Tutorial: How to run a mass fabricator at maximum efficiency

  • A mass fabricator can be used to create the versatile uu-matter, but is a complex and resource-intensive process.


    Here's a way to make it simpler.


    Note that the following tutorial makes the following assumptions:
    -You are powering your fabricator using a nuclear reactor. I'm using Rick's cheap MK 1 design on the 'useful reactor designs' sticky in the nuclear engineering forum as a baseline; it's a very useful design.
    -You are using buildcraft -- the most efficient cobble -> scrap recipe was created by buildcraft, and the mod has a bunch of useful tools for automating scrap production.
    -Overclockers are not being used; I might edit this post later if I learn the formula dictating how overclockers affect energy usage.
    -The decimal point is represented by a period, not a comma -- just in case.
    -Finally, You are comfortable with math.


    Let's begin.


    According to the wiki, making a single UU matter at the lowest possible efficiency uses 1 Million EU. Luckily, there is a much better way to create matter: scrap. Adding scrap to a mass fabricator will make it work six times faster, and reduce energy usage likewise. A scrap-powered mass fab will only use up 166,666 EU per matter, but producing matter at this pace requires 34 scrap. Scrap can be produced at a recycler, but on average, it takes 8 recycler operations (35 EU without an overclocker) to produce a single scrap. I takes an additional (34•8•35) 9520 EU to produce matter at optimal efficiency, for a total of 176,186 EU/matter, and creating a single matter consumes (34•8 ) 272 blocks/items. That's a lot of stuff.


    The best material for recycler food is cobblestone -- it's widely available, quick to mine, and using lava, infinitely renewable. Again, however, 272 blocks of cobble are required to make even a single piece of uu matter -- but luckily, there is a way to multiply the number of recycler operations you get from a piece of cobble by 8/3 -- 3 cobble can be crafted into 8 buildcraft cobble pipes, meaning that only (272•3÷8 ) 102 blocks of cobble are necessary to create uu-matter, less than two stacks.


    But, you say, does the pipe recipe not require glass? That it does, but luckily there is a way to create glass from cobble. Cobble can be macerated into sand at a cost of 625 EU, and smelted in an induction furnace at the cost of an additional 208 EU (For simplicity's sake, I'm assuming that you have a solar panel wired up to the induction furnace to keep it at maximum temperature). One glass is used to create 8 pipes; as a result, using this method to create 34 scrap consumes an additional (34•[625+208]÷8 ) 3,540 EU, for a total of 179,726 EU per UU matter.


    As a result, 1 UU matter can be created from 179,726 EU and 102 cobblestone by:
    1. Macerating 34 cobble into glass, then smelting it (in an induction furnace) into 34 glass (costs 3,540 EU total)
    2. Using your cobble and glass to craft 272 buildcraft cobble pipes
    3. Feeding those pipes into a recycler to produce 34 scrap (Costs 9,520 EU total)
    4. Feeding 166,666 EU and 34 scrap into a mass fabricator to produce a single UU matter.
    For ideal sorting of cobble so that 1/3 of the cobble becomes glass, use a diamond pipe with two cobble in one output slot feeding an automatic crafting table, and 1 cobble in a different output slot feeding a macerator -> furnace -> original crafting table.


    Using a 40 EU/t reactor, and powering everything except the mass fab using renewable energy/(geo)generators, a total of (4 million ÷ 166,666) 24 UU matter can be created from (102 • 24) 2,448 cobble (38 stacks plus 16, about 2/3 the capacity of a double chest)


    Note: Using diamond pipes, cobble can be easily sorted to make exactly 1/3 of it go to the macerators -- either route cobble out of three inputs, only one of which leads to maceration, or route cobble out of two inputs, one of which has twice as much stacks of cobble as the other -- cobble will be twice as likely to go down that route.

  • Very interesting, now my question is:
    Replace cobblestone with an automatic cactus farm. Should I convert the cactus to scrap,burn it to aid in energy, or have a balance of the two?

    I5 2500K | 4GB Cosair Vengence | Radeon 6850 | Rosewill 600w PSU | GigaByte Z68MA | CM Elite 311 | Dell 19" 720p (upgrading soon!)| Hitachi 500 GB 7200 HDD | LG 24X |Windows 7 (Genuine!)
    Alblaka in a Lightning Rod suggestion thread...[/size]

  • Ideally, you'll also want to use RedPower for the block breaker. It's easy to set up a trio of ShdwDragn's clockless cobblegens to feed into one tube, which can supply a chest or feed directly to the IC machines.
    3 of them in a horseshoe pattern can supply enough cobble to create 2 stacks in about 30 seconds.

  • Very interesting, now my question is:
    Replace cobblestone with an automatic cactus farm. Should I convert the cactus to scrap,burn it to aid in energy, or have a balance of the two?


