Sadly no pictures today, just too tired to upload and link them. I just finished a prototype of a new type of cobble farm that uses, well TNT. I haven't seen this type of farm yet, but that's not saying it doesn't exists. How it works is more or less you place a TNT charge and a set of cleverly placed pistons move the charge and builds a cube of cobblestone using multiple cobblestone generators around the TNT charge. It is then detonated and water streams bring the cobble to your feet. There is a buffer for the TNT so you need not worry about placing TNT each time. I'm still trying to figure a way to safely read the TNT reservoir size so as to shut down the machine once all the TNT has been used up.
Still a ways away from full use however as I want to compact and simplify the circuits.
You could make this fully automatic if you were to use creepers as the blasting source. JL2579 did it with his crew and it works quick ingeniously. However that being said it is not a small build by any means and what you have sounds plenty easy enough to build, nice job!
I would suggest a bud censor at the end of the reserve that deactivates the machine I could show you how to build the deactivation switch if you like. but the rest of it your on your own I do simplistics that large stuff is to complex for me to care about for to long. hit me up at GT:devilarmor1991 I will have it built and ready for you to see if you want.
I've already built one that uses creepers, but it really wasn't all that great because creepers blast damage is kinda random, The hardest part of this was actually building the cube 'quickly'. I mainly did this because of the amount of TNT we were beginning to stockpile. My next goal really is to spend alot of time compacting and perfecting the circuitry,
Thanks for the offer on the bud switch, I already know how to build 3 different types, but I think there are better ways to handle this. I'm thinking of using a stacked system that I can use to push additional TNT charges, and by reading the stacked level I can determine how many TNT charges remain.
I also want to be able to adapt it to be able to construct bigger cubes. We have a wood farm that can grow and push wood blocks into a block for easy harvesting, but adapting this machine to push the wood blocks into this new harvest machine I can pretty much automate wood collection as well, but this will require some testing as i'm not entirely sure the size of the cube I would need to construct to harvest wood, and for that matter, a sand machine ect.... Pretty much any resource I can somewhat create on the fly I should be able to harvest now, at least thats my plan once the machine has been perfected.
First and foremost, sorry it took so long getting some pics up, also I really hope they can be seen as I sometimes have issues with others being able to view photos I upload to facebook.
The below image shows the completed and functional framework for the machine. Funny thing is....only after completing this did we actually begin to use our brains, so we'll chalk this prototype upto a 'over engineered' version. It uses a large piston array to construct the cobblestone cube with a TNT block in the center. The only thing the user has to do is turn the machine on and place TNT when the tnt charge is absorbed by the machine.
Here is a picture of the piston array, which is more or less the 'brains' of the outfit. Each element of the array is responsible for triggering either pushing a row, the entire base,a single cobble or TNT, and also triggering the detonation of the TNT. It has run under various workloads and hasn't failed yet. Sadly some of the cobble is lost in the explosion, of the 26 or 27 that's used to create the cube only about 1/4 of that survives to be collected. It takes approximately 40 seconds to generate the cube. This version is rather easy to expand to have 4 cube makers with not much more resources, which should generate close to 1 cobble a second. More cube makers could be stacked above for additional cobble. Only 1 piston array should be needed.
Finally we have the collection and TNT placing area where the machine can be turned on/off at any point in its construction phase. Audio tones alert the user that its time to place TNT. A cover plate slides back and the tnt is 'sucked downwards' and pushed into the machine when needed. The user has about 20 to 30 seconds to refill the TNT location or the machine auto shuts down. Sadly I was hoping that our version of the dispenser worked like it does on the PC in that it would 'place' TNT, rather then drop it on the floor, but heres hoping we get that in the next upgrade.
We have already begun work on a new prototype that is creating the cube in about 6 seconds and uses way less resources, which more or less uses a double piston array extender to place TNT in the middle and then push cobblestone around it. Why we didn't think of this in the first place is beyond me.
Definitely appears to be over engineered... not seeing quite how it is supposed to work from the pics though....
Here's what I would do IF I were to build one of these Cobblestone generators.
At ground level, have a bed of water flowing to one point (the collection area/collection point.
have a sticky piston/regular piston sequence near (at or just below) ground level that allowed lava runoff to hit water runoff, use sticky pistons to extract the stone/cobblestone block and pull it out to a piston sequence to push it up along a wall (upto 13 blocks high), have another piston sequence as the 13 and 12 block level (maybe even 11 block level) to push out the rising wall blocks horizontally (ultimately making a 2-3 block thick stone/cobblestone floor about 8 blocks above the collection area. Have TNT pushed out in front of a redstone trigger about 8 blocks above the stone floor over empty air.
When the top floor is completed, light the TNT and allow it to drop to the now completed stone floor below... Still thinking of about a simple way to do this automatically... I can think of a few complex ways... but I'm having a hard time figuring out a simple check...
This actually builds a 3x3x3 cube, with TNT in the middle. It works by a small clock that I believe is on something like a 3 second loop. The piston array rotates and is then decoded on what it should do next, ie push a cobblestone, push a tnt, push the row, or push the entire cube floor down 1, ect.
