Reguarding Buildcraft Pipes and Multi-Inventory Population

[Doc_Goblin]

Hello,

Basically I'm designing a factory that uses aspects of Rail Craft.

Its a tower of 10 coke furnaces with pipes that bring down the coke and creosote, and another pipe that takes up the coal/charcoal.

The issue I am having is I need to populate all the furnaces with coal equally, as coke cooks at 1 per 3 minutes, the aspects of 10 ovens is to cook 10 every 3 minutes, ergo 200 an hour. now with the setup I am using, a straight gold pipe with the out lets, it randomly populates the furnaces.

I had considered using a gate to detect if something is in the furnace, and as long as 1 item is it changes the junction of an iron pipe. this would continue all the way up the line so that each furnace got 1 item. and if the bottom and top are seen as "in use" as in 1 piece of coal in both the engine extracting the coal from a chest world stop, as to stop the top one becoming full and allowing for even spread, ergo using the resources more efficiently.

Im looking for a way to be able to stack 64 coal in each coke furnace, but for it to add a single unit to one furnace, then skip to the next, and then after it has place a singular unit in the top furnace to then start again from the bottom.

I understand Computer Craft, Redstone in general and all the aspects of gates, but I cant think of a quick and efficient way to do it, as I haven't use build craft specific gates before so I don't know the limitations on the number of signals and so on.

Some one must have created a simple system using one pipe to populate inventories simultaneously from the same pipe.

Any help would be appreciated, and thanks for your time.

*Below is an image of the tower (in a work in progress form) and on the left side is the pipe network in question, the front side is the retrieval and there is a fluid retrieval opposite.*

[DOUBLEPOST=1370183651][/DOUBLEPOST]P.s. I realise they are called Coke Ovens, but I started with furnace and thought.. what the hell

 

[EL_Kurto]

So you want it so for every 10 coal you put in 1 will always go into each?

 

[b0bst3r]

Put a vanilla chest in between each coke oven (that serves no purpose or connects to anything) so that they are all connected and use a router with a machine filter upgrade (set to coke ovens) and that will fill each in turn. The chest simply serve to chain all the coke ovens together which is a requirement of the router.

 

[Doc_Goblin]

So you want it so for every 10 coal you put in 1 will always go into each?

Exactly!

Put a vanilla chest in between each coke oven (that serves no purpose or connects to anything) so that they are all connected and use a router with a machine filter upgrade (set to coke ovens) and that will fill each in turn. The chest simply serve to chain all the coke ovens together which is a requirement of the router.

Ill give this a try, the more variations the better, so I can interchange with different mod packs and in survival.

how exactly do I apply the upgrade? I cant just click it.[DOUBLEPOST=1370185762][/DOUBLEPOST]Right I figure out how to install the upgrade. Now with my tower it ahs a 1 block gap between each oven, do I set a chest in these locations and then have a router at the bottom touching the coke over, or do I need chests all the way up the side?

 

[Harvest88]

Put a vanilla chest in between each coke oven (that serves no purpose or connects to anything) so that they are all connected and use a router with a machine filter upgrade (set to coke ovens) and that will fill each in turn. The chest simply serve to chain all the coke ovens together which is a requirement of the router.

I'm using furances as the "filler" for routers to do our eventually set of 600+ or so coke ovens. It's a pain in the rear to do all those ovens since they're soo slow.

 

[Doc_Goblin]

It put 26 into the top 7, then 2 in the 8th lowest, and then nothing in the bottom 2, no matter how many stacks I put in.

edit: ok more and ore stacks and now there is 26 or so in each. ill have to keep trying it out to see how well it works. Thanks for the Help with this approach though it is not equal population

But! if anyone knows a way to do it with build craft and or red power pipes, id like to know this as well, so I can design it with or without the other mods.

I like the simplicity of the router, because in theory I could use it to extract the coke, but they are expensive in comparison to pipes.

