But the carts don't load up enough once they're empty to feed all the furnaces. One way to start to fix the problem would be if I could 'turn off' four of the five slots in the hopper, but I don't know how to do that for the smelting slot. The fuel slot is easy, I just put non-fuel blocks in there and they *can't* go into the fuel slot, but the smelting slot seems to take anything and everything, even if it can't be smelted.
So can anyone help me fix the problem? Or is this design just one that looks like it works until you try to use it for an extended period of time at which point it 'breaks' (or just has to be scaled down to 6 or so furnaces)?
How about adding a delay at the chest end so the carts have more time to load?
I just replaced one of the powered rails on each line with a detector rail and a line of repeaters to power the rail under the chest after a pause.
I haven't tested how it affects how the furnaces are filled, I just tested the concept.
(There's no real thought behind having fewer repeaters on the fuel line, I was just testing different ways of connecting the power to the powered rail.)
Wow. That's...such a simple solution... And with the proper timing it should work just fine. If the cart stays under the chest long enough to get at least 2 items per chest, that would solve the problem perfectly.
EDIT: Tinkering around in creative, seems like 5 repeaters, 4 on 4-delay, 1 on 1-delay will let them pick up 33 items If you remove one more delay tick, it only gets 31.
There's also a slight problem with your arrangement, the detector rail on top of the hopper will prevent that hopper from accepting items, but that's easily remedied (just mentioning it for anyone who might come here later).
The issue with the original design is after one puts fuel and source into chests, one needs to let the carts sit there and fill up with at least 16 items before they can start moving - on every cycle.
One solution I would go for is to measure the source hopper cart with a comparator followed by 2x dust and then a repeater going into the power rail. When hopper cart has 23 items, comparator signal becomes 2 and activates the circuit, sending the cart out. (power rail for fuel cart is activated by same circuit)
There also needs to be another comparator measuring the source chest and going into a torch - so that when source chest is empty, power rail activates regardless of how full the cart is.
The issue with the original design is after one puts fuel and source into chests, one needs to let the carts sit there and fill up with at least 16 items before they can start moving - on every cycle.
One solution I would go for is to measure the source hopper cart with a comparator followed by 2x dust and then a repeater going into the power rail.
As this is a redstone-less design, moving the input chests one block further in so that they cover 2 blocks with tracks might also get enough items in the cart.
But of course your solution is better, at least for those players who know a bit of redstone. One more block of redstone dust would give 46 items in the cart. Makes the distribution more even if you have 16 chests.
I set up a starter cactus/bamboo XP farm in a new survival world and had to solve that exact problem. I didn't want all XP to end up in one furnace so I'm distributing the cactus, approximately equally. I have enough bamboo that I don't have to worry about distributing that, so there is a waterstream feeding bamboo to all furnaces. (Using a flying machine to harvest the bamboo with minecarts below can be extended easily, if you have enough gold for powered rails.)
My solution is this. I want to load up enough cactus for the cart to distribute 2 cactus to each furnace. Solution is as this: A detector rail (loading station) goes one block up and is terminated with a block. (To build the detector rail upwards you'll have to place a temporary rail that is deleted immediately.) Behind the detector rail is one normal rail and after that two powered rails. A fence gate blocks the rail, an input chest is over the detector rail.
Now the fence is open if (a) there is no minecart on the detector rail, (b) there is an empty minecart on the detector rail or (c) there is a cart with 46 or more items on the detector rail.
I'm reading the detector rail, the signal goes into a block with 2 outputs: On the side is a redstone torch that lights up if there is no signal (no minecart or empty cart). On the other side is a redstone signal with length 3 going into a repeater. Both signals loop to the gate. Now what happens is this:
If there is no cart, the redstone torch keeps the gate open.
The empty cart goes on the detector rail. If the input chest is empty, the redstone torch is still powered and the fence gate stays open. The cart will return.
If the chest has items, the cart will pick up at least one item, which depowers the redstone torch and the fence gate closes.
As soon as the cart has picked up 46 items, the comparater sends a signal with strength 3 which again unlocks the fence.
