Manual section on processing machines

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Zefram 2014-08-23 21:12:20 +01:00 committed by RealBadAngel
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@ -848,6 +848,53 @@ discharging slot through the top. Items are not accepted through the
front, back, or sides. With a tube upgrade, fully charged/discharged
tools (as appropriate for their slot) will be ejected through a side.
### processing machines ###
The furnace, alloy furnace, grinder, extractor, compressor, and centrifuge
have much in common. Each implements some industrial process that
transforms items into other items, and they manner in which they present
these processes as powered machines is essentially identical.
Most of the processing machines operate on inputs of only a single type
at a time, and correspondingly have only a single input slot. The alloy
furnace is an exception: it operates on inputs of two distinct types at
once, and correspondingly has two input slots. It doesn't matter which
way round the alloy furnace's inputs are placed in the two slots.
The processing machines are mostly available in variants for multiple
tiers. The furnace and alloy furnace are each available in fuel-fired,
LV, and MV forms. The grinder, extractor, and compressor are each
available in LV and MV forms. The centrifuge is the only single-tier
processing machine, being only available in MV form. The higher-tier
machines process items faster than the lower-tier ones, but also have
higher power consumption, usually taking more energy overall to perform
the same amount of processing. The MV machines have upgrade slots,
and energy upgrades reduce their energy consumption.
The MV machines can work with pneumatic tubes. They accept inputs via
tubes from any direction. For most of the machines, having only a single
input slot, this is perfectly simple behavior. The alloy furnace is more
complex: it will put an arriving item in either input slot, preferring to
stack it with existing items of the same type. It doesn't matter which
slot each of the alloy furnace's inputs is in, so it doesn't matter that
there's no direct control ovar that, but there is a risk that supplying
a lot of one item type through tubes will result in both slots containing
the same type of item, leaving no room for the second input.
The MV machines can be given a tube upgrade to make them automatically
eject output items into pneumatic tubes. The items are always ejected
through a side, though which side it is depends on the machine's
orientation, due to a bug. Output items are always ejected singly.
For some machines, such as the grinder, the ejection rate with a
single tube upgrade doesn't keep up with the rate at which items can
be processed. A second tube upgrade increases the ejection rate.
The LV and fuel-fired machines do not work with pneumatic tubes, except
that the fuel-fired furnace (actually part of the basic Minetest game)
can accept inputs from tubes. Items arriving through the bottom of
the furnace go into the fuel slot, and items arriving from all other
directions go into the input slot.
administrative world anchor
---------------------------
@ -910,7 +957,6 @@ subjects missing from this manual
This manual needs to be extended with sections on:
* powered machines
* processing machines
* CNC machine
* music player
* tool workshop