Help with BC piping

[Cosmology27]

So I'm very good with RP2 tubes for transportation and filtering, now that they're gone in Unleashed, I don't really know how to accomplish the same things. Here's my main issue.

With RP2 I have a processing system for each machine. I have a chest where I put multiple stacks of things to be processed (let's say macerated). I then pump the items out of that chest and into the macerator, then pump them out of the macerator into another chest. This allows me to throw in like a dozen stacks at once, then walk away, and later pick up the dozen stacks, without any attention on my part. If I use BC pipes, they would all just fall on the ground after seeing that the macerator/chest is full. How do I do this without RP2?

Thanks for the help.

 

[Jess887cp]

You could use gates to detect if the machine has space, and pump according to output. That would be the route you could use, but there is an even more elegantsolution, vanilla hoppers. Just stick a large chest on top of a vanilla hopper and you don't need to worry about overflow. I'm not sure which side you pump out of a macerator, but if it's the bottom, then have a stack of chest, hopper, macerator, hopper, chest.

Tah-daahh!

The problem could also be solved with a large enough buffer.

 

[PoisonWolf]

Diamond Chest connected to router A. Connect router A to another router B. Connect router B to your macerator(s). At the end of this macerator, place another router C, and put a diamond chest next to router C.

Router A: Insert machine filter and ejector upgrade. Set machine filter to diamond chest, set to nearby machines only, and set to eject into router B from the appropriate sides (tip: blue colored side of router is north).
Router B: Insert machine filter. Set to consider macerators only, leave to default of all machines, and set it to insert into macerator from the appropriate sides/slots.
Router C: Insert machine filter and ejector ugprade. Set to consider just macerators: Set to nearby machines only. Set to extract the output and eject into the connected output diamond chest.

You can swap diamond chest for barrels too if you want. This allows for fast right-clicking stacks of the same ore. If you do use barrels, for the output, you need to insert from the top sides (under router C settings).

Routers will do all the detection for you and handle any risk of overflow, etc, relative to autarchic gates, etc. No engines are needed too.

 

[casilleroatr]

One of the best solutions to prevent overflow in buildcraft pipes is by using Gates. These must be crafted in an assembly table (Important: put a chest next to it to catch output). The assembly table needs power but it is powered indirectly using lasers. You put the lasers near your table and power the lasers with mj. It can be difficult for the beginner to make gates because the recipes don't show in vanilla NEI, so either trawl the wikis or install either NEI plugins or NEI addons (I forget which one does the buildcraft non vanilla recipes). Using gates to acheive what you are doing first get an Iron AND gate and an autarchic gate (I think that needs to be iron too) and some pipe wire (any colour). Put the autarchic gate on a wooden pipe next to the input chest. Then run either cobblestone or golden transport pipe to the macerator and run pipe wire the full length of the pipe. Put the iron and gate next to the macerator. Open the iron and gate GUI and click on the left slot until you see "inventory empty". Then click on the right slot until you see "red pipe signal" (assuming the pipe wire is red). Then open the autarchic gate GUI and for the left slot click until "red pipe signal on" and set the right slot to "energy pulsar". This means that the autarchic gate will only trigger the wooden pipe to pull out of the chest if there is room for it in the macerator. (You can also pipe into a chute or hopper above the macerator. If you do this set the gate conditional [left slot] on the chute/hopper to "space in inventory"). The buildcraft pipe system is worth getting into. It has alot of customisation options which can lead to some fun builds and preventing overflow can be an interesting challenge. There are lots of different pipes which have different functions (not all of them in vanilla buildcraft).

There are alternatives which you may prefer though

You can use vanilla hoppers for example. They are very good and can pull from inventories above them and eject them if there is room in the direction of the thin end. This is really useful and can do what your redpower set up could in the space of one 2 blocks including the chest (although it will only connect to one machine).

The final solution I can think of are extrautils transfer pipes. They work like hoppers except they can have pipes coming out the end. First you need to put a transfer node onto the chest. They have an internal buffer of one slot and they will pull one stack of items from your chest. Then they will scan the pipe network they are connected to for valid inventories and when they find one the transfer node will push the items into the valid inventory, in this case your macerator. Just run the transfer pipes to the correct side of the macerator.

 

[namiasdf]

The problem with gates is that there still is delay times. Routers are difficult to get early game and if you're not there yet (especially machine filters), creating a loop in the piping is best. You may even choose to install LogisticsPipes.

Putting a small 2x2 loop near the macerator which includes the pipe connected directly to the macerator will work. You can also replace the loop by connecting an iron pipe to the pipe that is directly connected to the macerator and have its output option back towards the "macerator pipe". Any overflow will simply go towards the iron pipe, fly back down and back into your system. If you have multiple items/multiple routes, your diamond pipe settings should reflect this backtracking of overflow.

LogisticsPipes seems to be a good solution, though relatively expensive as well.

 

[Jess887cp]

The problem with loops is lag though, which is why I prefer hoppers for just about everything that needs this kind of treatment.

 

[PoisonWolf]

The problem with loops is lag though, which is why I prefer hoppers for just about everything that needs this kind of treatment.

This. Especially if you're using engines to pump stuff out from the input chest. I can see hundreds of items being looped and once the limit of 100 items per pipe has been reached, stuff will start spilling out all over.

