Controlling fabricators

Twenty iron sheets for the new room – and every time walk to the lathe, look for the recipe, press the button. A chip can preselect the recipe, show the progress and report when material is missing.

What the fabricators have in common#

The autolathe (StructureAutolathe), electronics printer, tool manufactory and hydraulic pipe bender work the same way:

Slot 1 is the output. If something lies there, a piece is done and waiting to be collected.

Choosing the recipe#

sbn LATHE HASH("Drehbank") RecipeHash PRODUCT

PRODUCT is the prefab hash of what should come out, for example HASH("ItemIronSheets"). According to the recipe data an iron sheet needs 1 iron and one second, an iron frame 4 iron and four seconds. Writing the value every tick does no harm: the fabricator only switches when the hash really changes.

Activate: only at the right moment#

This is where the most important trap lies. Activate 1 starts a job, and while it runs Activate stays at 1. If the chip writes a 0 in between, it cancels the job. So never pass the button value to the fabricator every tick, but write a 1 only on a press:

lbn tmp BUTTON HASH("Start") Activate Average
sgtz tmp tmp
beqz tmp start
sbn LATHE HASH("Drehbank") Activate 1

sgtz makes sure a missing button (NaN) does not count as a press.

Resupplying raw materials#

If Reagents drops below a limit, it will soon be over. A light “Nachschub” calls for ingots in time. Which ingot exactly is missing you have known since yesterday: lr … Required and rmap.