnace for your top slot only dusts and to make steel. Export bus the dusts to the top and coal to the bottom.
Depending on how often you use the carbonate and hot steel recipes you might either make a furnace for each or have them share one furnace and use an interface w/ crafting recipe to pull the supplies from the ME network and deposit them into a chest attached to the interface. I would avoid letting the ME interface output directly to a pipe or relay in case you request 100's of items at a time it can easily overwhelm this secondary network. Also crafting a mix of the two remaining recipes can easily jumble up the top and bottom slot items since new items go into the first available slot and most things pull from that slot -- easy for most systems to get the wrong bottom slot item for the top slot item.
To avoid overflow i would probably just put a chest next to the main interface and then use your favorite transportation network to pull items from the chest in proper ratios for the blast furnace recipes.
Yeah, the sorting machine approach really isn't any different than the diamond pipe one, only it requires blutricity and forces me to paint tubes and route them around to the bottom of the blast furnace, instead of just sticking a tesseract underneath the furnace and calling it good.
And yeah, for a while I just stuck an export bus underneath the furnace and filled it with coal dust, but now that I can make tungstensteel, I'd rather adapt my existing specialized furnace than co-opt one of my general ones just for tungstensteel. After a long mining session my three general furnaces can get held up by a pretty extensive backlog.
That's good to know. The only problem is that I don't necessarily want to turn all of my iron into steel, and I don't want to turn all of my steel into tungstensteel. I want to have steel and tungstensteel made on demand, which means using an interface, which means that I can't just have an export bus dump aluminum, titanium, chrome, silicon, and tungsten into the furnace to be smelted. I suppose I could use a router to insert those materials into the top slot, but that can lead to situations where an autocrafting request for steel is held up because the router dumped a stack of aluminum in my coal dust filled furnace.
And yeah, for a while I just stuck an export bus underneath the furnace and filled it with coal dust, but now that I can make tungstensteel, I'd rather adapt my existing specialized furnace than co-opt one of my general ones just for tungstensteel. After a long mining session my three general furnaces can get held up by a pretty extensive backlog.
That's good to know. The only problem is that I don't necessarily want to turn all of my iron into steel, and I don't want to turn all of my steel into tungstensteel. I want to have steel and tungstensteel made on demand, which means using an interface, which means that I can't just have an export bus dump aluminum, titanium, chrome, silicon, and tungsten into the furnace to be smelted. I suppose I could use a router to insert those materials into the top slot, but that can lead to situations where an autocrafting request for steel is held up because the router dumped a stack of aluminum in my coal dust filled furnace.
ME Interface + emerald pipes + diamond pipes. you can have each emerald pipe pull out a specific recipe from the ME interface and then use the diamond pipes to split them.
Honestly, your diamond pipe/item tesseract system is probably the cleanest. You can use one tesseract on top and on below then offload the complicated sorting in a back room somewhere.
Honestly, your diamond pipe/item tesseract system is probably the cleanest. You can use one tesseract on top and on below then offload the complicated sorting in a back room somewhere.
Yeah, only it's not necessary to use emerald pipes, since the interface shouldn't have anything in it not used for the crafting recipe at hand. A wooden pipe is doing the job just fine. As for the diamond pipe/tesseract solution, yeah, it seems like that's probably the best way to go. I did consider using two pairs of tesseracts and hiding the interface elsewhere for maximum cleanliness, but I like having the interface with the recipes close to the furnace it's feeding. Using one tesseract is a nice comprimise.
I'm pretty sure the Advanced ones can put stuff in any "side" you want (similar to Routers, except only on adjacent blocks). But I think each one can only put stuff into 1 side, so I think you need 1 for each side you want to put stuff in.
tbh, I don't think it'll get any cheaper than a Diamond pipe + some other piping/tubing/tesseracts to divide the top/bottom input/output. And how much nicer translocators would look I'm not sure, if you cover up the piping who cares what it looks like?
Well if you already have multiple furnaces. Assume you have 4 furnaces to make the most out of the casing. Why not export bus to the bottom of each -- supply two of them coal, one steel, and one carbonate. Or whatever ratio makes sense to you. If you need to process ores more then maybe swap a coal out for that.
Then put an interface or two with all the crafting recipes for blast furnaces + relay tubes/pipe to the top of each furnace -- filter the input at the furnace. Allow the dust only types to go to any furnace, the iron to only go to the coal furnaces, tungston to the steel, and Ores to the carbonate.
Read the post you quoted again. Doing that will cause the same problem as using a router to distribute the dusts - inevitably there will come times when I'm trying to craft steel, but the furnace(s) will be full of something else, forcing me to pull out the offending dust and put at least a bar of iron in manually. Which kind of defeats the purpose of an automatic system.
One of the first lessons AE taught me was that it's important to separate your automatic processing from your automatic crafting. If you use the same machines for both, you're going to have situations where either your crafting backlogs your ore processing system, or your ore processing causes your crafting to get delayed indefinitely.
Here was my thought of a clean setup in game using buildcraft:
http://imgur.com/a/zLYzM
I would setup an export bus set to craft for steel/hot tungston anywhere on the network and control it with a level emitter. So it trys to keep the amount of steel/hot tungston you want supplied without trying to convert all your iron to steel. So you can grab a stack or two to do something and it will start work on crafting replacement, but stop at a certain level.
If you keep all the furnaces running all the time then you probably need more furnaces. You could also divvy up which furnaces get what give the steel furnaces less to do, so they are available more.
http://imgur.com/a/zLYzM
I would setup an export bus set to craft for steel/hot tungston anywhere on the network and control it with a level emitter. So it trys to keep the amount of steel/hot tungston you want supplied without trying to convert all your iron to steel. So you can grab a stack or two to do something and it will start work on crafting replacement, but stop at a certain level.
If you keep all the furnaces running all the time then you probably need more furnaces. You could also divvy up which furnaces get what give the steel furnaces less to do, so they are available more.
I'm really not seeing the advantages of this system over a single diamond pipe and a tesseract pair on the steel/tungstensteel furnace. I guess it uses fewer interfaces, but I'm not that starved for quartz. And for what it's worth, I already have level emitters maintaining two stacks of steel and one stack of tungstensteel in my network.
Actually, I just had a funny thought - a stone golem should be able to take whatever's leftover inside an interface placed on top of the blast furnace and insert it into the bottom slot of the blast furnace, as long as the marker block is placed underneath it. I'll have to test that out when I get home - the idea of a magical construct working alongside a hypertechnological matter-energy converter is kind of hilarious.
