Steel does not suffice against regolith!

[Tobruk]

The temperature situation in vacuum is insane!

Everyone recommends going for steel because the overheat is >275, but has anyone considered the fact that the robominers themselves produce heat? Heck, even with fricking thermium* it is inevitable for them to overheat because of their own heat production, it's just a matter of time.

I've tried god knows how many builds from several forum posts and none have worked reliably.

• robominers hanged on an insulated ceiling? Check.
• robominers submerged in liquid and backwall + sweepers disposing of the fallen regolith? Check.
• robominers placed under a roof so that they do not come in contact with regolith? Check.
• robominers drip cooling? Check.

Please, please tell me what the heck am I supposed to do?

I'm not even in the sandbox mode and I've tried all this. All of it! Probably wasted like two hundred cycles.

I'm sad

* I do not own thermium yet or any of this stuff so please do not recommend it to me.

[bountygiver]

steel will be enough to hang on to until you get thermium, assuming you start building rockets as soon as you surface breach. Thermium miner is actually pretty easy, just expose the thermium miners to the regolith, let it get buried so it trasnsfers its heat into the regolith, but always have a few primer thermium miners that are properly sheltered to dig out a few uncovered miners and it will propagate, cooling the covered miners will be easy, just use glass as a base and make a small pool of petroleum under the covered miner, so regolith will keep the glass floor temperature at 300C which absorbs the heat from the covered miner through petroleum, now your miners will never overheat.

[Tobruk]

Just now, bountygiver said:

steel will be enough to hang on to until you get thermium

I beg to differ, though. The regolith that falls down from the sky in my case is roughly 300 deg, no matter which spot I inspect. The moment it falls from the bunker doors my machinery is screwed.

Just now, bountygiver said:

thermium miners that are properly sheltered to dig out a few uncovered miners and it will propagate

Yes, I have to agree with you - it's quite a smart idea (if it weren't for the temp problems and lack of thermium)

 

EDIT: I did a quick test of yet another build but even though the steel miners were submerged in 50 kg of 70 deg. water beforehand and they began digging momentarily after the drop, one got damaged already. (I am aware regolith may occasionally entomb all of them at once, but it was experimental)

[Yunru]

It's an insane idea, I know, but have you tried not letting the regolith fall on your miner's? 

[Tobruk]

Just now, Yunru said:

It's an insane idea, I know, but have you tried not letting the regolith fall on your miner's? 

Then I can't transfer heat off of them. In the original post I explained that I have tried the ceiling method.

[Yunru]

Just now, Tobruk said:

Then I can't transfer heat off of them. 

That's what the water's for. 

[Tobruk]

Just now, Yunru said:

That's what the water's for. 

Pipes do not exchange heat with buildings within the same tile. If the miner's attached to a ceiling how can the outside water be in touch with it?

[Yunru]

Just now, Tobruk said:

Pipes do not exchange heat with buildings within the same tile. If the miner's attached to a ceiling how can the outside water be in touch with it?

Why would it be attached to a ceiling? 

[Tobruk]

Just now, Yunru said:

Why would it be attached to a ceiling? 

Could you be so kind and show me your current approach to cooling miners?

[Yunru]

6 minutes ago, Tobruk said:

Could you be so kind and show me your current approach to cooling miners?

I'm on phone atm, so you'll have to settle for a description. 

The most basic setup I use is a robominer sat on a floor, with a 4 wide roof above it, and a vent constantly dripping a small amount of water onto it. 

[Tobruk]

Just now, Yunru said:

I'm on phone atm, so you'll have to settle for a description. 

The most basic setup I use is a robominer sat on a floor, with a 4 wide roof above it, and a vent constantly dripping a small amount of water onto it. 

Do you remember how much? 15g would suffice?

I think I finally managed to build something decent for the thermium-wait.

What do you think @Yunru? Each miner has access to the other's roof as well. I set the drip to be merely 2 grams a second and it seems to be working. Quite amazing how little liquid it needs yet how frustrating it was without it??

