My first foray into deep automation with my crafter invention has not been as simple as I thought, and it all seems to come down to logic.
I had often complained to myself that I’ve been in a constant need of more books. In time, the idea struck that I put my new crafters to use, and create a system that makes these books for me. On top of that I wanted to implement an automatic, on-demand storage solution for blank books and inking books. As soon as I would take books out of my full storage, my crafting setup would spin up, making just enough books to fill to capacity.
The first simple challenge I encountered concerned the crafter. I needed to find a way to consistently fill these crafters, trigger them, and fill them again. My first iteration provided the crafters with two pulses every time a slot was filled, which was a clear flaw. Given enough time, the crafter could completely empty itself and break, given that one of the items consistently runs out. My second design fixed this issue. It would evaluate two hoppers on each side of the crafter, ensuring that both hoppers are completely filled before it fires the crafter using compact logic gates. Of course, the key downside is that one must completely fill the input hoppers before the crafter can even begin to function.
The second design challenge was transportation. I had to figure out how to transport these items from my automatic farms to the mechanism, then to the storage chests. My first idea was hoppers. They’re very simple to set up and are immediately compatible with any mechanism. Still, they are prohibitively expensive. Five iron just for a single meter of travel is not economical in the slightest. It was off the table just seconds after I considered it. My third idea was mine carts. They were less expensive than hoppers, but they still required large mechanisms to ensure smooth operation—especially when these carts need to stop when its input or output flow is in use.
A recent flight to the end portal gave me inspiration. As I glided, I looked to the left and saw large ice peake close to my home spruce forest. I realized that I could use this ice as a surface to glide my items across large distances, with the help of cleverly placed flowing water. I gathered ice and made it into a compressed, heat resistant form, and also took sand from the Great Northern Village ruins to make into glass. With these I made transparent tunnels that would chute items from place to place, and it worked just as well as I hoped. The implementation was perfect.
The third challenge I have yet to solve is on-demand. I need to create a mechanism that will kick in when a chest is less than full, and deactivate when full again. A comparator is an easy pick, but timings and gate logic is something I still need to consider. My only worry is that I will cause overflows, considering the time taken for a single item being made to it arriving in the chest. It may even be something unavoidable, and that is not a bad thing. It may even be easier to evaluate the capacity of the hopper feeding the storage chest, rather than the chest itself.
In all, fantastic progress. And I already am thinking about my next automation journey before this one is even done.