Is it possible to do the following with ME Interfaces?

[Brian Cherrick]

I got 3 coke ovens that I am trying to fully automate on an as-needed basis with AE.

I want it to smelt coal into coal coke in each oven. So if I use auto-crafting from the terminal to do 192 coal coke, it will drop 64 in each machine. Or if even possible, if I wanted to do 60, it would do 20 in each machine.

An ME interface on each oven doesn't work. 1 Interface branched off into 3 lines doesn't work. Anyone have any clues on how I can do what I want here, if it is isn't possible? Or can 1 item only be done period and no multitasking sotospeak?

 

[jaycron]

So, to clarify, an interface on each coke oven, with a recipe for coal coke in each? Have u remembered to orientate the interfaces so that the arrow is pointing towards the coke oven?

 

[Brian Cherrick]

That's what it was. Forgot to wrench each one for the arrow .... silly me

Thanks for pointing that out.

 

[casilleroatr]

There aren't really any round robin type things in applied energistics but depending on what mod pack you are running there are several options for you. If you have engineer's toolbox there is an item distributor which will perfectly divide its input across 3 all three (or any 2) of the sockets internal inventories which can then be routed separately to a coke oven. You might also be able to use routers to distribute coal perfectly among any amount of coke ovens although you may need to place a full inventory of any type (like a chest with a single cobble in each slot) in between ovens to connect them.

They are the only things other than turtles which can evenly divide a stack of items that I know of. Thermal Expansion item ducts have a round robin mode but it only works stackwise it doesn't split stacks up.

Buildcraft diamond pipes and MFR item routers can split stacks up on a probability basis if you don't mind not splitting a stack perfectly. For any of these solutions you will only need one interface.

As a final note, given the length of time it takes to process a single piece of coal in one of those ovens, might it not be better to continuously export coal into your coke oven network so you don't need to wait when you order a batch. You can use a level emitter to stop the export bus from decimating your coal supply.

 

[Badger]

And people wonder why I love extra utilities because of the way it's nodes use inventory search algorithms with the pipes as 'trees' rather than dumping stuff into pipes and waiting for them to explode, nothing gets moved unless it has a destination... so you just set up a chest of coal on top of the network with a single transfer node, and then have nodes and liquid transfer nodes attached to the SAME pipe on the bottoms of each coke oven... run the pipe past your fuel tank to store the cresosote, and the coke all goes into it's own inventory. easy as pie, no fancy surplus dumps or funky ways of handling overloaded pipes neccessary. The best part is, you can also set up a sorting pipe from a chest full of tree trunks, so if your coal chest runs out, it will start dumping in trunks as neccessary to at least keep the creosote flowing.... a few filters later, and you have 24 hour fully automated steel production, and a fully running boiler.

and XU is installed in most of the current modpacks

As an added note, if you don't mind 'minecart automation', a couple of liquid and storage minecarts can be rigged up to take coal from storage, fill each coke oven to capacity with coal, and then move on. It's a fun lightweight automation challenge, and all of the tools are low-tier within railcraft itself. I make it a challenge to NEVER actually connect pipes to XU nodes, which means the nodes alone have to do the brunt of the work, keeping things close together, no ugly pipes running around (except among interconnected nodes) and minecart automation for everything else. Admittedly I have to use 'homemade' watertowers (liquid nodes over endless water attached to liquid loaders) in order to keep a good sized boiler hydrated (do you have any idea how many watertowers it takes to keep a large boiler going? it's obscene!) but minecart automation makes up in elegance and coolness factor what it loses in compactness. and over large areas, who cares about compact?

 

[MigukNamja]

Thermal Expansion item ducts have a round robin mode but it only works stackwise it doesn't split stacks up.

The later versions (including the 3.0 official release) have adjustable stack sizes. I haven't tried it myself, but setting the stack size to 1 just might work for Brian Cherrick's purposes. Specific setup:

• 1x ME Interface pointed at a vanilla chest, w/coal to coal coke recipe in the ME Interface
• 1x TE3 Itemduct w/servo upgrade coming out of chest, with stack size set to 1 (shift-left-click the '-' button to quickly drop it from 32 to 1)
• Itemducts connecting each Coke Oven, set to round robin mode
• ME Basic Import Bus or similar to suck in the coal coke from each oven

 

[casilleroatr]

The later versions (including the 3.0 official release) have adjustable stack sizes. I haven't tried it myself, but setting the stack size to 1 just might work for Brian Cherrick's purposes. Specific setup:

• 1x ME Interface pointed at a vanilla chest, w/coal to coal coke recipe in the ME Interface
• 1x TE3 Itemduct w/servo upgrade coming out of chest, with stack size set to 1 (shift-left-click the '-' button to quickly drop it from 32 to 1)
• Itemducts connecting each Coke Oven, set to round robin mode
• ME Basic Import Bus or similar to suck in the coal coke from each oven

That is really interesting actually. I haven't played with any of the full releases yet but I look forward to trying it out. Alternatively, you could have an interface set to export a stack of one item at a time and round robin that out.

 

[Democretes]

Personally, I think it would be best if you just set up export buses to the coke ovens and then have a dark cable set up so that it disconnects the coke ovens whenever you have a good surplus of coal coke in order to prevent a big shortage when you need it. That stuff takes forever.

 

[DriftinFool]

After playing around a little, I found that a storage bus on a coke oven recognizes the coal coke as the stored item. The simplest way I can come up with is an export bus set to export coal, and a storage bus on the side of each coke oven. Your 4 ovens will keep 4 stacks of coal coke as inventory. Whenever you take some from your ME network, the export buses will refill it. One advantage to this method is always having 4 stacks already made and not needing to wait for it.