I've been in the process of trying to drain a large lava lake in my MCPE world, using a stack of buckets, pouring the lava into a basin, running water over it, then mining it out. But it was tedious, and my diamond pickaxe kept hitting the stone walls or floors and wasting part of its life digging out soft blocks.
What I wanted was a system similar to a cobblestone miner, where lava and water meet to create cobblestone, and all I have to do is stand there and mine. I did a brief search for a design online, but didn't find anything. I assume this has been done before, I highly doubt this is a new concept. But I'll post it so that hopefully it'll be available for someone else needing it to find in a search.
Concept:
* I wanted a Dispenser to feed a lava bucket into a water stream so that it would instantly become obsidian. The empty bucket would then be immediately taken out of the Dispenser and a full bucket put in. And once the obsidian block was mined, the Dispenser would automatically pour out the next lava bucket, so that all I had to do was keep mining and the new obsidian block would appear under my pickaxe.
Build the Hopper/Sorter system that only pulls Empty Buckets out of the Dispenser. Since buckets take up more space and are more expensive than a standard item, I loaded up on the junk items instead of the buckets to fill the Dropper nearly to the trigger point.
The Dispenser is fed by the chest and hopper. As space is freed up by empty buckets leaving, full lava buckets are shoved in. Nothing besides lava buckets should be put into this system. The second hopper and doubling up the output chest are optional, but useful. That's there to catch falling Obsidian and store it away.
The circuit turns on if there's a solid block between it and the Dispenser *and* there are items inside the Dispenser. When the Obsidian block is mined, the circuit turns off, activating the Redstone Torch on the back of the Dispenser and causing it to pour out the next lava bucket.
*CORRECTION: The block holding the Redstone Torch should be Obsidian, so that it doesn't get mined immedidately when struck by your diamond pickaxe.
The water flow comes from up top and is trapped down below. We don't want it to wash away any of our Redstone circuits, so it needs to be carefully trapped.
Put a starter Obsidian block in, either a full block, or manually pouring a lava bucket into the water flow.
Note that the circuitry visible on the right is off, because the Dispenser is empty at this point.
Put your full lava buckets into the top left chest. Empty buckets and Obsidian will show up in the chest under your feet. Once all buckets have been loaded into the system, click and hold on the starter Obsidian block in a place where your pickaxe will strike the Obsidian block behind it when it's mined. Once this block is mined, it will drop into your pocket or the hopper (or sometimes get thrown backwards onto your circuitry - periodically go over there and picke up the droppings).
The Redstone Circuits will stay lit up until the Dispenser is empty. Stop mining when the circuits go dark, leaving an Obsidian block in the system for next time.
Well, that's it. My first non-trivial redstone design. Not too complicated. Hopefully someone will find it useful.
There is an occasional bug where the Empty Bucket redstone circuits lock up sometimes and don't pull the empties out of the hopper. It's a bug of some sort - detroying one of the redstones and re-laying it fixes the issue.
I've been in the process of trying to drain a large lava lake in my MCPE world, using a stack of buckets, pouring the lava into a basin, running water over it, then mining it out. But it was tedious, and my diamond pickaxe kept hitting the stone walls or floors and wasting part of its life digging out soft blocks.
What I wanted was a system similar to a cobblestone miner, where lava and water meet to create cobblestone, and all I have to do is stand there and mine. I did a brief search for a design online, but didn't find anything. I assume this has been done before, I highly doubt this is a new concept. But I'll post it so that hopefully it'll be available for someone else needing it to find in a search.
Concept:
* I wanted a Dispenser to feed a lava bucket into a water stream so that it would instantly become obsidian. The empty bucket would then be immediately taken out of the Dispenser and a full bucket put in. And once the obsidian block was mined, the Dispenser would automatically pour out the next lava bucket, so that all I had to do was keep mining and the new obsidian block would appear under my pickaxe.
Build the Hopper/Sorter system that only pulls Empty Buckets out of the Dispenser. Since buckets take up more space and are more expensive than a standard item, I loaded up on the junk items instead of the buckets to fill the Dropper nearly to the trigger point.
The Dispenser is fed by the chest and hopper. As space is freed up by empty buckets leaving, full lava buckets are shoved in. Nothing besides lava buckets should be put into this system. The second hopper and doubling up the output chest are optional, but useful. That's there to catch falling Obsidian and store it away.
The circuit turns on if there's a solid block between it and the Dispenser *and* there are items inside the Dispenser. When the Obsidian block is mined, the circuit turns off, activating the Redstone Torch on the back of the Dispenser and causing it to pour out the next lava bucket.
*CORRECTION: The block holding the Redstone Torch should be Obsidian, so that it doesn't get mined immedidately when struck by your diamond pickaxe.
The water flow comes from up top and is trapped down below. We don't want it to wash away any of our Redstone circuits, so it needs to be carefully trapped.
Put a starter Obsidian block in, either a full block, or manually pouring a lava bucket into the water flow.
Note that the circuitry visible on the right is off, because the Dispenser is empty at this point.
Put your full lava buckets into the top left chest. Empty buckets and Obsidian will show up in the chest under your feet. Once all buckets have been loaded into the system, click and hold on the starter Obsidian block in a place where your pickaxe will strike the Obsidian block behind it when it's mined. Once this block is mined, it will drop into your pocket or the hopper (or sometimes get thrown backwards onto your circuitry - periodically go over there and picke up the droppings).
The Redstone Circuits will stay lit up until the Dispenser is empty. Stop mining when the circuits go dark, leaving an Obsidian block in the system for next time.
Well, that's it. My first non-trivial redstone design. Not too complicated. Hopefully someone will find it useful.
There is an occasional bug where the Empty Bucket redstone circuits lock up sometimes and don't pull the empties out of the hopper. It's a bug of some sort - detroying one of the redstones and re-laying it fixes the issue.
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My MCPE Survival world Blog (v0.9-0.10)
MCPE Hardcore Blog (v0.10)