Tutorial #4: Modular On Demand Autocrafting
This is where it gets fun. Setting up auto crafting using Retrievulators is the most resource (EMC and server) efficient. It will only create and craft items as they are needed. No need for having chests full of items and pipes constantly pumping items that will most likely never be used. It can be tedious and time consuming to setup but once you have it going it is a modular setup that you can easily add to and expand what items it creates or crafts.
EMC Collection
EMC IS YOUR FRIEND!!! Tekkit Classic revolves around EMC and to setup this type of auto crafting you will need a lot of it. This is my collector room. There are only 8 MK3 Collectors per Power Flower and it creates plenty of EMC to do what I need.
Supplying your factory with EMC
You may have noticed in my EMC room that there is no Filters or anything to extract the items from the Condensers, this is because I am using a Retrievulator setup to retrieve Diamonds from all of them at once. You could do this with only a Retriever but then it would require a Timer or some sort of Redstone signal. In the setup pictured above, I somewhat trick the Retrievulator by placing an item in the T slot that will never be found in the Condenser so it will always looks for Diamonds that it can retrieve.
You will need to have a Condenser creating Diamonds that will supply for factory. Diamonds work well as a single Diamond is enough EMC to fill a Condenser with low level EMC values while a stack of them is enough to request to fill Condensers up with items such as Gold.
The Condenser setup pictured above changes the Diamonds into Red Matter for better storage and then it is transferred (In another room) to another Condenser when needed to supply Diamonds.
Crafting Modules
What you see in this picture is the modular setup that can be repeated over and over for any items you require to make. The beauty of this setup is that, for example, once you add in a crafting table that makes Copper Cables, you will never have to craft them again. Any recipe that requires them from now on will request them from there. This works by connecting all of the modules together at the back with Mag Tubes and Accelerators.
The picture above shows modules with an Automatic Crafting Table MK2, for a module to create items with an EMC value replace the Crafting Table with a Condenser.
Something to take note is that if an item crafts a certain amount (eg, 6 x Copper Cables) you need to request 6 in the Retrievulator of the module that is using them. The same goes for items that only craft 1 at a time, you can not request more than it makes or the Retrievers will keep looking for that amount as items do not stack inside Crafting Tables. For example you can however request 64 Rubber from a Furnace.
Stocking Chests
One thing I like to do is setup chests that contain crafted items that I am always using and then have items retrieved from my factory when it dips below a certain amount.
As you can see in the above picture the T side checks the chest for 64 Pneumatic Pipes and if it has less that 64 it will retrieve 8 until it has 64.
Overflow
Overflow can become a problem with this setup because Retrievers will send for more than it actually needs sometimes and the items will be rejected and find the closest available chest. To overcome this I place Chests inbetween each module connected to the Pneumatic Tubes. This way when items are rejected they will go into these chests and be used up next time they are requested.
Top Loading Machines
Some machines like Alloy Furnaces and Macerators need raw items to be inserted through the top face. In this case you cannot use the module design mention above.
Also note that in this picture I was trialing a setup that extracted from the Alloy Furnace and into Chests. I do not think this is necessary and the output from the Alloy Furnace could have probably been hooked staight into the Mag Tube network.
The Mindcrafters
I cannot take credit for this design. It comes from a group of guys who make modded Minecraft tutorials on Youtube called The Mindcrafters. The tutorials they make are awesome and I highly recomend you check them out. Especialy the video of a walkthru of their build "The Megalith"
If you have any questions, comments, tutorial requests or I have made any errors, please post a comment and I'll get on it.
