The right furnace for your automated factory

1st Official Post

    So, recently i started playing online a lot more on a Multi-Mod Tech Server and I have a question for you now:
    What is your preferred choice of furnace to automatically process dusts with?


    Now, most people would say "go Induction n00b", but the redstone signal to keep it heated is messing with the filters I use to get the output. Because of that and - maybe - some resources saved, I keep thinking "would overclocked electric furnaces not be the better choice"?


    What is your weapon of choice to tackle all the stuff that wants to be cooked up?

    Quote from MadMax2910


    What is your weapon of choice to tackle all the stuff that wants to be cooked up?



    "go Induction n00b"


    My automated factories, have enough space to not interfer with any nother machines.



    By the way, you can put a lever in any side of the induction furnace.

    • Official Post

    The Arcane Furnace of Thaumcraft, which is averagely duplicating every 32nd Item, but its not SMP.


    Otherwise i'm using a normal Electric Furnace without Upgrades (cheap and efficient) for my Factory and a blutric Furnace (because of the blutric Alloyfurnace right next to it) for Quicksmelting stuff in my Workshop (even if i havent used it by now, because of my Factory, which is of course just autosmelting everything, what can be smelted).

    Induction can work perfectly fine with filters, one just has to think for a moment.
    aka: don't put the lever directly on the furnace, they can take an indirect signal so put it on the block in front of the furnace then switch it on there.

    Quote from Ook

    Induction can work perfectly fine with filters, one just has to think for a moment.
    aka: don't put the lever directly on the furnace, they can take an indirect signal so put it on the block in front of the furnace then switch it on there.

    Ninja'd me

    Or you could just swap out the filters for retrievers. Then you could have levers on your induction furnaces and still have RedPower item extraction, but better.

    Quote from JaffaKree

    Or you could just swap out the filters for retrievers. Then you could have levers on your induction furnaces and still have RedPower item extraction, but better.


    except filters are *tons* cheaper than retriever. Filters just need gold and a red doped wafer as the major components. Retriever need 2 ender pearls.

    Quote from Ook


    except filters are *tons* cheaper than retriever. Filters just need gold and a red doped wafer as the major components. Retriever need 2 ender pearls.

    I'd suggest either getting an athame (RP2 anti-enderman weapon) and going enderman hunting, or trading with someone who has excess ender pearls. One side benefit -- a filter can only service 1 machine, a retriever can service as many machines as you have connected to your network.

    Quote from quantumleaf7895

    I'd suggest either getting an athame (RP2 anti-enderman weapon) and going enderman hunting, or trading with someone who has excess ender pearls. One side benefit -- a filter can only service 1 machine, a retriever can service as many machines as you have connected to your network.


    "trading with someone"? not everyone plays on a server ya know.
    plus endermen are rare-ish spawns (I almost never see them) and hard to track down or require a ton of resources and a large effort to go to The End and kill the dragon.
    Filters are relatively cheap and easy to make.
    Tough choice there.

    • Official Post

    I made a nice High-Y Flushing mobtrap based on Kiershar's design. I was easily able to get enough ender pearls to go to the end after killing all the endermen that had teleported onto the roof of the trap. Plus I made it switchable between an XP-farm (which also drops rare drops) and just regular grinder. Gives me ridiculous amounts of everything I need.

    Lesson 1: Watch over your crops....

    If I can swing it I usually go for a Electro Furnace with two or three transformer upgrades, 5 energy storage upgrades, and maybe 6-8 overclockers. But if I can't be arsed to get all of that: induction furnace.

    I worked on a fairly big cobblestone production factory for awhile, and I did consider using induction furnaces. It took a lot of tinkering but I discovered that it does depend on what methods you're using to move your items around.


    Are you using Buildcraft Redstone Engines? Because if so, the heat level of the engine matters. An electric engine struggles to keep up with the item flow from a redstone engine even at blue heat levels if you try it without any overclockers. However, only minimal overclocking is necessary to bring it up to speed. My setup uses 2 overclockers in each electric engine, which is enough to keep up with the engine at blue level. I also usually implement a Redpower 2 circuitry system that cycles power between two redstone engines attached to chests (both filled with the same stuff) so that only one is ever running at the same time. This means there's always at least one engine running, and the engines have ample time to cool and stay at blue heat.


    Of course, this is only good for a low EU using slow style factory. With only 2 overclockers per electric furnace, and only keeping redstone engines at blue, your system is going to run fairly slow. If you're going for something like a steam engine which moves whole stacks of materials at once then you're going to require an induction furnace most likely, and maybe even multiple ones. But that would run bleedingly fast, for sure!

    Obsession with Automation is a good thing, right?