How To Build An Automated Drilling Platform Without Using Scripts

[@TheMARSHalMELLOW]

Move the rotor to the vertical connection, creating a theme park pirate ship made from drills, it means instead of drilling a circular hole, you Gauge a large diameter circle, adding more pistons in either direction. later adding wheels and such, you can convert it to a mobile drilling rig by disconnecting it from the ground anchored blocks. Really useful for ice drilling. If you limit them by reversing them faster, you can drill square holes too.

[@307Gareth]

you could put the sensors next to the rotor by add 2 blocks from the rotor, that way you don't have to keep adding more sensors further down as the drill mine deeper. that way you'll have better continues long distance mining with multiple pistons

[@Kaboom-0623]

if you put a cargo container on the end of the piston and then the rotor you could use just one sensor off the side of the cargo bin to catch the drill pass and advance the piston ... but then you dont really need to do that ever anyway since advancing the piston at 0.01 and the rotor at 2rpm you drill smooth holes and you just need a block to see when the pistons are fully extended and retract it

[@aidantung8415]

THIS WAS A REALLY WELL DONE VIDEO thank you for maing it it really helped me out . also i think its so cool that you decided to start a youtube channel i think youl be very popular one day dont stop trying

[@Siinwu]

if you place a sensor on the back of the drill at the edge of the swing, make the sensor field like a knife blade, left/right 3m, up/down 0,5m, front o,1, back 8,1m. when it has gone a round and cleared the dirt infront of drill it can now trigger it to increase max distance when no asteroids (terrain) detected. thats it really. :)

[@FakeSchrodingersCat]

If you increase the bottom extent you should not need multiple sensors.

[@EKOMovers]

Adding to timer block 1 to turn the sensor(s) back on and timer block 3 to turn them off. (not off/on) Unless you are done (full extent of the piston ) if time block 3 is activated the drill head will stay in the up position ... if you have to restart it Senor has a range of appox 20 blocks from the block is is on. Show on hud on the senor and Show senor range will give a better picture of this

[@squiddles1678]

What shaders are you using???

[@wolfe8035]

An idea here is you can also do a 8x3x3, though this becomes highly unstable kind of requiring a gyroscope to be usable... sadly though such a thing becomes annoying to try to automate because each click of the sensor would extend all the pistons, increasing the chance to damage your rig. This rig is always great, but with deep drilling you're better off going more manual or utilizing some other methods. 👍

[@doctorgrubious7725]

You don’t really need a sensor if you don’t mind doing what I do and just having a 1rpm rotor with a 30 second timer that activates the pistons at the end as well as a second timer, set at 4 seconds, than the 4 second timer stops the piston extension at the end and re-activates the first, creating a loop that does this automatically, no sensors needed, for turning on and each just group the pistons, drills, rotor, as their own groups, and get a button pad and assign the buttons to toggle the groups on and off, the 4th button stops/starts the timer

[@mastermindgameplay5297]

Huh, interesting. That concept could definitely work as well. Thank you for the insight, I appreciate it.

[@D_Rogers]

Share inertial tensor on rotors & pistons reduces the wobble on long mining arms.... :) Sensors are under-rated, so handy... What's the advantage of intermittent piston movement? Over continuous, but slow?

[@mastermindgameplay5297]

There may not be a grand difference between the approach of slow and steady or intermittent but when used to mine elements that take a long time to refine, the intermittent creates a dwell time to allow the refinery to keep up with demand.

[@MrSN99]

Why did you use junctions instead of tubes?

[@mastermindgameplay5297]

Typically, I use the junctions instead of tubes if I have not completed the structural part of a base. This assists in planning on where and how an assembler, turret, refinery, h2/o2 generator, a hydrogen generator etc. may be automatically attached without having to change out tubing. After settling on a complete utility design I go back and switch none multi function junctions for respective tubing. Thank you for the question.

[@MrSN99]

@@mastermindgameplay5297 thanks for clarifying

[@alexrogers1432]

I made this but the my conveyor isn't putting it into my refiner can anyone help?

[@mastermindgameplay5297]

Have you checked all of the connections? For me, I have often overlooked completing a piston head which will cause a break in the transfer of stone from the drills. Another issue may be if you are using a conveyor sorter to pre sort the types of ore heading to multiple refineries. I suggest start with the most obvious such as making sure each component is complete, and then progress to checking the flow of the resources through the system.

[@kellywestii5967]

Made an endless/infinite drill?

[@mastermindgameplay5297]

With a few tweaks and added components such as projectors, a welder, and assembler it could potentially be set up for endless drilling.

[@limitedgames5780]

My conveyers on on the drill arm ain’t sending the stone down to my refinery

[@mastermindgameplay5297]

By chance, have you checked the piston heads to see if they are completely welded. Sometimes they may appear complete but are not actually functional. This can be caused by excessive vibration or sideways force when the drills hit hard spots in the resource.

[@sinrkidd]

You should put it up on the workshop

[@mastermindgameplay5297]

Agreed, I am working on publishing several machines, rovers, and ships on Steam and then will provide the links in the descriptions.

[@sinrkidd]

@@mastermindgameplay5297 ok

[@travisdaye1977]

im gonna do this and put it on wheels

[@ashleyward5634]

you keep saying one setting but doing a different setting, im lost :(

[@mastermindgameplay5297]

My apologies, here is a list of the settings I used. Rotor - 0.71 velocity, rotor set to lock initially on “G” screen set to lock/unlock Drills - “G” screen set to on/off Timer 1 - set to 5 seconds - slot 1 is rotor lock/unlock - slot 2 is drills toggle on/off - note: the sensors are already on and react with the drills passing them automatically. Sensor 1 - right extent, top extent, back extent set to lowest setting 0.1. - The front and bottom extent are set to 5m - Detect players off, audio proximity alert off, detect subgrids on, detect owner is on. - 1st slot in sensor 1 is increase maximum distance of piston - slot 2 is timer block 2 set as start timer. Sensor 2 - same distance and options settings as sensor 1 - slot 1 increase maximum distance for piston - slot 2 is time block 2 start timer. Piston - set to 0 for maximum distance to start out. Then hit the reverse button Timer 2 - set to 4 seconds on timer, slot 1 is toggle piston on and off Button panel - button 1 set to start timer of timer block 1 Hopefully, this outline of setting will help.

[@Rafa36999]

Thought this would keep going down by its self lameee

[@bobbyvandyke143]

You dont need timer blocks or sensors just turn the piston speed to 0.0001 and put 15 pistons on it and then turn the drills and rotor on and walk away. Thats 150 meters so roughly idk 20 real life hours of mining. Roughly 700,000 iron ingots if you make the drill head 10 drills long and you can put a rod 10 blocks long on the otherside with a ball of heavy armor blocks on it to even out the weight. I got a rover that had a projector on it that projects small mining bases smiliar to this but quite a bit taller with 17 refineries on it to save on material costs 5 windmills the rover can weld the projection with a welding crane it carries on its back using a turret controller to make the crane. I can upload it if anyone is interested. Its a medium sized rover but since it can fly and has all the bells and whistles it is 29,000 pcu so pretty expensive to make in survival. Took me roughly a week to build it in my mars survival playthrough.

[@mastermindgameplay5297]

Wow that sounds pretty cool! I definitely encourage every space engineer to upload and share their creative builds.