Combining turbine output using gearbox not working

Support & Questions & Bugs & Help & Requests
,
1

I’m trying to use axles and gearboxes to merge output from turbines. I’m using 3 invar fluidized bed burning boxes, 3 chromium boilers and 2 steel turbines.

2022-01-27_09.03.12
2022-01-27_09.03.12605×767 493 KB

If I understand the tooltips right, it should be within the minimals and maximals even with small fluttering:
1 invar fluidized bed burning box produces 64 HU/t.
1 chromium boiler accepts a maximum of 96 HU/t and turns it into Steam/t with a factor of 2, so with 64 HU/t it produces 128 Steam/t each, adds up to a total of 384 Steam/t, so there’s 192 Steam/t for each turbine.
1 steel turbine accepts 96~384 Steam/t and turns it into RU/t with a factor of 1/3, so it should output 64 RU/t each, adds up to a total of 128 RU/t on the main axle.

What actually happens is that, when this output is connected to a machine with rated power 128 RU/t (e.g. the steel centrifuge), the machine repeatedly and rapidly starts and stops, never finishing a fraction of a recipe. Only when I disconnect 1 turbine from the steam supply and turn off 1 burning box does it work smoothly, supposedly with 2/3 the rated power (which still lies in the 1/2~2x range).

So, what could have happened? Is it because of inbalances in fluid distribution that the turbines give different output which cannot be combined using a gearbox? Or is it related to the boiler receiving less HU/t than rated (even though within 1/2~2x)?

2 Likes
2

It is actually 64x2 RU/t not 128 RU/t.

As for the Custom Gearbox, if not all Inputs are 100% identical, the lowest Input is taken instead. So this might be because sloshing?

2 Likes
3

I thought I’ve read somewhere that machines can meet their RU/t requirement either in a large packet or in several smaller packets. Also, it’s kind of a pain that the 64 RU/t output of the steel turbine lies exactly at the boundary between 2 tiers, which is 16~64 and 64~256.

2 Likes
4

I guess this might be the cause then.

It seems to work as expected when I add 1 more boiler and connect each turbine to 2 boilers, so that each turbine is guranteed a sufficient input.

By the way, is there some specific reason for it to be designed to take the lowest input, not the average input?

2 Likes
5

It takes the lowest because it effectively gets throttled by the slowest input. And dividing by amount of Sources is not as easy as one would hope it is, since its not based on an Energy Network, which i should definitely have done, but ofcourse i did not…

2 Likes