[Lurve]

Have them upright, exposed to regolith, and close enough to cover each other.  Pipe coolant to the tiles beneath them.  When they get entombed but before their neighbors can dig them out, the support tiles will cool the regolith and the regolith will cool the miner.  Too long of an entombment and the regolith will start heating it up again, too short and it won't cool sufficiently, so it'll still break from time to time. 

For the most part this can work with steel, but ultimately I think you'll find it isn't worth it.  By the time you really need those solar panels, you'll have thermium anyway.  Thermium robominers just need to be entombed from time to time to dump their waste heat.

[KittenIsAGeek]

8 hours ago, Tobruk said:

The temperature situation in vacuum is insane!

This game does not model radiative heat transfer.  Therefore, there is no mechanism to transfer heat while in a vacuum. Because the heat can't go anywhere, anything that produces heat simply gets hotter until it destroys itself.  

This can be both a good thing and a bad thing.  On the good side of things, you can use a vacuum to isolate really hot stuff (or really cold stuff) so that its temperature does not change (until you want it to).  On the bad side of things... Yeah, your robo-miner in space melts itself.  There are a number of solutions, but here's a quick reference of the problem:

1. A building does not directly transfer heat with the floor (or ceiling) directly.
2. Buildings only transfer heat through a medium -- this can be atmospheric gas (oxygen, CO2, sour gas, etc), liquid (water, crude oil, etc), or even solid (regolith).
3. Tempshift plates help with heat flow -- but only if they're within an element (gas/liquid/etc).  Again, even if its touching a floor/wall/etc, a tempshift plate will do nothing without a medium to transfer heat.

[OxCD]

28 minutes ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

 

1. A building does not directly transfer heat with the floor (or ceiling) directly.

I could be wrong (game's off) but as far as I can remember from my test robominer does.

Before thermium, my surface was covered by steel robominer and door system. Robominer were hanged to a door. Another door displaced from one tile just below the robo (free the canon). A valve, a shut-off and a liquid vent per robo above the whole design. Then all was timed. Rego falls : both door opened, rego has fallen : upper door close & enabled robominer starts working, and when you want : close lower door and drip some water on it.

Of course use drywall for background, then H2O (or pH2O) will stand on the lower door and cool the miner. You'll only have to renew the water each time you open lower door for the rego to fall.

Careful, robo range is halved in this setup, undepending lower door status.

This setup does not includ sweeping.

[KittenIsAGeek]

4 minutes ago, OxCD said:

I could be wrong (game's off) but as far as I can remember from my test robominer does.

A building does not DIRECTLY transfer heat with the floor.  It requires some sort of medium, such as a gas or a liquid to be present.  

6 minutes ago, OxCD said:

 A valve, a shut-off and a liquid vent per robo above the whole design. Then all was timed. Rego falls : both door opened, rego has fallen : upper door close & enabled robominer starts working, and when you want : close lower door and drip some water on it.

The liquid vent is allowing the robo miner to transfer heat into the floor.

[OxCD]

11 minutes ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

A building does not DIRECTLY transfer heat with the floor.  It requires some sort of medium, such as a gas or a liquid to be present.  

I get your point, but my thought remain. If my memory is correct, in the setup i've described and used, robominers were overheating when rego was accidentally falling on the top of door (during the build for example). Rego was above, robo was below, but gets overheating. This is how I remember trouble I had.

 

EDIT : the vent wasn't dripping on the upper door. I don't know if my textual explanation is clear enough for you to get how it was set. Unfortunately it's very late here so laptop's off & I'm trying to sleep ^^...

[KittenIsAGeek]

5 minutes ago, OxCD said:

I get your point, but my thought remain. If my memory is correct, in the setup i've described and used, robominers were overheating when rego was accidentally falling on the top of door (during the build for example). Rego was above, robo was below, but gets overheating. This is how I remember trouble I had.

Regolith can act as a medium for transferring heat as well.

[OxCD]

6 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

Regolith can act as a medium for transferring heat as well.

Again I get your point but it doesn't change mine ^^ On my example, i've explained that rego is not touching robominer. Rego is above the door, robo is below. And the door is closed. It acts as a medium when it shares the tile. Here, it's not the case. I'll test again soon and report here.

