Dusts are fine, they combine into their regular sized 1.000 unit size when they enter a mass storage.
But ores do not and this makes me sad…
So any tips on how you manage this mess? Optimally i want all tiny purified ores to be automatically combined into their regular size (1.250 unit size) at the source, without building hundreds of boxinators or crafting tables one for each type of ore.
And the same applies to refined ores (1.375 unit size), again at the source without having to build yet another mega array of machines just to combine them.
Mind you, i don’t have a logistics core set up yet. I am not at that stage of the game at this point in time.
But i don’t know if (assuming i actually start making aluminium) if there’s a way to request a generic 9 amount of any tiny variant and automatically turn that generic 9 stack into its generic standard size equivalent.
Nearly all refined ores have reached the end of their cycle and don’t have a use outside of getting shredded back into dust for that extra .375 each. My setup was extremely simple: crusher-sluice-centrifuge-shredder-main GT barrel storage area (dusts). I do agree that those extra purified small ores are a bit of a headache, because you could indeed still have an extra bathing or centrifuging step for those, which is why before getting an item filter I would stick to processing one type of ore in bulk at a time and use a hopper screwdrived to output only multiples of 8, because a centrifuge will accept and process those 8 purified small ores as it would have accepted a single regular purified ore. Again, here large batch processing stops you from coming short (not having enough of a specific kind of purified ore and crashing your entire processing chain) if you prioritize that specific kind of ore in the first place. It’s a tricky system though, that does require some small babysitting before aluminium and item filters (or buildcraft/logistic pipes, but I’m assuming this is a greg-only setup) come into play: I would always feed the centrifuge with a stack of the already purified ore you’re centrifuging and have a backup of 8 of the ore in the hopper, this way the hopper will only accept that specific ore and never get filled with anything else as long as you have more of that ore coming in, since the crusher, centrifuge and sluice work at roughly the same pace.
Let’s make a case about copper: You have tetrahedrite, copper ore and stibnite. You dig up an entire vein and use a barrel or hopper to fill it up first with tetrahedrite, wait until the first stack (and extra 8) of purified tetrahedrite ore gets cleaned up by the and then start the centrifuge and shredder. At this point You can send a redstone signal to stop the crusher once the barrel is empty, but sorting up the remaining stragglers among the tiny purified ores is obviously gonna be a manual job, but what I used to do was simply chuck those extras in the shredder directly, since the dust will still stack in a barrel, and then repeat the process for the next ore.
Of course, in my case I eventually ended up automating the process by hooking up an extra utilities filter to re-rout filter all small purified ores into another storage for further processing, but that’s not a GT functionality.
In short, process in bulk and expect some tedium. Hope this hasn’t been completely useless!
Ah yes, you gave me a good piece of advice @Amaranth, hoppers do have the functionality of outputting a fixed amount at a time.
I will need to investigate this further but basically, i can possibly work with this mechanic in such a way that i always ensure batches of 9 or at least divisible by 9 are sent to some autocrafter that can select the appropriate recipe depending on the ore.
Or at the very least, i can somehow sort all those tinies in such a way that i have evenly divisible by 9 amounts of them at some location.
Sort of a sensor setup that detects when only a remainder stays in a hopper for some time and thus sends it someplace else.
Or, I can at least work with said hoppers in such a way that a mass storage over a hopper sends 9 items at a time into a “forgets filter when empty” item barrel and a single point of conversion from tiny to regular. Perhaps through a boxinator.
Either way, didn’t consider hoppers having the capability you just mentioned.
