Posts by SpeedDaemon

Quote from MJEvans

Using Redpower2, instead of buildcraft, why not combine a timer and counter? The timer constantly pulses while the reactor is on, and the counter ticks up/down based on the timer. When it's done you'll need some kind of latch (RS or toggle) that also forces the reactor off. A toggle of either kind might be used to switch from count-up to count-down and reset things again.

That's exactly what I've been doing
Actually, since my design maintains a constant temp when off, you could use a 1 second timer and a 5,000 counter, and then be able to start and stop the reactor at will without losing your time. (you'd still have to add a bucket or two manually every time you restart, though... might see if I can upgrade the design tonight to be more automatic.)

Counters' output will stay on once they reach one of their limits, so unless you're decrementing it for some reason, there's no need for a latch.

I like the leafy awnings

Since you have redpower, you should make some cover panels out of plank blocks and hide that redwire for the lights in the ceiling...

Quote from AkhkharuXul

I had a clever idea on how to stop the reactor perfectly without resorting to crazy timers [cos I was going to use an ~5000s clock as well].
The new buildcraft 3.0.0 has gates... if there's a re-enriched isotope cell in the chamber, send redstone signal
Should work flawlessly for 9k+ reactors... not so much so for < 9k And buildcraft pipes hook up with redpower tubes decently which will work fine for the input side.

Was about to test it when I had an unexpected explosion which caused massive lag (I thought Buildcraft had a severe leak).
Though, 3.0.0 is in alpha so, probably a lot of people won't use it til it gets more finalized.

Well the timer isn't THAT crazy... It's a 100s timer feeding a 50ct counter.

Regarding your comment above about only 50% or so becoming re-enriched... I just made an interesting discovery.
I was watching my reactor inventory when my 5000s timer ran out. All 20 DI cells lost their progress bars at exactly the same instant that the reactor shut off (so that part works perfectly).

However... They didn't become RE U-cells right away. After that point, it appears that there is some random delay before they're "done."

So, two back to back half-runs should yield 40 RE U-cells, but I might have to take them out and toss them into my production reactor for a few seconds to finish them off (it's a fairly conservative 500EU/t CASUC design, so it can handle a little extra heat easily).

In any case, for this design, once you start it up, it's hands-off. Another (accidental) side effect of this design is that when it's got all the cells in (which generates 20 heat/sec, even when the reactor is off) it's perfectly heat-neutral with the cooling system off, so you don't have to rush with pre-heating. Put 5 buckets of lava in, and it will sit at 10020 heat until you start it up, and get up to about 11020 before the first water bucket gets there. Then just drop two in manually to get it back down to 10k. It also has some pistons that allow it to be configured for 1h/s positive, neutral, or 1 or 3 h/s negative on the fly.

Edit: Design as run for this test: http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…=1b10101001201521s1r11r19
Also, .schematic link added to OP

Prototype is built, and currently running rock steady at 9770 or 10020 heat every time I check with the thermometer...

I put in a timer to cut the reactor at exactly 5000 seconds, so hopefully I can get exactly two runs out of one set of u-cells...

We'll find out in another hour or so...

Quote from Irontygre

The design I suggested will net you 80 cells per run if you do the swaps at the right times. (BTW, I didn't come up with it, I've seen it tossed around in some of the other CASUC breeder posts).

Basically, you get most breeding efficiency if you have every U cell touching 4 DU cells. Which leads me to the question why Akhkharu didn't set up his reactor with that in mind.

Ah... I see. So with the design you posted, you'd have to swap isotope cells touching one U-cell halfway through the cycle, the ones touching two 1/4 way through the cycle, etc.? Basically you get 2x the recharged cells per unit time, but the same per input u-cell (in return for micromanagement).

Quote from chc4

Is there any way to make redstone engine warm up without actually pulling the ice? Or else it would just quickly fill up the reactor....

I do have redPower insalled,also.

Well, I guess you could remove the wood pipe until the engine is warm. Or put some obsidian pipes under the reactor to recirculate dropped ice. You'd need a system like that if you use RedPower machines, anyway.

You could just wait for the redstone engine to warm up fully before starting things up... Then build the system around that timing.

Or use redpower filters/transposers instead, where you have much better control over the timing.

I managed to get my reactor to run a full cycle without locking up, but I was the only one online during that time and didn't go too far afield.

I know /time set will lock up every active RP2 machine...

Hopefully RP2 pr4 will fix this

Quote from AkhkharuXul

Similar concept to my breeder. Theoretically you would actually be able to charge 2 sets of isotopes with this configuration during one cycle (as long as the heat remains above 9k).
Which is really good, 40 cells charged with only using 5 uranium cells.
Watch out, Rick will probably say that this is his design *chuckles*.

2 sets? Does that mean that starting at 6k or 3k I might still get one full set out of them? The planner only shows 100% at 9k starting.

Might have to look into putting a timer on it, in that case

Quote from Irontygre

If you're aiming for 9,000 heat, it's already a babysit breeder, why not go with this internal configuration:

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…=1a10101001201521s1r11r19

And run your bucket injector at 1 bucket per second?

Well, my goal with this was to recharge as many cells as possible in one cycle using the smallest amount of uranium...

The production reactor itself can recharge 12 cells in once cycle (sacrificing a little over 50% of EU generation to do so) in the following configuration, with no mods to the reactor itself. I think it might even be able to handle 6 cells to 50% during a full production cycle also.
http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…=1010101011201521s1r11r10

So if I'm going to put in extra uranium anyway, I probably wouldn't bother with a separate breeder...
But if I can squeeze a little extra efficiency out of it, it might be worth the up front cost.

