I've been hooking up my buildcraft machines to my power grid via power pipes and iron OR gates. The gates send a red pipe signal if the Has Work condition is fulfilled (I believe this condition comes from Extra Bees, which I have in.) The red pipe signal triggers a redstone signal on my engines. This Has Work condition is not available on most non forestry machines, and the thermal expansion trigger for energy storage won't work with the fabricator since the heat is constantly dropping. What would be a way to have the engine only running when it has things to craft?
Thermionic Fabricator Automation?
- Thread starter Darkblock306
- Start date
Make sure you always put in the exact number of resources to craft (for example with a RP Regulator), then trigger the engine on "items in inventory". I haven't tested it myself, I hope it won't trigger on the fake items in the crafting grid.
A second solution involves an Item Detector and a State Cell to turn the engine on for a specific amount of time (experiment to see what works) every time an item enters the TF.
A second solution involves an Item Detector and a State Cell to turn the engine on for a specific amount of time (experiment to see what works) every time an item enters the TF.
Thanks for the advice, I'm going to go with setting the gate to items in inventory. Considering how it is not needed very often putting exact resources in won't bother me much.
I would like to see this machine block updated for BC gates but until then you should try just putting the machine on top of an energy cell, change the cell to high and place a pressure plate down to turn the cell on. routing your power to the cell underneath. i find that i don't use this block much at all so standing on a pressure plate while i use it isn't a big deal.
I have mine powered by a redstone conduit, and I change it from outputting to inputting manually whenever I use it. As I don't use it very often and don't do any automatic crafting with it, it doesn't bother me too much, same with the rolling machine. BC Gate support would be nice nevertheless, just for the sake of principle...