Undocumented feature! That seriously changes my preferred order of tech startup... I wonder if extractors have the same benefit? Though that's a lot of RS dust... I'd probably be better off investing coal in a battery...
Yeah. So if that's the case you process 9 iron and 6 rubber the old way while building the macerator; then your iron is conserved at the cost of 1 coal + redstone (and a copper cable) but you still need one more rubber to build your generator. Finally the extractor requires 9 more iron and 6 more rubber.
Given that you'd want 13 rubber, 17 iron, a bunch of tin and copper (you'll get more than enough in your travels, but you might want to make an iron over a tin bucket depending on your balance), at least one redstone block (but I vastly prefer 32+ dust so I can build a miner and never go down again; however that also requires several gold).
PS, you're going to want an iron pickaxe to mine effectively, so + 3 iron the old way.
Display More
Oh really? Interesting, if I remember correctly all machines will accept direct RS dust, and it will provide one operation for the machine you put it in, no matter what machines you put it in, I mean the core machines, electric furnace, macerator, extractor, induction furnace (may need changed) etc. All the basic machines accept it, even miners and pumps. The kind of stuff that doesn't is stuff that doesn't have a fuel slot, like mass fabricator, electrolyzer, and magnetizer.
Oh, and you said you need an iron pickaxe if you want to mine effectively, really you have to have it for redstone.
EDIT: So anyway, I start all my worlds with a macerator, this way I can stretch my iron as far as possible, I don't care about copper, tin, rubber, or redstone, those are all MUCH less precious than iron, just my two cents.