industrial grinders, worth it or not?

[khorozm]

Although you can gain more yield from a grinder, it is expensive, and require a horrible amount of energy to support it.
I have a question that, why don't I put the resources into a better mining system (like more quarries), instead of using an industrial grinder?

I wonder if you actually use it, or just for specific ore?

 

[Bagman817]

I use it quite a bit. Originally for Gold and Copper as I was short on both, now pretty much for Ferrous Ore, and when I actually do manual mining, I silk touch Nicolite and Redstone and run them through. Pro-tip: you can have a grinder on each side of the multi-block (I wish I'd known that when I first built mine).

 

[PonyKuu]

I wanna build one or four and it doesn't matter that it requires tons of energy ^_^
That thing is cool. But I'll make one more 36HP and two steam turbines first. I want them to replace my pulverizers in my AE automatic system.

 

[silenos]

Imho the ind grinder is only worth it if you use chemicals instead of water in it, like ferrous ore + mercury cells. For bulk processing I prefer pulverizers since they also give some additional stuff but are way more compact, easier to setup, cheaper and need way less energy.

 

[PonyKuu]

I think pulverizers give you less additional stuff. And they don't handle silk touch stuff as good as Industrial Grinder does (put some coal ore in grinder and get thorium. Same for uranium ore/plutonium and so on)

 

[CodaPDX]

Yes, if for no other reason than they give you extra iridium when you grind up sheldonite.

 

[Mash]

I use it for the things that require it, such as getting platinum dust from sheldonite, as well as the iridium nuggets.

For the other 99% of my ore processing, I use the rotary macerator, which is much less energy-costly, and I believe it's also significantly faster.

 

[Neirin]

If you use the exchange rate Power Converters provides a max speed quarry uses 115 EU/t. An Industrial Grinder uses 128 EU/t. Not much difference, particularly since the quarry will spend that energy just as readily on cobblestone as diamonds; whereas a grinder will only spend energy on useful things (if setup right). Also, additional Grinders are cheaper than additional Quarries (avg. cost of 7.5 diamonds vs. 11, not to mention Quarries need Titanium).

The more auto-mining you do, the better the industrial grinder gets relative to more mining. In general it boosts ore output by about 25-50% compared to a macerator (and that doesn't count extras like diamonds from nikolite). If you have 1 quarry, adding a 2nd would give you a 100% bump in output. Adding a 3rd would give you another 50% boost. At this point, if you consider the bonus items you get from the grinder, I'd say it wins handily. Once you are at a 4th quarry (33% increase in mining), the grinder is the best investment you can make for resource gathering hands down.

Of course, the real value of the grinder is in the extra goodies you get. Highlights include extra iridium, extra platinum, and enough thorium to run quite a few nuclear reactors. If you are deft with a silk touch tool or are using an arcane bore you also get several amazing bumps from using the grinder (i.e. nikolite becomes diamonds).

The extra cost of a grinder relative to other processing methods pays for itself pretty quickly. Also, if properly automated, the grinder uses less power than a rotary macerator. Since you can't really turn off the rotary macerator, its overall efficiency is terrible, even if its draw is manageable.

The one disadvantage that the grinder has that you didn't bring up is speed. No matter what you do, the grinder will always take 5 seconds per ore (same as pulverizer). At a certain point, getting processing times down is more important than block efficiency (at least for more mundane items, I'd still use the grinder on Sheldonite). In that regard, nothing can compete with overclocked IC2 machines. A fully overclocked macerator can handle 100 times more ore throughput than a grinder.

 

[Ako_the_Builder]

Short answer: yes

once you have it, and associated things, automated you get more resource than other methods and never have to touch it again.

My setup: a grinder on each face of the casing (so 4 grinders), 1 set to use mercury cells, other 3 set to water (might switch a water to sodium persulfate one day). Water cells are automated, mercury cells are automated, tiny dusts into dusts is automated, dusts into ingots is automated. I've not had to touch my grinder setup for weeks, it just works.

