One "drop" chest

[CyborgTriceratops]

I've been watching some people to LPs in their FTB mod pack and I've started to get an idea for something I'd really like to do, but would require a lot of work and items. I want to tell it to you so you can help me out by pointing out improvements to the design, or issues with it.

I plan to have a single chest in which I can dump any item I want to, from dirt to skulls to armour. The chest will be attached to multiple wooden pipes taking the items out and putting them into an iron pipe, pushing all the items into a series of diamon pipes/other sorting devices. These sorters will repeatedly break down the items from bulk, into categoris, into single items, such as Diamonds in one pipe, and iron in another. It will than send these items into what ever I deem they need, such as iron ore into a macerator and then into a furnace and finally into a chest in my storage room. Obviously this is very resource intensive, as I'd need a macerator/furnace for each ore type and multitudes of Geothermal Generators and pipes, but I believe it would look nice as I walked/fly over the operation. A few questions I have though.

1. Are there ways to power wooden extraction pipes other than redstone engines, I want to power them via my geothermal generators.
2. Are there pipes that will rotate where they send output too, such as to 1/2/3/4/1/2/3/4 or is it only random? Secondly, what happens to an item that comes to a diamond pipe and it isn't alloted to go to any of the outputs?

Thank you for your help, I appreciate it.

 

[Bibble]

1. Wooden pipes can be powered by any BC engine. They are buildcraft objects, and don't accept IC2 power. You could attach an electrical engine to them, though.

2. A diamond pipe will distribute it's outputs across the possible (if there are 2 routes wood can go down, the proportion of wood that goes down each route is the same proportion of wood items in that direction's inventory in the GUI). What you are actually wanting is a distribution pipe from Additional Buildcraft Objects. I think it's coming, but waiting on a stable update.

3. An item that doesn't have a dedicated output from a diamond pipe will go down an unassigned exit, or pop out, if it can't do that.

 

[CyborgTriceratops]

1. I'll have to take a look at different type of electrical engines than. Maybe a solar farm might be the way to go to power this thing.

2. A Diamond block has 6 out puts, so I could technically seperate the 4 items/blocks out for each pipe segment, as I'd need one unassigned one to keep the items moving forward, and one blocked one to keep the items from back feeding. I'll also look into the distribution pipes.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Zelfana]

You won't need more than one wooden pipe on the chest unless you want to get all the items moving instantly. If you want to use lava as the power source you could use a magmatic engine, it should pull out a full stack at a time or close to it at least. It's more fuel efficient than using electric engines. Liquid transposer can take lava out of cells to put into it and also geothermal btw. It will return the cell that way, uses minimal MJ.

All pipes will select an output randomly by default. Exceptions are iron pipes which will only output to the open side and diamond pipes that are configured to output certain items to certain output in which case other items will select randomly from the remaining choices. Other special case is if an output is going directly into a machine or chest and the inventory is full in which case it will not go that way and goes another way if it can. If there are no other ways to go it will pop out, iron pipe will make the item go back instead.

You can do wooden pipe - golden pipe for boost - diamond pipes in a line with alternating stone and cobblestone outputs so they don't connect when next to each other.

 

[CyborgTriceratops]

The Wooden/gold/diamond set up is how I am planning on doing it, with the multiple wooden pipes to quickly empty the chest/s as I plan on having multiple quarries dumping into it. I'll look up the magmatic engine though.

 

[Zelfana]

You should have separate chests for every quarry and pipe to the same sorter instead to prevent overflowing of the chest. And then one output pipe is enough for each I'd say.

Btw, I also had this idea before and I'm going to make a backpack dumping chest. I'll have all the backpacks with me and then I just shift+rightclick the chest with them and stuff gets sorted. Might do separate chests for each backpack so it's easier to pipe.

 

[Mero]

I would wait for redpower to get finished to make your system. You will be able to do everything you want easily with it

 

[Enigmius1]

My experience has been that buildcraft pipes are not very good for sorting systems. I haven't had a chance to mess around too much with the BC gates yet but even those just seem kind of clunky and awkward. I have done some sleek and highly functional refining and storage setups with RP tubes.

