Rotation, Stress and a First Production Line

Comrades, the machines of Create multiply the work of our hands. A single water wheel, well used, can press more iron sheets in an afternoon than a brigade with hammers. This lecture teaches the two ideas every machine rests on, rotation and stress, and ends with a first production line you can build today.

Two tools before anything else

• Ponder. Hover over any Create item in your inventory and hold W. An animated lesson shows how the block works. Our modpack has no recipe viewer, so Ponder and the recipe book are your references.
• Engineer's Goggles. Wear them and look at a machine: they show its speed and, on sources and gauges, the stress figures. Make a pair early.

Most parts are made from andesite alloy (andesite and iron or zinc nuggets) and wood; later machines need brass, which is mixed from copper and zinc with heat. Zinc ore is found underground.

Rotation

Create machines run on rotation, measured in RPM (revolutions per minute). A rotation source turns, and the rotation travels through connected parts.

Sources.

• The hand crank: your own arm. Good for testing.
• The water wheel and the large water wheel: turned by flowing water running past their blades. Slow and steady, and it never runs out. The direction of the flow decides the direction of the turn.
• The windmill bearing with sails: glue the sail structure to the bearing and start it. More sails give more strength; Ponder shows the minimum.
• The steam engine on a boiler of fluid tanks heated by blaze burners: much power, for a later stage.

Carrying rotation.

• Shafts carry rotation in a straight line.
• Cogwheels pass it to cogwheels beside them, and each step reverses the direction. A small cogwheel meshed diagonally with a large cogwheel doubles or halves the speed.
• A gearbox turns rotation around a corner.
• A clutch or gearshift stops or reverses it with a redstone signal.

Stress

Every source has a stress capacity, and every machine has a stress impact that grows with the speed it runs at. Add up the impacts on a network: while they stay below the capacity, all is well. When they exceed it, the network is overstressed and every machine on it stops at once.

This is the first law of the workshop: do not run faster than you need. Doubling the speed doubles the stress of every machine. When a network overstresses, add a source, slow the machines down, or split the work onto a second network. Read capacity and impact with the goggles, or place a stressometer in the line; never guess.

The machines of a first workshop

• Mechanical press: presses items beneath it. Over a depot or a belt it turns ingots into sheets; over a basin it compacts.
• Mechanical mixer: stirs a basin beneath it, for alloys, dough and the like. Some recipes need heat from a blaze burner under the basin.
• Mechanical saw: facing sideways it fells trees; facing upward it cuts items that pass over it, for example logs into planks.
• Millstone: grinds, for example wheat into flour.
• Encased fan: blows items through water to wash them, through lava to smelt them, through fire or a campfire to cook (smoke) them, and through soul fire to haunt them. Ponder shows each.

A first production line: iron sheets

Iron sheets are needed everywhere in Create and are a fine first line. You need a water wheel with a steady flow, a few shafts, a belt connector, a mechanical press, a funnel or two and two chests.

1. Power. Set the water wheel in a stream (or make a small waterfall over one side of it). Run a shaft from its axle to the workshop.
2. The belt. Place two shafts on the same axis, a few blocks apart, and join them with the belt connector. Turn one of them with your line from the wheel. Watch which way the belt runs; reverse it with a cogwheel step or a gearbox if needed.
3. The press. Put the mechanical press above the middle of the belt, two blocks up (one gap for the items), and give it rotation from above or from the side.
4. In and out. A funnel on a chest at the start drops iron ingots onto the belt. At the far end, a funnel into the second chest collects the sheets.
5. Check. The press stops each ingot, strikes it and lets the sheet go on. Look at the wheel with your goggles: if the network is overstressed, slow the line down.

Deliver your sheets to the common stores with /cw deliver when the plan calls for them.

What next

Logistics (moving goods between machines and across the land) is the subject of my second lecture: /cw lecture engineering 2. Questions: /cw ask professor-engineering <question>.