Manufacturing: which machine prints what

In Stationeers almost every part, tool and kit is printed from ingots. There are five fabricators for this. Each has its own recipe list, and each only counts the substances you put into it: an iron ingot counts as 1 iron, a gold ingot as 1 gold.

The five machines#

Machine	Recipes	of which tier 2	Focus
Autolathe	70	7	kits for structures and machines, sheets, glass, plastic, frames
Electronics Printer	130	22	chips, boards, batteries, cartridges, electronics kits, printer mods
Hydraulic Pipe Bender	130	29	pipes, pumps, valves, tanks, filters, canisters
Tool Manufactory	121	28	tools, suits, belts, backpacks, spray paint
Security Printer	15	1	access cards, mining charge

All five have a 100 W base draw, an import and an export slot, a chute input and output and separate ports for power and data.

Basic materials from the autolathe#

Many build steps do not ask for ingots but for semi-finished goods. The autolathe makes most of them:

Product	Ingredients	Time	Energy
Iron Sheets	iron 1	1 s	200 J
Steel Sheets	steel 0.5	3 s	500 J
Glass Sheets	silicon 2	1 s	500 J
Plastic Sheets	silicon 0.5	1 s	200 J

On top of that come Electronic Parts from the electronics printer: iron 3, gold 2, copper 3, 5 s. So one steel ingot is enough for two steel sheets, one silicon ingot for two plastic sheets.

Tier 2 and the printer mods#

Four of the five machines can be upgraded to tier 2 with a printer mod. You fit the mod with the screwdriver. According to the build stages tier 2 brings:

• build time × 0.66 – about a third faster,
• energy × 1.1 – 10 % more power per recipe,
• the same yield and the same material use,
• above all: access to the tier 2 recipes.

Mod	for	printed in	tier needed
Electronic Printer Mod	electronics printer	electronics printer	1
Autolathe Printer Mod	autolathe	electronics printer	2
Pipe Bender Mod	pipe bender	electronics printer	2
Tool Printer Mod	tool manufactory	electronics printer	2

That gives the order: upgrade the electronics printer first, then it prints the other three mods. Every mod costs steel 35, electrum 8, constantan 8 and solder 8, takes 180 s and needs 72,000 J. So you need four alloys before the first machine reaches tier 2.

The security printer has no upgrade stage and therefore no printer mod: its last build stage fixes it at tier 1. Every printer only shows recipes up to its current tier, and a recipe's tier belongs to the item, not to the machine. The Demolition Charge counts as a tier 2 item because of the tool manufactory – so its recipe in the security printer never shows up. Plan it via the tier 2 tool manufactory instead.

Worked example#

50 iron sheets take 50 · 1 s = 50 s and 50 · 200 J = 10,000 J at tier 1. At tier 2 it is 50 · 0.66 = 33 s and 11,000 J. For bulk goods the mod pays off for the time alone.

Building the machines#

The kits of all five machines come from the autolathe. The four large printers need iron 20 and copper 10, three of them gold 2 on top. The security printer is more expensive: gold 20, copper 20, steel 20.

All of them are built the same way:

1. Place the kit.
2. Add two iron sheets with the welding torch (two steel sheets for the security printer).
3. Fit four cable coils.
4. Add two plastic sheets with the welding torch.
5. Finish with the screwdriver – the machine now works at tier 1.
6. Optional: fit a printer mod with the screwdriver – tier 2.

According to the game data the printers are flammable (flashpoint 373.15 K, autoignition 573.15 K). A fire in the workshop will hit them too.

Controlling them with IC10#

The printers know On, Activate, Lock, Open, readable Reagents, CompletionRatio, StackSize, ImportCount, ExportCount and writable RecipeHash. They also have a memory with 64 places that a chip can write with put. The matching instruction constants are called PrinterInstruction.…, for example PrinterInstruction.ExecuteRecipe.

A simple example shows the autolathe's progress in percent on a LED Display (Small):

# Show print progress
define PRINTER 336213101       # Autolathe (StructureAutolathe)
define LED -815193061          # LED Display Small (StructureConsoleLED5)
define NPRINT HASH("Autolathe")      # name of the printer
define NLED HASH("Progress")         # name of the display
define PERCENT 100             # turn the ratio into percent
alias ratio r0

start:
yield
lbn ratio PRINTER NPRINT CompletionRatio 0
bnan ratio start               # no printer with this name
mul ratio ratio PERCENT
sbn LED NLED Setting ratio
j start

For another printer you only swap the hash in PRINTER. The hashes are at the top of every device page and in the Hash lookup.

Common mistakes#

• Recipe not available: it needs tier 2, or it belongs to another machine. The recipe page shows where it is printed.
• The printer does not start: material is missing. Reagents shows how much is inside in total.
• No printer mod possible: the electronics printer is still at tier 1. Its own mod comes first.

Further reading#

• Browse all recipes: Recipes by machine
• What a build costs in total: Build cost calculator
• Getting material back: Recycling and centrifuge: getting material back
• The alloys you need: Furnaces and alloys