You can get an idea of what I'm referring to if you skip to about the 3:30 point in this video:

 

[Flip]

This is just a comprehensive sorting system and there are several ways to do it. The way you suggest, with purely BC, is doable, but probably the most complicated and prone to accidents (dropped items, looping pipes). I personally use LogisticsPipes for this, but as others have mentioned RP2 is also a good solution when it gets released.

But to answer a specific question: yes, you can rotate output using a diamond pipe. You can put multiple of the same item in a single diamond pipe colored slot and that will determine ratios. So if you put 9 cobble in the first red slot and 1 cobble in the first blue slot, 90% of your cobble will go out the red pipe and 10% out the blue pipe.

 

[Zelfana]

This is just a comprehensive sorting system and there are several ways to do it. The way you suggest, with purely BC, is doable, but probably the most complicated and prone to accidents (dropped items, looping pipes). I personally use LogisticsPipes for this, but as others have mentioned RP2 is also a good solution when it gets released.

But to answer a specific question: yes, you can rotate output using a diamond pipe. You can put multiple of the same item in a single diamond pipe colored slot and that will determine ratios. So if you put 9 cobble in the first red slot and 1 cobble in the first blue slot, 90% of your cobble will go out the red pipe and 10% out the blue pipe.

It might be clunky and space consuming but there is no chance of accidents if it's done right. Cobblestone and stone pipes do not connect so they can run alongside each other and iron pipe makes items output to only one way.

Even diamond pipe has random chance of distributing, you can't get perfect sequential distribution of items with BC pipes. Doing what you suggest would mean 10% of cobble goes in the other pipe, yes, but it's a chance of 10% for every cobble that goes in, not every 10th cobble. It could put two in a row in there or go long time without putting any.

So yeah, sorting can be done but perfectly equal distribution not really. There is one way, though. If you have multiple wooden pipes taking items out of a chest and have them powered equally they will all pull out items at the same time effectively distributing them evenly as long as the chest had a number of items that is divisable by amount of pipes. Actually used this for automatic scaffold crafting when you input wood so that perfectly right amount of sticks versus planks were crafted.

 

[Evil Hamster]

I was attempting to build my own item sorting/processing system, but decided it would be too clunky/space consuming at the moment so my quarry gets some minimal sorting and I have several chests set up to handle the overflow. It only takes ~5 mins to sort manually an hour or more of quarry operation I can live with that until RP comes out.

 

[thedeester1]

Found out one thing by accident today...If a redstone switch is next to an Iron pipe, each time its switched changes the "Non return value of the said pipe" Like using the wrench.

Im very new to FTB and MC in general

I dont yet know if you can detect a certain item...or if it can be done when its in a pipe? I know you can filter through Diamond Pipes.

I dont know why you want to go away from Redtone engine's as a means to emptying the chest. If they are left on all the time they can do a good enough job unless you are in a team and the chest is filled every second. I still dont get it since there are 10 possible exits from a double chest and red stone engines are free and safe?

Ok you put all those pipes in they will link... Connect the wooden ones staight to iron ones and set the non returns to stop looping.

If it is possible (something else for me to try) Id connect redstone signals to Iron Pipes and detect whats comming. Using some of the circuits available and possibly pistons to make/break the signal you could sort items by switching the Iron pipe property. I cant see it been easy to do though.

I used a Redstone engine to empty a chest that had cobblestone filtered into it from a quarry, into a re-cycler. Once the redstone engine is upto full speed there are no gaps between blocks

 

[CavemanecaLP]

I'm actually doing something similar currently in my LP.
I've been using obsidian pipes as the inputs for the system, as well as direct from a quarry.
It's working out pretty well so far, you can see some of the details in this video...

 

[Zelfana]

Found out one thing by accident today...If a redstone switch is next to an Iron pipe, each time its switched changes the "Non return value of the said pipe" Like using the wrench.

