Hi folks, I just found a source of ice in my world, which means I can finally expand my item sorter beyond the 20 or so items it could handle before!
Background:
The way the sorter works is to drop items from a dropper into a water source block in a trench so that the flowing water pushes the items along the trench. the bottom of the trench is made of hoppers with a redstone mechanism to lock them if they contain fewer than 45 items (41 of the item to be sorted in the first slot, 1 'blocker' item in the other 4 slots - polished diorite slabs are what I use since I'll never use them for anything else). This locking system works to filter out all items but the one that sorter 'slice' sorts out. When the water peters out, the next trench bottom block is Blue Ice so that the items slide past. There's also a sign above that ice block so the water source on the next block doesn't flow backwards.
The problem:
I don't know why, but after the 3rd ice block, the water doesn't seem to have enough force to keep the items moving to the next ice block. They seem to get stuck on a random hopper halfway to the next ice block. they don't get pulled into the hopper, because it's locked to all but a single type of item, but they do stop moving, but not always on the same hopper. All of the other trench blocks are either glass, stone or smooth stone, and there's either air or a glass block above the trench.
Has anyone experienced issues like this before? I'm playing on Switch, but I also have minecraft installed on my PC (Windows 10 edition) and can transfer my save there via a Realm. I'll do that this evening and try to add some screenshots, maybe a short video demonstrating the issue.
I think I figured out the problem, but I also found a better solution.
I think the problem is that there is a turn in the trench. At about the 3rd ice block, the trench turned 90 degrees to stay under my house. The dropper sort of shot the items out, so they're right at the other side of the trench as the water pushes them along. But then the trench turns and the items end up closer to the middle of the block as they're pushed along. So in the first leg of the trench the items sort of ride the side of the hoppers, and never get stuck in the middle. So to make this work, I can't turn the trench.
The better solution is to just replace the whole water-pushing trench thing with a line of hoppers. It's a million times simpler, it's silent, it's faster, and no water to wreck the redstone. Only downside is I don't get to watch the items flow by
Hi folks, I just found a source of ice in my world, which means I can finally expand my item sorter beyond the 20 or so items it could handle before!
Background:
The way the sorter works is to drop items from a dropper into a water source block in a trench so that the flowing water pushes the items along the trench. the bottom of the trench is made of hoppers with a redstone mechanism to lock them if they contain fewer than 45 items (41 of the item to be sorted in the first slot, 1 'blocker' item in the other 4 slots - polished diorite slabs are what I use since I'll never use them for anything else). This locking system works to filter out all items but the one that sorter 'slice' sorts out. When the water peters out, the next trench bottom block is Blue Ice so that the items slide past. There's also a sign above that ice block so the water source on the next block doesn't flow backwards.
The problem:
I don't know why, but after the 3rd ice block, the water doesn't seem to have enough force to keep the items moving to the next ice block. They seem to get stuck on a random hopper halfway to the next ice block. they don't get pulled into the hopper, because it's locked to all but a single type of item, but they do stop moving, but not always on the same hopper. All of the other trench blocks are either glass, stone or smooth stone, and there's either air or a glass block above the trench.
Has anyone experienced issues like this before? I'm playing on Switch, but I also have minecraft installed on my PC (Windows 10 edition) and can transfer my save there via a Realm. I'll do that this evening and try to add some screenshots, maybe a short video demonstrating the issue.
Thanks!
I think I figured out the problem, but I also found a better solution.
I think the problem is that there is a turn in the trench. At about the 3rd ice block, the trench turned 90 degrees to stay under my house. The dropper sort of shot the items out, so they're right at the other side of the trench as the water pushes them along. But then the trench turns and the items end up closer to the middle of the block as they're pushed along. So in the first leg of the trench the items sort of ride the side of the hoppers, and never get stuck in the middle. So to make this work, I can't turn the trench.
The better solution is to just replace the whole water-pushing trench thing with a line of hoppers. It's a million times simpler, it's silent, it's faster, and no water to wreck the redstone. Only downside is I don't get to watch the items flow by