Also, pardon my "n00blear" engineering, but why would this be a babysit breeder? (Aside from the fact that the cooling is balanced on a fairly thin edge.) 10k out of 14k heat should be below the turn-things-into-lava threshold, if I'm understanding things correctly.
EDIT: and filling up the empty spaces with reactor plating would bring that down below the 70% threshold (should only have to worry about evaporation)

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…=1b10101001201521s1r11r19

Would like comments/suggestions from someone more experienced with breeding.

Now that I'm messing around with CASUC reactors, I quickly realized that feeding them is a challenge!

The linked design has the external cooling tuned to produce exactly 250 excess heat/s, making it easy to balance bucket input at one every 2s.

It would be a bit fiddly to get started without blowing yourself up, but once going, it should be stable.
Redstone the reactor, and add the internals.
Add 5 lava buckets to bring heat up to 10k. This gives you about 20 seconds to start it up before you risk dropping below 9k with the first bucket, and about 16 seconds before cratering after you start it up to get the first bucket in.
Alternatively, add 6 buckets to put you at 12k, which means you'd have longer to get the buckets running, then let 4 or 5 cycle through to cool down to 9.5-10k before starting the reactor.

At least, that's the theory.

Was also thinking you could use pistons that extend into the water flow around the reactor to fine-tune the external cooling on the fly.

EDIT: schematic download

Quote from kkabcd

Will you release a download when its done because this is such and amazing design

Probably depends on the other people on the server. At a minimum I could load up a backup on a parallel server instance if someone wants to look around.

I don't think a combined macerator & furnace are a good idea...
Tin, copper, and gold dust all have recipes that use the dust rather than the ingots, so you don't really want to blindly smelt it all. In fact, I don't keep many ingots around at all. Mostly I store the dust, and drop it in an induction furnace as needed.

Clay... Do you smelt it into bricks, or make clay dust out of it?

In this case, I'd rather have the control rather than the convenience.

Quote from Raging Industrialist

What is providing the precious EU? Are you going nuclear or are you going to use gigantic solar arrays. Personally, i would recommend some geothermal generators. They are efficient, and will not explode.

Probably a combination... A 3-chamber Mk V CASUC reactor can easily do 500EU/t with room left for a little (suboptimal) breeding during normal run cycles, and a little margin for error. I'll probably have one of those in there somewhere. I'll probably also have some sort of BC/IC Fuel->EU generator in there, too. BC fuel is extremely cheap/dense energy storage.

Definitely no huge solar arrays, though. I'll probably have some solar and wind built into the roof (depending on elevation) to handle power vampires like keeping induction furnaces hot, and of course to power the Mob Kebab wall ... In fact, I might make it a server rule that solar arrays have to be below a certain size.

My feeling is that having lots of storage is the best way to go. Then you can get by with much less generation capacity, since you can draw from storage when you need it, and recharge when you're doing something else.

You might also want to ask yourself if it's even worth using CF in a place where it's not exposed to light

One layer is already blast proof to anything but a nuke/meltdown, so you don't gain anything there. You can't see it, so the paintability doesn't matter. And it's more time consuming to manufacture/place.

Consider leaving it hollow (gotta put the wires and pipes somewhere, right?) or using a cheaper fill material.

Quote from FnordMan

yup, I can attest to that. i've got a large lake in the nether that I drained a bunch out of with a Buildcraft pump. In other news: didn't know this before today but BC pumps do have a max range, it's just a pretty large max range.

Do tell!
I've been wondering about that...

Quote from anorend

do you think you could post a screenie when your done with that part of your base? would be very much appreciated

Well, as I can't even start until after 1.9 is released and the mods stabilize, that might be a while

But I do have more prototypes...

This is the input to the auto-storage. The filters in the bottom/middle send stuff to the appropriate chests. The tube they feed off of would end up in an overflow chest to catch uncategorized stuff. The transposers at the top lead to an overflow tube, and are necessary as check valves to keep stuff from backflowing into the wrong chests.

This is the output side. The chests will be divided into categorized "banks" to hopefully keep the number of different items in each bank under 32.
To get a specific item, you'd set 5 or 6 switches to select an item, which would turn on the appropriate colored wire (the red one, in this case), then turn on the switch for the appropriate bank, which starts the timer, which is AND-ed with the select wire to pulse the transposers.

These are the different circuits that select individual items within a bank of chests. You need one circuit (2x3x7) for each type of item. This test set is just one of each type of circuit (for 6 inputs, you need 7 basic types; the others are just musical chairs with the input wires). In the real thing, they'll be stacked 8 long and 2-4 high on each side of the cable bundles. Hopefully Eloraam will get her RedBus system finished, in which case all of this could probably be programmed into a computer block instead. Just imagine what kind of Hell this would be without RedPower

Quote from HeadHunter67

Yeah, I discovered that as well when working with your 3-chamber MkII-1 EC design last night.

The Readtor Planner may not take that into account when calculating maximum operating temperature or how long a reactor can run. It would seem that the projected results are under the assumption that the specified amount of cooling water will remain in the chamber at all times, regardless of the hull temperature.

Fortunately, I was able to pull the cells, swap out the cooling components and apply ice to get it back down to a temperature where I could replace the water, so there was no incident. But it shows that even presumably "safe" designs can have unforeseen effect.

I think accepted best practice is to put the water source block up above the reactor out of evaporation range. Then the flowing water around the reactor can evaporate, but gets immediately replaced.

Didn't know that either...

I added it to the Nuclear Reactor wiki entry, since there's no mention of it there, either.

Quote from FnordMan

my big problem is you can't extract stuff out of chests with the tubes, it's purely for the output of her machines right now.

Sure you can... just stick a transposer next to the chest, input side facing the chest. Add a timer to pulse the transposer, and you can pull stuff out even faster than a redstone engine on a wooden pipe.