Taming a metal volcano.

[fishoutofwater]

1 hour ago, Tonyroid said:

All builds have strengths and weaknesses, this one is a good design but it deletes much of the heat instead of turning it into power. There's nothing wrong with that, but I prioritized power-generation in my build. To understand how the heat gets lost, have a look at this part of this video here. In your screenshot (for example) if molten gold were to fall on the piece of gold sitting on the airlock door then about 933C of heat in the molten gold disappears.

That said, I really like the design and I know ways to stop that problem from happening, but if you save the heat then cooling the metal gets much trickier.

 

That sounds about right for the heat-deletion phenomenon I describe above.

I thought that only happened to magma falling to igneous rock debris.

Please take a look at my metal volcano tamer, am I deleting heat?

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[Steve Raptor]

6 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

Right. So @Tonyroid asked me to have a look at his volcano tamer. And there's definitely some good idea in there. But as he calls his channel Advanced ONIthen why not include all the bells and whistles while still making it as compact as possible.

This ended up like one of the most over-engineered projects I've done in a long time.But there's also some very important takeaways and observations that can be used by almost every player.

So before we dive into the build let me list some tips.

Whenever you discover a volcano, vent, geyser or fissure then never dig out this tile before you're ready.

That tile blocks the output, so that is you're safety valve. It will not start producing material before you dig that out. You also can't analyze it before that. At the same time you should never put rails through that tile in metal volcanoes. It will melt the rail unless you account for that but more importantly it will melt the material on the rail if stuff on the rail passes that tile while it's erupting.

@Tonyroid's forced average output by conveyor shut off on timer is good but the pressure plate overrride is really a bad idea in my opinion as it will force too hot material through the system if you happen to queue up some constructions of that material then the dupes will gap it as fast as the volcano produces it, and you'll have to make a system that is far less optimal than a straight average output one.

Anyway, you might be thinking; "enough with the chit-chat let's see some pics damnit". Ok, here's the completely over top over-engineered volcano tamer build.

As you can probably tell, there's a lot of things going on here.So let's dive into it.

That's a mouthful of automation, so let's divide that up

The loop thermo sensor is after the counter flow cooler that cools both the steam turbine and the iron on the rails the final bit. You might think that's a weird place for a thermo sensor to control the aquatuner but actually it really doesn't matter. You just stick a filter gate on it equal to the number of pipe sections from the aquatuner input to the thremo sensor minus one. Which means that if the thermo sensor is adjacent to the aquatuner input then the pipe length is one minus one so you can leave the filter gate out. That's the only difference from a normal set up. After the filter gate there's a buffer gate which is set to the same number of seconds as the filter gate because you know that when the filter gate turns on then every pipe section between the thermo sensor and the aquatuner fulfil the condition of the thermo sensor so you can turn it on for that number of seconds. I use say the buffer gate is equal to filter gate minus one just for safety.

Then that signal goes through a NOT to an AND gate with the thermo sensor from the steam room that turns the steam turbine on. So if the steam turbine is on and the aquautner is off the switch to self-powered mode on the memory toggle. This is to avoid going into self-powered mode makes the system unstable and get stuck from which it has to be reset but more on that later.

The smart battery output through a rising edge detector then resets the memory toggle switching back to being grid powered when it reaches 10% which is only enough for full power draw on the conductive wire for 1 second. Smart battery setting is 11/10 because the only thing we care about is the recharge point. we want the signal to go inactive as fast as possible after that.However, sometimes the smart battery gets stuck if there's a large power drain at the same time as the recharge signal is active.

And that's what the liquid shut off on a filter in the corner is for. When in self-powered mode the shut off is powered and loop a blob or two of water around which constantly resets the 3s filter gate. If power is lost then the loop stops and trigger the rising edge detector that resets the memory toggle to grid powered mode if the smart battery gets stuck. This does not happen often. 99.9% of the time it's not needed. And you could in principle only have that for restoring grid power but generally the smart battery works fine and does it safely while the emergency power loss detector results in a 3s brown out.

Then there's the timer for the conveyor shut off valve to limit output flow to the average the volcano can produce. It's explained in Tony's video.