If the fence is opened, the cart will start to move because of gravity, fast enough to reach a powered rail which will speed it up sufficiently. When the cart returns, the 2 powered rails give it enough momentum such that it will go up far enough on the detector rail.
The threshold of 46 items could be lowered to something like 23 (using redstone strength 2 instead of 3) or increased if desired. Also I could build something to keep the cart from leaving empty. But for a starter farm (quick and dirty) this will suffice - at one point I'll replace that with a better, bigger design anyway
I've been trying to build this design:
But the carts don't load up enough once they're empty to feed all the furnaces. One way to start to fix the problem would be if I could 'turn off' four of the five slots in the hopper, but I don't know how to do that for the smelting slot. The fuel slot is easy, I just put non-fuel blocks in there and they *can't* go into the fuel slot, but the smelting slot seems to take anything and everything, even if it can't be smelted.
So can anyone help me fix the problem? Or is this design just one that looks like it works until you try to use it for an extended period of time at which point it 'breaks' (or just has to be scaled down to 6 or so furnaces)?
How about adding a delay at the chest end so the carts have more time to load?
I just replaced one of the powered rails on each line with a detector rail and a line of repeaters to power the rail under the chest after a pause.
I haven't tested how it affects how the furnaces are filled, I just tested the concept.
(There's no real thought behind having fewer repeaters on the fuel line, I was just testing different ways of connecting the power to the powered rail.)
Just testing.
Wow. That's...such a simple solution... And with the proper timing it should work just fine. If the cart stays under the chest long enough to get at least 2 items per chest, that would solve the problem perfectly.
EDIT: Tinkering around in creative, seems like 5 repeaters, 4 on 4-delay, 1 on 1-delay will let them pick up 33 items If you remove one more delay tick, it only gets 31.
There's also a slight problem with your arrangement, the detector rail on top of the hopper will prevent that hopper from accepting items, but that's easily remedied (just mentioning it for anyone who might come here later).
The issue with the original design is after one puts fuel and source into chests, one needs to let the carts sit there and fill up with at least 16 items before they can start moving - on every cycle.
One solution I would go for is to measure the source hopper cart with a comparator followed by 2x dust and then a repeater going into the power rail. When hopper cart has 23 items, comparator signal becomes 2 and activates the circuit, sending the cart out. (power rail for fuel cart is activated by same circuit)
There also needs to be another comparator measuring the source chest and going into a torch - so that when source chest is empty, power rail activates regardless of how full the cart is.
As this is a redstone-less design, moving the input chests one block further in so that they cover 2 blocks with tracks might also get enough items in the cart.
But of course your solution is better, at least for those players who know a bit of redstone. One more block of redstone dust would give 46 items in the cart. Makes the distribution more even if you have 16 chests.
I set up a starter cactus/bamboo XP farm in a new survival world and had to solve that exact problem. I didn't want all XP to end up in one furnace so I'm distributing the cactus, approximately equally. I have enough bamboo that I don't have to worry about distributing that, so there is a waterstream feeding bamboo to all furnaces. (Using a flying machine to harvest the bamboo with minecarts below can be extended easily, if you have enough gold for powered rails.)
My solution is this. I want to load up enough cactus for the cart to distribute 2 cactus to each furnace. Solution is as this: A detector rail (loading station) goes one block up and is terminated with a block. (To build the detector rail upwards you'll have to place a temporary rail that is deleted immediately.) Behind the detector rail is one normal rail and after that two powered rails. A fence gate blocks the rail, an input chest is over the detector rail.
Now the fence is open if (a) there is no minecart on the detector rail, (b) there is an empty minecart on the detector rail or (c) there is a cart with 46 or more items on the detector rail.
I'm reading the detector rail, the signal goes into a block with 2 outputs: On the side is a redstone torch that lights up if there is no signal (no minecart or empty cart). On the other side is a redstone signal with length 3 going into a repeater. Both signals loop to the gate. Now what happens is this:
The threshold of 46 items could be lowered to something like 23 (using redstone strength 2 instead of 3) or increased if desired. Also I could build something to keep the cart from leaving empty. But for a starter farm (quick and dirty) this will suffice - at one point I'll replace that with a better, bigger design anyway