Dust Automation

[Cougar281]

I've finally started with some automation using AE, among other things, and while it's not as awesome as other things I've seen posted around, I'm pretty happy with how it's working... The only thing I haven't been able to figure out is how to automate the consolidation of tiny piles of dust into regular dust to be smelted. I tried a packager, and it worked... sort of. The problem is if I have all the types of dust going to it, when one doesn't have enough to make a pile, it'll leave the remaining piles there until it has enough, so nothing else can work. The Packager might work if I had about nine of them (one for each type of dust), but I would rather not have a wall of packagers if I don't have to... Is there any other way to automate this?

Edit: here are a few shots of my processing center:

Spoiler

 

[Sonicyoda13]

Send the tiny piles in a chest and have a redpower sorting machine set to pull out the piles when there is four of them and put them in the packager.

 

[voidreality]

I use RP2 retrievers to only send groups of 4 to my packager. Besides that you could use an inventory turtle that only requests 4 items if 4 or more are present. Also, an alternative to the packager could be a fabricator. Just some ideas off the top of my head.

 

[Siro]

You should be able to do this by exporting into an interface (or a chest with an importer if I have this wrong). Set to craft only on the exporter and set up crafting recipes for the dusts.

If you're also constantly processing the dusts further, you can also just set your processing exporter to single/craft (and have the recipe set up in your autocrafting) and eliminate combining the dusts as a separate step.

 

[DriftinFool]

The gregtech auto crafting table has a dust setting in it and will only make large piles

 

[Cougar281]

The gregtech auto crafting table has a dust setting in it and will only make large piles

Which one is that? I might be blind bur I don't see it...

 

[Bickers]

electric crafting table it has a dust mode

 

[Cougar281]

Thanks, I'll check it out.

 

[Cougar281]

I think the Electric Crafting table may be the winner... It's really backed up right now because it's not terribly fast, but I suspect once it catches up, it shouldn't have too much trouble keeping up.

 

[Bickers]

I think the Electric Crafting table may be the winner... It's really backed up right now because it's not terribly fast, but I suspect once it catches up, it shouldn't have too much trouble keeping up.

if you running the latest pack you can use IC2 upgrades like overclockers on most gregtech machines just remember once its installed there is no way to remove it

 

[Adonis0]

I have seen a pretty nifty set-up
it was ME interfaces set to stock 4 piles of the tiny dusts, that way if you have less than that they all get put into the interface, and next to the interface was a xycraft fabricator which was set to craft the 4 tiny piles into a full dust. Then import busses to just withdraw all the dusts

On each interface you can have two types of dust, to have a fabricator to the left and right, and stack these up in a modular design.