Sweet thread indeed. Started on Monster recently and wanted to give rotary a try. bit of a learning curve but its got some major potential.
I currently have 6 steam engines through a 4:1 gearbox to a grinder supplying 4 hydros which are powering a boring machine via some more gearboxes. works fine but a bit slow at ~21s/action.
I also have a 2nd grinder powered by a gearbox and 2 hydros supplying lube to 6 hydros for charging and other uses. All canola is being fed by a 4x6 (4 fan) farm powered by 3 steam engines. Keeps up without issue (constant, slow surplus of seeds but still a surplus). got a crazy ethanol setup going, at 11k ethanol and counting (MFR treefarm/sugarfarm is key there, lol) The only issues I'm having atm are the extractor, I don't have a good way to keep it fully powered yet. Currently its powered off 2 magnetos sourced by 4 hardened cells, enough energy to process 32-48 ore in a go before draining. So that's still a bit manual but the ore return is crazy worth it.
**Point of warning**, industrial coils do indeed explode if overcharged. Had one I forgot about early on and it blew a nice ~15-20x15-20 crater in my base lol. So charging area is now isolated and encased in obsidian, did some blast testing in SP and found that 3 layers of basalt cobblestone or 1-2 layers of obsidian is enough to contain the possible explosion.
Base after explosion
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Blast testing
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In regards to the boring machine, I did some testing in SP and hooked it up to a turbine, it was going at 3.9s/action! So this thing can get seriously cranked up with high amounts of speed and the torque requirement is pretty low comparatively. I don't have mine enchanted yet though.
Some other threads I read said that an extractor can run off just 2 gasoline engines, I can strongly confirm this is NOT the case after testing in SP. Took 5 engines and several gearboxes to make it function 24x7 Performance engines fared a bit better but also require a catalyst (redstone, blaze powder or one other i forgot). I think doing steam>magneto is going to be the simplest way of getting an extractor constantly running but id like to run it off rotary to see what it takes. As long as you have the raw material supply a single pair of fermenters can easily keep up the ethanol production and can be run off DC engines and just need a water supply.
I also want to add that despite the bit of learning curve this is a really fun mod and I wish other mods would include such an informative book in game! lol
Jet fuel is going to be a serious endeavor though.
*edit: also if you have them aqueous accumulators are much better at providing water for these machines (less machines) so I run accumulators into RC liquid pipes for just about everything. It also supplies enough water pressure for sprinklers quite easily though I haven't set any up yet on the server.