 The hydro sensor is a grid power kill switch. It shuts it off from grid power. Used also to make sure things don't start up before you're ready. If the system is up and running then it will be powered 

And then there the power shut off on the right which is only there on the aquatuner off line to prevent too large power draw on the output power.

This build is meant to power itself, and a few non-mission critical buildings around it. Like a tube access point or a liquid or gas pump or two.This is illustrated in the save with a continuously running liquid pump. It will automatically switch between being powered by the grid, or by the steam turbine in the volcano tamer.

 

Pipe overlay is also a bit messy but the aquatuner loop have a c-bypass (in this case a u really) and a double bridge buffer. This will not get stuck under any circumstances. The power loss detector loop can be seen in the corner.

The other piping is the inter-cooler that cools the metal from potentially 195C-200C in the steam chamber to 95C with the steam turbine output by first going into buffer loop that is bypassed so that water goes to the valve as fast as possible and only then fill up the buffer loop. Before it gets to the valve it cool the battery with a single regular pipe section through a petroleum blob, and cools the iron to it's final 95C in the other petroleum blob. The valve limits the flow to 1000g/s which means we can run it through the inter cooler without fear of burst pipes.

If you do not want the battery to be "cooled" (to 95C) then make that pipe section insulated as well, and maybe just don't have the petroleum blob there either. You still need the other petroleum blob though. 

By comparison wiring is pretty simple. The one thing to note is that the power loss detector only runs when in self-powered mode by not being directly connected to the battery. This is to spare us the noise of it constantly resetting otherwise.

Rails are pretty simple as well. It just goes through all the places in needs to and avoids going through as many other tiles as possible. And avoids the center of the volcano as recommended above.

Other than that there's only left to say that since this is an average output design, we do not want to extract heat from the metal as fast as possible, so there's only one temp shift plate to make the steam room temp sensor get as accurate a reading as possible

Oh, and one final thing before you build it. You MUST leave debris inside for example obsidian equal to the amount that the build will output through a full dormancy period. The reason is that the rails should never run dry, and for that same reason then when you set the shut off trigger. round down to the nearest number of seconds.

Here's a save with the build running on all 3 metal volcano types.

Enjoy!

VolcanoTamer.sav

Nearly chocked on my tea when I saw the automation pic.

[0xFADE]

Whew that is impressively prohibitively dense. 

[beowulf2010]

1 hour ago, 0xFADE said:

Whew that is impressively prohibitively dense. 

That's how I feel about myself when I try to figure out some of @Saturnus's compact automation systems. 

[Tonyroid]

4 hours ago, Saturnus said:

Right. So @Tonyroid asked me to have a look at his volcano tamer. And there's definitely some good ideas in there. But as he calls his channel Advanced ONI then why not include all the bells and whistles while still making it as compact as possible.

 

Awesome. The depth of this is fabulous and I'm going to link everything to it.

[coraxery]

I would love to download the save or see the automation image but it's not working for me. @Tonyroid will you be updating your video at some point? Big fan of your stuff, thanks for your work!

[Tonyroid]

13 hours ago, coraxery said:

I would love to download the save or see the automation image but it's not working for me. @Tonyroid will you be updating your video at some point? Big fan of your stuff, thanks for your work!

Updating it to reflect Saturnus's ideas? Probably not. I have an infinity of other topics to cover and as much as I like new and more advanced stuff I could spend literally all my effort making one build incrementally better forever, so I must have the discipline to work on something else until there is some kind of game-changer.

[Chthonicone]

Just a dumb question from me though: How do you connect this into your main power grid if you plan on using any excess power there? I always see these builds using conductive wire rather than conductive heavi-watt that requires special considerations.

Is there some transformer set up I'm missing that would allow this to provide power to the main grid or draw power from the main grid?

[Tonyroid]

10 minutes ago, Chthonicone said:

Just a dumb question from me though: How do you connect this into your main power grid if you plan on using any excess power there? I always see these builds using conductive wire rather than conductive heavi-watt that requires special considerations.

Is there some transformer set up I'm missing that would allow this to provide power to the main grid or draw power from the main grid?