We use a cube of cobblestone with TNT in the middle becausse the blast range is no further then the 3x3 cube so everything outside is safe, including other TNT charges ect. If we were simply to drop the TNT onto the floor, most of the 'blast' is lost and your actually only capturing the bottom half of the blast,which is about 25% and thus a pretty big waste. The goal is to fully utilize the TNT to its fullest.
With that said, the new system more or less constructs the cube in a much faster method, cobble generators generate cobblestone and fill the cube, and TNT is actually placed on one of the incoming rows which gets the first tick so that it ends up in the center of the cube always, it constructs a cube in about 2 to 3 seconds, with TNT detonating a total of 6 seconds from start to finish.
I hope to have pics of the new version soon, its light weight for resources, and we are now expermenting with mixing in sand from a sand generator so that both sand and cobble can be collected.
Still a ways away from full use however as I want to compact and simplify the circuits.
Pictures soon
Thanks for the offer on the bud switch, I already know how to build 3 different types, but I think there are better ways to handle this. I'm thinking of using a stacked system that I can use to push additional TNT charges, and by reading the stacked level I can determine how many TNT charges remain.
I also want to be able to adapt it to be able to construct bigger cubes. We have a wood farm that can grow and push wood blocks into a block for easy harvesting, but adapting this machine to push the wood blocks into this new harvest machine I can pretty much automate wood collection as well, but this will require some testing as i'm not entirely sure the size of the cube I would need to construct to harvest wood, and for that matter, a sand machine ect.... Pretty much any resource I can somewhat create on the fly I should be able to harvest now, at least thats my plan once the machine has been perfected.
I'll try and get some pics off today.
The below image shows the completed and functional framework for the machine. Funny thing is....only after completing this did we actually begin to use our brains, so we'll chalk this prototype upto a 'over engineered' version. It uses a large piston array to construct the cobblestone cube with a TNT block in the center. The only thing the user has to do is turn the machine on and place TNT when the tnt charge is absorbed by the machine.
Here is a picture of the piston array, which is more or less the 'brains' of the outfit. Each element of the array is responsible for triggering either pushing a row, the entire base,a single cobble or TNT, and also triggering the detonation of the TNT. It has run under various workloads and hasn't failed yet. Sadly some of the cobble is lost in the explosion, of the 26 or 27 that's used to create the cube only about 1/4 of that survives to be collected. It takes approximately 40 seconds to generate the cube. This version is rather easy to expand to have 4 cube makers with not much more resources, which should generate close to 1 cobble a second. More cube makers could be stacked above for additional cobble. Only 1 piston array should be needed.
Finally we have the collection and TNT placing area where the machine can be turned on/off at any point in its construction phase. Audio tones alert the user that its time to place TNT. A cover plate slides back and the tnt is 'sucked downwards' and pushed into the machine when needed. The user has about 20 to 30 seconds to refill the TNT location or the machine auto shuts down. Sadly I was hoping that our version of the dispenser worked like it does on the PC in that it would 'place' TNT, rather then drop it on the floor, but heres hoping we get that in the next upgrade.
We have already begun work on a new prototype that is creating the cube in about 6 seconds and uses way less resources, which more or less uses a double piston array extender to place TNT in the middle and then push cobblestone around it. Why we didn't think of this in the first place is beyond me.
Here's what I would do IF I were to build one of these Cobblestone generators.
At ground level, have a bed of water flowing to one point (the collection area/collection point.
have a sticky piston/regular piston sequence near (at or just below) ground level that allowed lava runoff to hit water runoff, use sticky pistons to extract the stone/cobblestone block and pull it out to a piston sequence to push it up along a wall (upto 13 blocks high), have another piston sequence as the 13 and 12 block level (maybe even 11 block level) to push out the rising wall blocks horizontally (ultimately making a 2-3 block thick stone/cobblestone floor about 8 blocks above the collection area. Have TNT pushed out in front of a redstone trigger about 8 blocks above the stone floor over empty air.
When the top floor is completed, light the TNT and allow it to drop to the now completed stone floor below... Still thinking of about a simple way to do this automatically... I can think of a few complex ways... but I'm having a hard time figuring out a simple check...
We use a cube of cobblestone with TNT in the middle becausse the blast range is no further then the 3x3 cube so everything outside is safe, including other TNT charges ect. If we were simply to drop the TNT onto the floor, most of the 'blast' is lost and your actually only capturing the bottom half of the blast,which is about 25% and thus a pretty big waste. The goal is to fully utilize the TNT to its fullest.
With that said, the new system more or less constructs the cube in a much faster method, cobble generators generate cobblestone and fill the cube, and TNT is actually placed on one of the incoming rows which gets the first tick so that it ends up in the center of the cube always, it constructs a cube in about 2 to 3 seconds, with TNT detonating a total of 6 seconds from start to finish.
I hope to have pics of the new version soon, its light weight for resources, and we are now expermenting with mixing in sand from a sand generator so that both sand and cobble can be collected.
Use a repeater against the outermost cobble block, more or less powering the outer side block which triggers the tnt inside.