Im very new to FTB and MC in general

I dont yet know if you can detect a certain item...or if it can be done when its in a pipe? I know you can filter through Diamond Pipes.

I dont know why you want to go away from Redtone engine's as a means to emptying the chest. If they are left on all the time they can do a good enough job unless you are in a team and the chest is filled every second. I still dont get it since there are 10 possible exits from a double chest and red stone engines are free and safe?

Ok you put all those pipes in they will link... Connect the wooden ones staight to iron ones and set the non returns to stop looping.

If it is possible (something else for me to try) Id connect redstone signals to Iron Pipes and detect whats comming. Using some of the circuits available and possibly pistons to make/break the signal you could sort items by switching the Iron pipe property. I cant see it been easy to do though.

I used a Redstone engine to empty a chest that had cobblestone filtered into it from a quarry, into a re-cycler. Once the redstone engine is upto full speed there are no gaps between blocks

Redstone engines take a bit too much space and even 10 is slower than one magmatic engine that can pull out full stacks. That's why I would use it. Yeah it uses lava but you can automate that, too, and also have a lever or something when you don't need it you can turn it off because it will go full blast even if there are no items to pull out. One thing I noticed, though. If you use any other engine you need to make sure its inventory is full or some items are bound to go there. Kind of stupid that the pipe connects to the engine's output.

Using iron pipes to sort isn't really easy enough, diamond pipes are way better. You're not going to make this kind of system until you have loads of stuff so the diamonds are not a huge deal.

You don't have to sort everything with this, obviously it will use a lot of diamond pipes if you want every ore to go different route etc.

 

[CyborgTriceratops]

Woah, a lot of replies while I was out. It looks like the general consensus is to wait until RP comes out, which I will probably be forced to do anyways due to time constraints and the mass number of resorces required.

The reason I don't want to use redstone engines is that they take up 2 spots, the engine and the switch, while powering them via redstone doesn't, plus I can power multiple outputs via 1 redstone.

Iron pipes aren't going to be used to sort, but to prevent loopbacks and double feeds. Diamond pipes (or other sorters) are going to the what sorts the items.

Second, somewhat related, question. Do Quarries destroy mob spawners?

 

[Zelfana]

I don't have iron pipes in the diamond pipe array, they are not needed there. Alternating stone and cobblestone pipes are the way to go. But they are needed in ore processing distribution and such. For pure sorting not necessary as long as you have a pipe for all the stuff that you didn't sort in diamond pipes. But I have ores going three different places so if you're not doing that you need some iron pipes to combine multiple outputs.

You can make quite a lot of sorting with the 8 diamond pipes you get for one crafting. I have all ores distributed to pulverizing/macerating/fortune and mob and scrapbox loot also handled with 5 diamond pipes. Couple more and you can sort most of the stuff you get on mining trips and general exploring. Less frequent stuff you won't need to sort separately, they will go to the "other" pipe. Cobblestone and the wooden tools I sort into void pipe straight away, there is no need to store those excessively. Igneous Extruder can make cobble for Recycler without costing energy.

Gold I feel is the bottleneck of material cost in this thing if your pipes will be quite long. Still, they are not absolutely necessary if you can live with the snail speed. When you have already established a good storage of resources you don't need the gold pipes but you probably can also afford them anyway. If you want the items faster you can still have your basic workshop to do that.

 

[CyborgTriceratops]

The "dump" chest will be in my main base, and will also be the main place I have iron pipes. The iron pipes will mainly be used so that I can combine all the wooden extraction pipes from the chest into one pipe with out having to worry about back feeds. I will use some golden pipes for places farther away, but not to many.

 

[thatsIch]

factorization did it for me. Instant dumbing, sorting, distributing and this onto barrels with 1024x64 items holding + image preview of content.

 

[Julian Zhou]

The best and easiest way to do this is with Logistics Pipes.

 

[CyborgTriceratops]

Hmm, I'll have to look into factorization and Logistic Pipes, I don't know much about either of them.