Connect the steam turbine to send power to you main grid, it doesn't supply the build directly.

Power the aquatuner and stuff from the main grid as usual.

[beowulf2010]

8 hours ago, Chthonicone said:

Is there some transformer set up I'm missing that would allow this to provide power to the main grid or draw power from the main grid?

Yep. Just put the normal conductive wire into the high side of the transformer and connect the low side to your main power grid via conductive heavi-watt.

Feels like cheating but it sure beats making the vacuum insulated double connector wall pass-throughs.

[Byste]

On 9/26/2019 at 7:15 PM, beowulf2010 said:

Yep. Just put the normal conductive wire into the high side of the transformer and connect the low side to your main power grid via conductive heavi-watt.

Feels like cheating but it sure beats making the vacuum insulated double connector wall pass-throughs.

I understand why this lets you send power to the main grid, and already "abuse" this mechanic to provide similarly low watt power generating systems on conductive wire to my heavi watt wire backbone. But I don't understand how you're supposed to also draw power from the main grid through the same transformer backward... Is that actually a thing, or are you using shutoffs to swap circuits to another transformer facing the other way?

Also, I cannot view @Saturnus's comment in this thread, or indeed find any comment he made through his profile since Sept 1st, and it's super confusing. I only see his post through the quote that @Steve Raptor made, and for some reason that quote fails to load the automation layer pic and the save file. Any idea what's gone wrong here?

Lastly, this thread has several references to a bug where it sounds like if your metal volcano tamer is offscreen, the rail conveyors stop basing the thermal exchange calculations on where the packets actually are throughout the system and only where they exited a loader/bridge most recently, which in Tony's and Saturnus's designs seems to be at the very beginning, implying that they won't lose any heat whatsoever beyond the initial ~200 degrees? Am I understanding this bug correctly?

[beowulf2010]

38 minutes ago, Byste said:

I understand why this lets you send power to the main grid, and already "abuse" this mechanic to provide similarly low watt power generating systems on conductive wire to my heavi watt wire backbone. But I don't understand how you're supposed to also draw power from the main grid through the same transformer backward... Is that actually a thing, or are you using shutoffs to swap circuits to another transformer facing the other way?

For me, nothing the complicated. Send the power out via one transformer, bring power back in with another transformer. I don't try to make it self powered, I'm just happy to get some power from heat I'm getting rid of. 

As for. Your other 2 questions, I don't know, sorry. 

[BLACKBERREST3]

On 9/26/2019 at 7:15 PM, beowulf2010 said:

Feels like cheating

Have you guys seen these threads yet.

Spoiler

 

1 hour ago, Byste said:

Also, I cannot view @Saturnus's comment in this thread, or indeed find any comment he made through his profile since Sept 1st

I believe yunru and saternus had a falling out of some kind over water compression storage. I'll have to read the mechanics behind what they were fighting about later, I got too much things to do rn.

Now that's considered cheaty 

[beowulf2010]

43 minutes ago, BLACKBERREST3 said:

Have you guys seen these threads yet.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

I believe yunru and saternus had a falling out of some kind over water compression storage. I'll have to read the mechanics behind what they were fighting about later, I got too much things to do rn.

Now that's considered cheaty 

Yes, yes I have.  And I love every single exploited mechanic. 

I only said what I said because of how much easier it is to just use a transformer to inject the power into your 20/50kW trunk line instead of the (ironically more of an exploit due to corner building) doing the vacuum insulation double heavy watt connector thingamajigger. 

[BLACKBERREST3]

1 minute ago, beowulf2010 said:

doing the vacuum insulation double heavy watt connector thingamajigger.

hmmmmmmmmmmmm, I don't get it  

Is that where you build over heavy wire, I forget if that is still a thing you can do. I used to do this with mech doors.

2 hours ago, Byste said:

Lastly, this thread has several references to a bug where it sounds like if your metal volcano tamer is offscreen, the rail conveyors stop basing the thermal exchange calculations on where the packets actually are throughout the system and only where they exited a loader/bridge most recently, which in Tony's and Saturnus's designs seems to be at the very beginning, implying that they won't lose any heat whatsoever beyond the initial ~200 degrees? Am I understanding this bug correctly?

