Machines do not work

I have assembled a system of: bronze burning box, a bronze boiler, pipes and a bronze engine that produces kinetic energy. I tried to connect different machines to the engine. Auto hammer works well, but the compressor and sifter refused to work, I tried to change their settings with the help of tools, but this did not help. All machines are made of bronze. The engine has enough steam. I think that engine power is not enough, but is it? What’s the matter?
I apologize, I do not speak English well and this message is made by Google translator

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Make sure the Energy mentioned in the Tooltips adds up, you need 16 KU/t constantly to power a Machine, so a pure Bronze Setup might not work.

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If you’re low on steel one can probably get away with a steel steam engine connected to two bronze burning boxes and boilers.

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It’s not exactly material friendly, but if you don’t have any steel I belive you can make it work with 3 invar b.box/boiler connected to a single bronze engine

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But bronze engine have a limit 16ku/t output energy, its not enough to compressor, sifter etc.

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Might have your machines around the wrong way Xenon, if you hooked up three invar boilers to a bronze steam engine, I reckon that sucker might explode, or at least conk out and need a smack with a mallet.

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I tried setting it up in creative and the engine didn’t seem to go over the green. In theory 3 invar boiler give exactly the max steam a bronze engine can handle, unless my math skills suck.
4 invar boilers (aka a dense boiler) overloaded the engine very quickly.

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Was just looking there, indeed three invar boilers would reach the 96 steam/t limit of a bronze steam engine, but that would only produce the max 24 KU/t @ 50% efficency of a bronze steam engine.

I think that means it would only be able to give the compressor half of that, being about 12KU/t, 4KU/t under the minimum to run the compressor.

I could be way off on my assumptions here though.

As far as I know there is no way to link steam engines, so the only next tier up that would work is the steel one, all others produce 24KU/t max.

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In my creative setup I just checked if the machine attached to the engine (a bronze crusher) was turning on at all. With a bronze boiler it stayed off, same with 2 invar boilers. With 3 it started doing the animation, meaning it was on. I didn’t actually check if it could actually crush ores, but I assume it could do it.
As I understand it the 50% efficiency of engines means that it has a cycle of push-pull, making the recepies slower and more lossy (because the progress bar goes up only during the push part), but it doesn’t actually cut the output in half.
If it did, even steel engines wouldn’t work (24/2 = 12KU/t, and the minimum required is 16)

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Well half power of a fully operational steel steam engine is 16 KU/t based on my theory, so it would still run, but might have trouble with certain ores.
Try this, run a strong bronze steam engine and see if it can power a bronze crusher. It’s max is 384 steam/t so it’s going to take a bunch of boilers but according to my theory is should produce 48ku/t at its upper limit which is ample to run the crusher, if I’m wrong it’ll overload.

At 384 steam/t you’ll need 8 bronze boilers or I think 2 strong bronze boilers.

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I’m not on my pc right now, and I’m about to go to sleep =P If I can I’ll give it a try tomorrow, but I’m working all day.

But I remember in my old world I had a steel boiler -> steel engine -> bronze crusher setup that worked no problem, even if it was slow
…until I messed around with the pipes and my whole base exploded, but that’s another thing u.u

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Not a problem, I’ll modify one of my constructs with the setup to push a crusher, I think it requires similar amounts of power. I do everything in survival though so it’ll be a while before I get a result. :grin:

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So two strong boilers is too much, the steam engine just packs in after a little while but it seems to run fine on one. So there is your answer @Stalker if you’re looking for a setup without steel.

One dense bronze burning box
One strong bronze boiler
One strong bronze steam engine
One Bronze Compressor (or crusher)
and a large bronze pipe (add a brass valve for safety :grin:)

@Gregorius what did I calculate wrong? I was sure two was what I needed. Is there a thermometer tool analog for KU measurement?

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Nothing to actually measure it, you can only really imply it. If the Boilers are stable then they do output properly. Maybe the pipes aren’t symmetrical enough? not sure.

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Lets see, two burning boxes outputting 96 hu/t to boilers accepting 96 hu/t outputting 192 steam/t. I’m sure this part is all fine as I can measure 192 steam/t in a pipe.
the pipe shifts 450 steam/t with a limit of 900 steam but theoretically should never reach that limit.

I’m expecting 384 steam/t but I think I measured more last night?
the pipes are set in series to one another with boilers under both and one end connected to the steam engine.

Going over 384 steam/t would cause the issue I was having of the engine overloading and making that awful thukthukthuk noise, :joy: should I be expecting more than 384 steam/t at any point? I’ll need to make some more measurements later to be sure.

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Try to put the engine in the middle, not one end. Basically make it symmetrical. GT pipes are weird with their sloshing

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Its not even the sloshing anymore, its literally just execution order issues when balancing the Pipes…

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Not sure how to do that with two pipes, putting the engine at any other point would be the same regardless of where I attach it to the two pipes, ha. :sweat_smile:

EDIT: I guess I could use three pipes and attach it to the middle one?

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Well, this is weird =/ I was testing the setup with 2 invar boilers and after 5-10 minutes of doing nothing it suddenly started crushing ores (I actually put ores in the crusher this time). The setup with 3 invar boilers started up as soon as the engine went green, but then it began overheating and eventually it stopped, which didn’t happen in yesterday’s test…

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Are these standard invar boilers? Give me a description of your setup, what burning boxes, steam engine and pipes are you using, also how many pipes? I take it you’re powering a bronze cusher like me.

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