 

[khorozm]

i am using a frame miner set up close to DW20's one
it takes over 5 rotary mac to keep up
i wonder if i will gain more yield if i reduce the mining speed of the frame miner, and put the energy into grinding ores
i have 8 grinders sitting there and i am only using one of them to get mainly platium

btw is it if i create a mystcraft world with hell and sky biomes, i will get the gregtech's ore?
i dont want to tear out the landscape of the nether and the end

 

[Neirin]

i am using a frame miner set up close to DW20's one
it takes over 5 rotary mac to keep up
i wonder if i will gain more yield if i reduce the mining speed of the frame miner, and put the energy into grinding ores
i have 8 grinders sitting there and i am only using one of them to get mainly platium

btw is it if i create a mystcraft world with hell and sky biomes, i will get the gregtech's ore?
i dont want to tear out the landscape of the nether and the end

It sounds like you have a system that is energy limited and requires extreme levels of throughput. That is exactly the sort of system a rotary macerator was designed to accommodate. You should really separate out some of the rarer ores to be processed by the grinder so you can cash in on some of the extras (i.e. easy platinum from ferrous ore), but your situation kinda screams "rotary macerator!"

If you let your system idle at all, I'd recommend looking into overclocking a normal macerator. Higher EU/t, but since rotary macerators pull energy even while idling (it's small, but it adds up fast) they tend to actually cost more total energy.

Even if you want to stick with a rotary macerator you should overclock it. Overclocking a rotary macerator doesn't work like overclocking a normal macerator - instead it increases the max RPM. This increases the speed it macerates at, but not the EU/t requirement (unless something has changed recently I've missed). An un-upgraded rotary macerator needs 288 EU to grind 1 ore. A rotary macerator with 15 overclockers goes twice as fast and only needs 144 EU per ore. Source

 

[KofteistKofte]

Totally worth it.
My setup is 8 grinder (6 water, 2 mercury) with 2 casing, 4 blast furnace and 4 induction furnace and i'm happy with them. Crafting and build part is little bit annoying and energy setup, but when you finish, totally wort your all work.

 

[hotblack desiato]

of course the grinder takes quite a lot of energy, but on the other hand: grinding coal ore gives thorium, grinding monazit ore gives thorium too, grinding uranium ore gives 2 uranium dust + plutonium dust.

so, although it consumes energy, it also makes nuclear energysources far more efficient.

 

[brujon]

It's a simple question of applying a few if X then Y statement.

IF Gregtech = Installed AND = Hard THEN Always use the Industrial Grinder after you have the infrastructure to support it

IF Gregtech = Installed AND = Easy THEN Only use the Industrial Grinder to get the SUPER RARE stuff.


That's basically how i roll. Industrial Grinder is pretty awesome for getting more of the stuff you simply absolutely need, but can't get large quantities off of centrifuging and electrolyzing stuff, chromium, iridium, platinum, titanium... The advantages it gives you over other mod-powered ore multiplication solutions isn't IMO worth the hassle if you're not playing on hard mode, since you don't need as many of the stuff as you normally would...

 

[Bloodfrost]

Its funny how many people ask this... the answer is pretty simple.

You should always have one, i dont think i'd go to the effort of automating it unless you have alot of back end resources but its 100% worth having for the odds and ends.

Personally i'm a macerator kinda guy but i always have my industrial grinder because i seem to always have a large amount of the cells you use for additional output...

So yeah, its worth it, build one, use it when you have the cells on hand... other than that? i prolly wouldnt bother automating it.

 

[netmc]

I concur with everyone else. If you play with GT on hard mode, it is required. Otherwise is completely optional. The bonuses you get from ores are more than worth it. I've done automation with it, but not required. there are only a few items you want to run through it instead of pulverizers or macerators. anything that gives titanium, platinum, iridium, chrome, thorium...

there is a thread here titled "what to I do with..." or something similar. It lists all the ores and what is the best method for getting the optimal output. the grinder is on the top of the list for just about everything. Pulveriser is almost always second. Fortune III pickaxe is either 1st or 3rd depending on item drops vs grinder output.

 

[DoctorOr]

I concur with everyone else. If you play with GT on hard mode, it is required.

So funny and ignorant at the same time. The Industrial grinder doesn't change at all between "hard mode" and "easy mode". It is better than the pulverizer or macerator at any price to build them.

 

[Mash]

If you simply want ore processing, use macerators. They're a lot faster, and will use a lot less energy. In fact, they can be probably about 5 times faster for like... a fourth of the energy cost.

If you absolutely need the tiny piles of nickel/gold/iron dust that Grinders give you, then feel free to use them in your standard ore processing. As it stands, I've never really been hurting for any of those. That being said, it's always worth it to have a Grinder built, if only for certain ores.

 

[DoctorOr]

Because clearly, 2x dust is better than 3x dust!

 

[Mash]

In the time it takes that grinder to put out 15 dust, my macerator could put out 50.

Just sayin'.