 

[sir_schwick]

With RP2 as of 1.4.7

It is a combination of Sorting Machines and Paint. You can use a Pneumatic Tube as the output to each oven. However if that does not work, Relays always work. You will want to organize the ovens into groups of 8, because the sorting machine does not have more slider columns than that. Each group will be serviced by its own Sorting Machine. That machine will send using Anystack Sequential to eight different colors. The trick is to put a piece of coal in each column and then give it a different color. Then paint the tube/relay that connects to each of the relevant Coke Ovens one of those colors. Under this mode the Sorting Machine will distribute the coal one at a time into each different Coke Oven.

Now I mentioned the groups of 8 thing because you need a similar system to distribute the coal to each of the Sorting Machines servicing a subset of 8 Ovens. Once again, have a chest that connects to each subset Sorting Machine. Have a tube of a different color for each one. Have that connect to a Sorting Machine attached to wherever you initially stick the coal. Set up this Sorting Machine the same way you did the last. Now each subset will receive an equal population of coal. If you have more than 64 Coke Ovens you can have a third layer of sorting, but this is getting silly at that point.

 

[MySideYourSide]

The logistics pipes mod has a supplier pipe that can keep machines stocked with certain amounts of materials

 

[b0bst3r]

Well I used to use 2 RP retrievers for coke ovens on a very slow timer, they wont spread evenly but once filled they move onto the next one. What I did was fill each coke oven manually first then turn on the retriever system so that 1 retriever filled all the coke ovens (the other retriever emptied), just make a loop so excess can return to storage or your pipes will be filled with coal no place to go.

 

[Loufmier]

if its 1.4.7 we are talking about, then you can use rp managers(you`ll need 11 for this setup) to keep ovens stocked with x items in them

 

[MilConDoin]

If you are fine with having all ovens filled with a full stack of coal: Desing the pipes, that they lead into a diamond pipe per oven, which is configured to accept coal in the direction of the oven. This way the coal will first try to fill the oven. If the coal cannot be placed there (= full stack of coal already) it will choose the next possible exit. This is the original Buildcraft method of an insertion pipe. If you're already on 1.5.x, you can use the insertion pipe from Thermal Expansion.

 

[Bibble]

Ok, the simple way here is to use what you have already implemented, and the pipe that you are looking for is the diamond one. The diamond pipe has a number of behaviours that would be useful here:
1. Overflow. As of 1.3.2 (probably) the diamond pipe will attempt any insertion designated in the filter, if that is not available, then it will send the item along another possible direction. In order for this to work, the pipe must be adjacent to the inventory, with the relevant colour containing the appropriate item, and another direction (not the source) must be BLANK.
2. The pipe will distribute items according to their distribution in the filter. Note, this behaviour overrides the previously described one. This means that if direction A has 1 coal in the filter, and direction B has 2, then the coal will be distributed with 1 going to A for every 2 going to B.

Essentially the behaviours do the following in order.

1. Attempt to send the item in the described direction.
2. If there are multiple directions, distribute the items according to the filter.
3. If the item cannot be sent in the direction (because the inventory is full), send down the next described route.
4. If there is no described route, send down the first available blank route (which is not the originating one).
5. If such a route does not exist, eject the item into the world.

For your setup, this is what I would do:
Move the entire thing closer to the ovens, replacing the gold pipes with sandstone to prevent insertion. At each insertion point, place a diamond pipe. The direction to the oven would contain a single coal entry, the "continue" directions would contain as many as there are ovens left in the cycle. So, for example, lets assume that up is White, and to the oven is blue. in the filter, one of the squares in blue would contain coal, and the others would be blank. For White, 9 would contain coal (might need to use another colour and cycle it into an iron pipe to continue for that). This would mean that, for the first oven, 1 coal would be inserted for each 9 that continue on.

To keep everything moving, I'd also, at the top run the pipe back to the originating chest, with the extraction method being an autarchic gate. Put an iron gate on the top oven and say "if space in inventory, the red pipe signal", which activates the gate. This means that the system would pump until the top oven was full. When it is no longer full, then the excess would cycle back to the chest.

You could also put the gate on the bottom oven if more than 10 items are extracted in the time it takes for 1 coal to move from the chest to the oven,