I think they are referring to this thread.

Spoiler

Here are other mechanics of temp transfer with rails

 

 

[beowulf2010]

14 minutes ago, BLACKBERREST3 said:

hmmmmmmmmmmmm, I don't get it  

Is that where you build over heavy wire, I forget if that is still a thing you can do. I used to do this with mech doors.

Not really. You build 2 heavy-watt joint plates with 2 normal tiles between them, build insulated tiles in the 4 available spots adjacent to the normal tiles, then use corner building to deconstruct the 2 normal tiles giving you a vacuum and to construct the 2 pieces of heavy-watt wire for the actual electrical connection. Lastly, insulate the 4 corner tiles of the 3x4 block. 

This is the only way I know of to run heavy-watt in and out of permanently sealed rooms without the joints plates transmitting heat through the walls. 

Here's a finished one above the steam turbine in an old version of my metal volcano tamer. 

Spoiler

 

[Evirent]

This looks like exactly what I was looking for! I'm sad I can't see the automation picture though. Can anyone help with that?

[SkunkMaster]

On 9/29/2019 at 5:20 PM, beowulf2010 said:

Not really. You build 2 heavy-watt joint plates with 2 normal tiles between them, build insulated tiles in the 4 available spots adjacent to the normal tiles, then use corner building to deconstruct the 2 normal tiles giving you a vacuum and to construct the 2 pieces of heavy-watt wire for the actual electrical connection. Lastly, insulate the 4 corner tiles of the 3x4 block. 

This is the only way I know of to run heavy-watt in and out of permanently sealed rooms without the joints plates transmitting heat through the walls. 

Here's a finished one above the steam turbine in an old version of my metal volcano tamer. 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

You cannot build tiles over wire outputs from heavy-watt wires anymore. 

 

You might be using a mod how ever

[KittenIsAGeek]

Here's my "tame" gold volcano.  Just to show you don't have to do anything fancy.

Spoiler

Its quick, its dirty, it works.  Valve dumps about 400kg/s water into the volcano for the duration of its active cycle.  When its dormant, I pump out the water underneath and replace it all with cooler water.  Pumps and sweeper are made from gold or gold amalgam.  The timer restricts the autosweeper so that the gold usually has time to cool a bit before it is moved.  Yes, the sweeper occasionally breaks.  No, I don't care.  This was a quick and dirty solution that was "doable" when I dug the volcano out around cycle 20 when I found it and it was dormant.  Eventually I'll empty the pool of relatively cool salt water (40c) and have to redo my design, but.. meh.  I'll worry about that when the time comes.

*edit: I should point out that I didn't add the sweeper and conveyor rails until much later in the game. I didn't have the research done by 20,  so I had the stairs on the left open to allow dupes to grab the gold.

[Yalp]

I made this a while back and am rather satisfied with it:

Spoiler

- Relatively simple
- Self sufficient
- Cools the vicinity 
- Steel used: 1700 kg (500 kg if a gold AT works, not tested)

Setting it up can be a little tricky since the water is on a lower level. Either evaporate it with the AT (requires external power) or block the water at the Volcano until it's evaporated (depending on orientation the Sweeper needs to be constructed after evaporation). Or, what I did, upgrade a preexisting (no steel) build that already evaporated the water.

 

Utilizing it in my last Oasis map:

Spoiler

Top is Gold, bottom Copper.

Yeah, it also somewhat keeps the CSV cool...

 

[beowulf2010]

14 hours ago, SkunkMaster said:

You cannot build tiles over wire outputs from heavy-watt wires anymore. 

 

You might be using a mod how ever

True, but you can build the heavy watt joint plates before digging the tiles that the wire outputs are in. 

[Sparkstorm]

Came up with this after watching @Tonyroid video.  No where near as dense as Saturnus's design, but just as compact.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Oxygennotincluded/comments/engb12/useful_metal_volcano_tamer/

Would be interested to hear other peoples thoughts on its design / possible improvements