Hi guys.
I would need some piece of advice on my scrap/UU-matter factory. I'm having some difficulties running it constantly with my actual setup. I can't send screenshot for now so I'll describe it as best as I can. Also, I'm a beginner at IC2 so I'll probably say silly things lol.
It's the first time I use a mass fabricator/recycler so I'm still a bit unsure I'm doing it right, however I've managed to feed the MF with scrap using buildcraft pipes connected to the bottom of the MF. I was happy with my setup and confident it would work fine from what I've searched on Internet but I started the factory line only to realise that not only scrap does NOT change anything to the MF cycle and still gets consumed in the process, but it also goes through a stack of scrap in about 1 second (drained my MFSU in just under a minute of testing lol). Impossible for me to feed the MF at this rate.
I read somewhere that it takes 7 recyclers to be able to supply a MF constantly on a 128 EU/t current. I read the maths, I understood them and they made sense. So, I ran a gold cable from a MV transformer (itself supplied by a MFSU) to 2 "flowers" of recyclers, one with 3 machines, the other with 4. In the middle of these flowers are chests directly pumping the scrap into the MF. Each recycler is equipped with a overclocking upgrade (to keep up with the input rate of the cobblestone and other crap I've decided to recycle), a transformer upgrade (obviously) and an ejector upgrade (if I get the name right) to feed the inner chests with the scrap without the need of using buildcraft pipes.
Using the same gold cable, I connected the MF a bit further down the line, about 25 blocks away from the MV transformer. theoretically, the current coming to the MF should be roughly 118 EU/t.Running a full cycle should take just over 7 minutes (1 million EU / 118EU-t / 20 ticks per second / 60 sec per minute = 7.06). Note that I'm on SSP so no server dependencies. It was obvious when I first turned on the MF that it'd take much less time than 7mn to run the cycle and it went through my stack of scrap in a blink, without any amplifying effect. Unless it's not the effect I was after, but the process didn't seem to speed up. I then tried with scrap boxes and then the GUI was showing "Amplifier 45000", used the stack of boxes in 1 second and produced many UU-matter.
You need a piece of scrap for every 17.86 EU/t, so on a 118EU/t current I need 6.6 pieces of scrap that we can round up to 7 scraps per cycle. Now, scrap doesn't seem to speed up the process but according to the tekkit wiki, it makes more UU-matter with the same amount of energy. So this is where I get confused; does this mean that the MF will go through a full 7mn cycle using scrap but will produce 6 pieces UU-matter for 1 million EU? If so, why does it use a full stack of scrap but the progress has only gotten up a few percents?
Then, the remaining question is why does my MF cycle so quickly? I'm not fully aware of this packets business, it's all a bit obscure for me but my understanding is that 3 powered individual gold pipes joining together into one will carry 3 packets of 128EU/t current. How this is useful, I'm not too sure. If anyone could clarify this for me.Anyway, I mentioned earlier that I'm using the same gold cable to power my 7 recyclers and my MF. To do so, I pulled the cable under the 7 recyclers (setup in 2 "flowers"), resulting in the cable connecting to itself on 2 or 3 spots. So, could it be that this intersecting gold cable, even though getting only 1 packet of 128EU/t current from only one MV transformer, ends up piling up EU packets from itself and by the time the cable arrives to the MF, it's accumulated several packets making the cycle much MUCH faster?
A related question would be, what difference is there between using scrap or scrap boxes in the MF? What solution is best?
Finally, I have a final big question. It's related to buildcraft pipes but since you guys are used to using these, I thought I'd ask anyway;
To feed the 2 flowers of recyclers (one array of 3 machines and one of 4 machines), I'm pumping items from a double chest using 2 outputs with 2 redstone engines, joining into one single pipe (with a few golden pipes for speed and iron pipes to prevent items to contraflow back to the chest) which then splits over the flower into 3 pipes to feed the 3 recyclers from the first flower. I then have an identical set up for the 2nd flower but this time the pipes splits in 4 to feed 4 recyclers. My problem is that the pipes are quickly overflowing and items are being spilled out of the pipes. I really don't understand why as even though I recycle differents items types (mainly different types of cobblestone from the mod underground biomes), the recyclers have a decent pace. So why are these spilling out? Note that the recyclers input are iron pipe to prevent items to spill at this particular spot if the recycler is full or is already using a different kind of item. Some items don't even seem to make it to any of the recyclers but it's hard to say as the golden pipes make them go much faster.
Thanks for your comments.