EDIT : nop ! My description was correct, but my point was wrong ! Without medium, robo do not get the heat from the door :

[OxCD]

@Tobruk And it worked like this for a thousand cycle. Steel only.

 

The liquid sensor is simulating scanner.

First buffer gate determines how much time the bunker door takes to open, minus few seconds. You can forget this one if you're ready to open both doors since the scanner detects the end of the rain. Operational time will be really negligible.

Next filter gate, is how much time you keep both doors opened, to let rego falls through the setup.

Last filter gate is how much time since doors has been closed again you'll let water drips on the lower door.

You have 2 controls for the cooling "power". How much time it drips, and how much g/s it drips. keep in mind that dripping to much will not help in a normal use, as the door cans only retain in this configuration approximately 30g per tile, so around 60g in total. All excess will still absorb a bit of heat, so dripping more for a longer time cans help as an emergency for faster and stronger cooling mechanism.

As an advice, try to do not put valve & shut-off above doors. If for any reason doors are not closing at the right time, rego will fall on those and start overheating everything. You'll prevent this to happen to shut-off & valve if those are not above doors. Less repair...

It seems that sometimes save, quit & reload are messing this a bit. I had some issue, I've to admit, when doors are not opening when it should. Always at reload.

But my setup, and particularly my automation, were a lot more complicated than the one above, for nothing... ^^ i've revisited it a bit. So maybe, this kind of issue is not an option anymore.

Don't forget to be carefull with limited range of the robo in this configuration.

[nvzboy]

I have been using the build in the spoiler for a good long while and it hasn't failed me without using any thermium or  wasting steel for repairs.

Spoiler

The main thing is that you cool the petroleum by running a pipeline of oil or petroleum through the glass tiles and running that through a steam turbine. When building this setup I build the bunker doors first, then the glass windows, then the robo miners and solar panels. When that is done I allow them to be automated. I disable auto-repair on the miners and just replace them when they overheat until the cooling system has been built completely. First I build the pipeline and the drywalls, then the steam turbine chamber. Then when everything is in place you put the petroleum on the window tiles and fill the cooling loop. It's also important that you build the robo miners in pairs so they can dig out each other's cover.

I hope this helps you out.

[Tobruk]

26 minutes ago, nvzboy said:

The main thing is that you cool the petroleum by running a pipeline of oil or petroleum through the glass tiles and running that through a steam turbine.

Wouldn't you constantly be losing petroleum this way once the rego hits the floor?

[nvzboy]

Just now, Tobruk said:

Wouldn't you constantly be losing petroleum this way once the rego hits the floor?

You must build the drywall at least two tiles high, that way the petroleum can just move to the side instead of be forced over the drywall and be exposed.

[jhohan29]

14 hours ago, OxCD said:

Again I get your point but it doesn't change mine ^^ On my example, i've explained that rego is not touching robominer. Rego is above the door, robo is below. And the door is closed. It acts as a medium when it shares the tile. Here, it's not the case. I'll test again soon and report here.

EDIT : nop ! My description was correct, but my point was wrong ! Without medium, robo do not get the heat from the door :

Add templates and blow some air.

 

[OxCD]

@jhohan29

I let you having a look at the whole topic. You'll easily understand that your point is kind of off-topic in this example as transfering heat from rego to robo is seen as a flaw, not a goal.

[Tonyroid]

On 6/8/2019 at 10:14 AM, Tobruk said:

You are on the right track. But use airflow tiles instead of glass because they are 100% transparent to light and they don't get hot. You can put airflow or mesh tiles above the robominers to "catch" the regolith so it doesn't fall on the robominers or into the water. If you are clever you can arrange the tiles so the robominers can reach all the regolith that is caught. You can put a scanner BELOW the platform and it will work just as well since airflow tiles are transparent to it. Your water will tend to last this way, so perhaps let the water run across the platform and dribble off one side into a collection area. Or perhaps maintain a thin pool and use a radiant pipe behind it to keep it cold.

Also, steel DOES suffice against regolith if you cool the regolith first, and that's a thing I'm going to do a video tutorial for soon.