    My instinct is to use the cactus to produce scrap and power the mass fab with a nuclear reactor, although using cacti to power the recycler seems interesting. 1 cactus can be burned into 125 EU, so you'd need (35•8÷125) 2.24 Cacti to produce a single piece of scrap.

  • And you can increase efficiency even more by using Equivalent exchange to convert 1 cobble to 4 dirt, saving YOU EU, resources, and a great deal of cobble.
    HAYO! P.S Who came up with HAYO in the first place? :wacko:

    1. OMG CREEPER RUN AWAY!
    2. Go away, you creeper wierdo!
    3. What ever, I'll just go around.
    4. Hup, over their heads I go!
    5. Okay Mister living grenade, I'm going to knock you into those skeletons, and I'll follow through with a nano saber. Understood? FOR THE ALMIGHTLY DRAGON LORD!

  • Actually A small note. Some people seem to miss that the Mass-Fab can run on incredible amounts of EU/t, since the packets can't be large then 512EU/t and thus will be accepted by the mass-fab without redesigning the environment (well... don't use a good CASUC...).


    My Mass-Fab was powered by 20 Solar-Arrays in 1.0. So it consumed 10240EU/t :P


    Also Eloraam constructed an incredible mass-fab utilizing a lot of Geo-Gens MkII.


    Actually a nice way with Redpower is producing Covers :P unfortunatly there isn't an easy way to automate this. Oh and another note to EEv6. Covalence Dust! 8 Stone + 1 Charcoal = 40 Covalence-Dust.

  • Actually A small note. Some people seem to miss that the Mass-Fab can run on incredible amounts of EU/t, since the packets can't be large then 512EU/t and thus will be accepted by the mass-fab without redesigning the environment (well... don't use a good CASUC...).


    My Mass-Fab was powered by 20 Solar-Arrays in 1.0. So it consumed 10240EU/t :P

    In my 1.0 world I had a massfab running on about 3600 EU/t using 6 parallel MFSUs (<3 Ice-fed CASUC) and a high voltage solar array (adv. machines addon). I didn't even try to keep up with scrap production.

  • In my 1.0 world I had a massfab running on about 3600 EU/t using 6 parallel MFSUs (<3 Ice-fed CASUC) and a high voltage solar array (adv. machines addon). I didn't even try to keep up with scrap production.


    Just feed the recyclers UUM to produce Scrap :P


    Actually is it worth it producing something out of UUM just to use it for scrap-production? I have no idea which UUM-Recipe gives you the most pieces per UUM-blob.



    PS: Anybody else thinking the UUM-Achievement should be renamed "Nothing else matters"?

    • Official Post

    Please confirm if i'm right:


    One Scrap needs approximately 30000 EU to be completely consumed by a Massfabricator.
    That's 1,000,000 EU / 34 Scrap rounded up to the next logical number (from 29411 EU).


    I need this information for timingreasons to input exactly 30000 EU per piece of Scrap if i'm right.


    Edit: I forgot the 0.16-factor so it needs only 4901.96 EU what is rounded up 5000 EU per Scrappiece, so Snoochys following Post is right.

  • also i'm not sure if you people were aware but you can power 1 Massfab from all 6 sides with glass cables making it eat 3072/t, it eats though scraps so fast that the amplifier number doesn;t even have time to go down, it stays at 5,000 and your scrap gets devoured at like 8 a second. what i did on my old server was made a large wall covered in MFSUs and ran a web of cables across the front, then lead one cable to a MassFab and wraped the cables around it in a block. the way to turn it off was to either use a splitter cable, cut the cable manually, or just simply let it fill up which was usually the case. i also used a monster trap that made about 24,000 items an hour to fuel my recyclers. once you have more scraps then you'll every want just set up a MassFab4 and have the scrap input and matter output on 2 of the sides and i garruntee you'll still eat through scraps faster then you could imagine. you would have to be recycling roughly 90 items a second to keep it with it.

    "the more people i kill, the better the chances are that i got the right one" ~Goblin Assassin: MtG

    • Official Post

    Or you could power the mass fab with 1 Glass cable, with 10+ MFSU's attached. 5120 EU/t power. . . Very quick UU production, indeed.

    Or: 9 :MFS-Unit: + 3 :MFE-Transmitter: + 4 manned :Water Mill: = exactly 5000 EU/t


    I can use Tin -> Energyconverstion for that, since Watercells are accepted in a Watermill (IC²-1.80).


    That gives me 8000 - 307 EU per Tiningot, using a Pump costs additional 800 EU.
    Charcoal is only 4000 - 307 EU.
    And Coal is used for Superfuel.

  • Just for the hell of it, I'm think of going into creative and pump a billion EU into a mass fab.....

    1. OMG CREEPER RUN AWAY!
    2. Go away, you creeper wierdo!
    3. What ever, I'll just go around.
    4. Hup, over their heads I go!
    5. Okay Mister living grenade, I'm going to knock you into those skeletons, and I'll follow through with a nano saber. Understood? FOR THE ALMIGHTLY DRAGON LORD!