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How do machines work?
- Craft, place, open. Every machine is a recipe; place it and right click it. E closes its screen.
- Slots. Ore, fuel, product… each slot only takes what suits it. An output slot is only for taking out.
- Fire. Machines with a fuel slot burn anything that burns. See the burn times in smelting.
- Hand or cable. The metal mill, the loom and the sewing machine are turned by hand, four times faster on a powered cable.
- Tanks. Right click a machine's tank with a bucket to pour a liquid in, or with an empty one to fill it; a cylinder does the same for gas.
- Away from the keyboard. Fill it, leave, come back.
Which machines make fire and metal?
| Machine | What it does | Runs on |
|---|---|---|
| Campfire | Four sticks on a row of three logs. Cooks raw food on a spit in 12 s. | Fuel |
| Fireplace | A 2 × 2 m hearth: lights and warms the room, cooks on a spit or gridiron. | Its own logs |
| Furnace | Ore into iron, copper, gold, titanium, lithium and aluminium; iron into steel; the kiln for glass, terracotta, bricks, cement and silicon; logs into charcoal; the Raisonite alloy. See smelting. | Fuel or cable |
| Metal mill | Rolls ingots into sheets and steel plates, copper into wire, sheets into small and large pipes, wire into power and signal cables, silicon into optical fibre. | Hand or cable |
| Hyperbaric press | Presses six alloys, and diamonds from coal, at 30 to 200 kW. See forging alloys. | Large cable |
Which machines work cloth?
| Machine | What it does | Runs on |
|---|---|---|
| Loom | Weaves two raw fibres (wool, flax, cotton or spider string) into a fabric: you choose one of 16 patterns and two dye colours. | Hand or cable |
| Dye vat | Recolours wool blocks, glass, fabric, candles, cables and sewn decoration; bone meal bleaches. Fill it with two buckets of water. | Nothing |
| Sewing machine | Sews fabric into curtains, rugs, cushions, wingsuits, camouflages, paragliders, a knitted sweater and a fur coat. | Hand or cable |
Which machines make power and help me build?
| Machine | What it does | Runs on |
|---|---|---|
| Generator | Burns any fuel, or oil and kerosene from its tank, and gives up to 5 kW to its cables, burning only what they draw. | Fuel |
| Concrete mixer | Cement, sand, gravel and water into wet concrete; with a steel ingot, reinforced; with a dye, coloured blocks; with limestone, plaster. | Fuel |
| Architect's desk | Draw a piece of your own, save it as a blueprint, build up to 8 copies in the materials you choose. See the architect's desk. | Nothing |
| Beehive | Bees make honeycomb from the flowers nearby; glass in it fills honey bottles. See husbandry. | Nothing |
Which machines handle oil, gas and rockets?
| Machine | What it does | Runs on |
|---|---|---|
| Tank | Stores 16 m³ of one liquid or one gas. The large tank holds more for a factory. | Nothing |
| Refinery | 1 m³ of crude oil into kerosene, petrol, diesel, natural gas and tar; crude or natural gas into plastic; kerosene and an empty dewar into a dewar of RP-1. See refine oil. | Fuel or small cable |
| Gas plant | Water into hydrogen and oxygen; fills empty dewars with liquid oxygen, liquid methane or liquid hydrogen; on the Moon, ice into both. | Small cable (6 to 9 kW) |
| Fueling tower | Pours full dewars, one after another, into the rocket standing next to it. | Nothing |
| Gravity generator | Gives a ship 0, 30, 70, 100 or 200 % of Earth's gravity. 2 kW at 100 %. | Cable |
Questions
Do machines work when I am not there?
Yes. The server runs them every tick, even with their chunks unloaded. Come back to the finished products.
What is a powered cable?
An electric cable fed by a generator (or another source). Machines with a cable port draw power from it; hand-turned ones then run four times faster. See power.
Where do I see a machine's recipe?
In the recipe book, or press I on the machine. See crafting basics.
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