 

[namiasdf]

In this image I have 7 electric furnaces in a row. Connected above them is a row of golden pipes. On either end there are iron pipes which outputs are directed towards the row of golden pipes. In the top right you will see some sand ready to be smelted. I had the AE system throw 1000 sand (that's how much is in that stack), so there will be overflow. (1000 - (64x7) = 552, to be more precise).

The sand will simply loop backwards and forth until available slots are found. This will repeat until it's all gone.

 

[casilleroatr]

So long as the pipe length between the input chest and the target inventory isn't very long the gate delay won't matter if you use the gate settings I suggested in my last post. Also the "space in inventory" conditional will be triggered when every slot has at least one item in it. If every slot bar the last is full, the moment even one item falls into the last slot, the condition will be triggered. This leaves you with a 63 item buffer in most cases (including every case I could think of when you are targeting a macerator).

Also, the gates switch on and off very fast. I think it takes about 1 tick or some silly small time like that. The source of the delay is in the travelling through the pipes. If anyone here is unfamiliar with gates this might useful information. Just making sure everything is clear.

 

[PoisonWolf]

Routers are difficult to get early game and if you're not there yet (especially machine filters)

If that's the case, then there is a cheaper alternative that doesn't require any filters whatsoever. You only need 2 routers, one barrel, one diamond chest, 2 autarchic gates, and 2 wooden pipes. The gates are simply set to items in inventory > energy pulser. This approach is slower, but it gets the job done when resources are still scarce. Furthermore, this approach is easily expandable without need for further piping, gates, etc.

 

[namiasdf]

But you get to see a billion glass flowing backwards and forwards omg.

edit: How do you avoid overflow to the router? Doesnt' the autarchic pipe pump out faster than it takes the item to reach its destination or is the travel time instant when you only have one wooden pipe.

Either way, both will work. I plan on having that on display, hehe. I can also request more than one item type at a time, though as fast as your may be, I have a tendency of ordering thousands of requests from my AE, simply because I can. Stress testing perhaps? Is just fun.

 

[PoisonWolf]

But you get to see a billion glass flowing backwards and forwards omg.

edit: How do you avoid overflow to the router? Doesnt' the autarchic pipe pump out faster than it takes the item to reach its destination or is the travel time instant when you only have one wooden pipe.

Either way, both will work. I plan on having that on display, hehe. I can also request more than one item type at a time, though as fast as your may be, I have a tendency of ordering thousands of requests from my AE, simply because I can. Stress testing perhaps? Is just fun.

The autarchic gates, without a connected engine only pumps out 1 item at a time. By the time another item reaches the router on the left, the router would have distributed it (thus no overflow). Since there are no upgrades to the router, the router will evenly spread out 1 item at a time across the furnace in this case. And the output router will never overflow because the second autarchic gate will always pull out 1item/second and push it to the chest.

 

[namiasdf]

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

I like mine better.

 

[immibis]

With only one machine, it's simple to do this: (I = iron pipe, P = gold/stone pipe, M = machine, W = wooden pipe, C = chest)

WMIPPPWC

The iron pipe points into the machine. Iron pipes have the unusual property that instead of dropping items on the ground, they will send them back in the direction they came from, even if that's not the direction they're supposed to go - so overflow items go back to the chest.

With multiple machines:

IPPPPPWC
MMMMM

This doesn't guarantee that the items will go into an available machine, but it works Well Enough™. Items come out of the chest and have a 50% chance of going into the machine at each intersection. If all machines are full the items go back to the chest.

If your input chest is full because you have more items coming in than you can process, you can't avoid overflow.
RedPower has this problem in an even worse form, though, which tends to cause severe lag instead of simply dropping your items. (There is a bug that can cause items to not despawn near unloaded chunks, though, which can be just as bad)

Alternative, with multiple machines and gates:

PPPPPPC
P    W
PPPPPPIWC
MMMMM
 
or
 
CWPPPPPIWC
  MMMMM

Iron pipe is pointing left.
Set it up so the right pipe only extracts if the top/left chest is empty. This guarantees no overflow.

 

[whythisname]

If you decide to go for a loop you should consider using Insertion Pipes (I believe they're now part of TE). They will automatically insert stuff if there is space in an adjacent inventory, so if stuff loops all the way around you know all your machines are filled up with all they can take. You can detect that with a gate and use that to stop the engine pumping stuff around and start a delay timer/clock/whatever. I don't recommend using Gold pipes if you want to use gates though, in my experience the faster an item goes through the pipes the less reliable gates are at detecting those items.
You can make very "clean" loops by using Iron pipes, they don't drop items as easily as other pipes and are perfect for capping off a row of Insertion Pipes (so you have those Insertion pipes running along a row of machines and at the end you put an Iron pipe that doesn't connect to anything else, any items will be "bounced" back by it instead of spilled out of the pipe). This does mean the only place the detect if all machines are full is that Iron pipe at the end.

Though I agree with Jess that vanilla Hoppers are a really good solution for most of these things. Applied Energistics is also a very good option if you have some of that AE quartz. And finally, I believe the Extra Utilities mod has a "leak-less" item transport system as well.