Why is the magma not excreting into the steam chamber?

[MartinAndel]

I gotta say I am a bit lost in this recipe from CGFungus on youtube. I think I've done everything more or less according to the schematic but the magma that's trapped in the vertical channel is refusing to inject itself into the steam chamber next door. As I understand it, some amount of pressure from the top should force some amount of the magma escape diagonally / down (in my case to the left), into the fluid filled chamber, below the turbines. But it isn't happening for some reason.

Any ideas on what am I doing wrong?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8DaGmpX4Os

[meekay]

Magma won't move diagonally on its own. Magma tamers based on this design (looks like it's based on this one) need a tempshift tile in the notch, preferably made of steel, tungsten, or obsidian. That will blend the temperatures in a 3x3 area and cause the magma to freeze to igneous. Since the only open tile is down-left, that's where it will get ejected. 

However, the trick is that it has to be a small enough amount of magma so that it becomes debris and not a tile. That means you also need to set your automation so that the door only opens for a split second, so that only a small amount of magma falls into the grate at a time. If too much magma gets into the mesh, instead of getting ejected as debris it will freeze as a tile and clog up the mesh. That's likely to happen right now based on your screenshot, but you can fix it by disabling all your automation (the pliers/scissors tool helps with this) and using diagonal digging to replace the two mesh tiles one at a time with solid tiles and then back to mesh, preserving the vacuum.

The page I linked to includes suggestions for the automation settings. It looks like you've used the same memory-buffer-filter as on that page. For the volcano tamers in my current game I'm using 0.4s for the filter (0.5s should also work), and I start them with 30s on the buffer and work my way down to 10s.

Finally, you've got a temperature sensor in there but I can't tell whether it's the trigger for the memory or connected to the turbines. If it's for the door I'd relocate it to be in the notch itself, although what you've got might work out for this game.

Since you used two-layer liquids to prime your steam chamber and it hasn't yet warmed up, you can still fix it by turning everything off and sending a dupe in through the top. In future designs if you use a petroleum slick as the bottom layer it will not only help spread heat but make it so that you can cool the chamber back down to perform maintenance or replacement.

[Gurgel]

Second this. Liquids and gasses do not move diagonally. The phase change is what makes it happen.

[MartinAndel]

5 hours ago, meekay said:

Magma won't move diagonally on its own. Magma tamers based on this design (looks like it's based on this one) need a tempshift tile in the notch, preferably made of steel, tungsten, or obsidian. That will blend the temperatures in a 3x3 area and cause the magma to freeze to igneous. Since the only open tile is down-left, that's where it will get ejected. 

However, the trick is that it has to be a small enough amount of magma so that it becomes debris and not a tile. That means you also need to set your automation so that the door only opens for a split second, so that only a small amount of magma falls into the grate at a time. If too much magma gets into the mesh, instead of getting ejected as debris it will freeze as a tile and clog up the mesh. That's likely to happen right now based on your screenshot, but you can fix it by disabling all your automation (the pliers/scissors tool helps with this) and using diagonal digging to replace the two mesh tiles one at a time with solid tiles and then back to mesh, preserving the vacuum.

The page I linked to includes suggestions for the automation settings. It looks like you've used the same memory-buffer-filter as on that page. For the volcano tamers in my current game I'm using 0.4s for the filter (0.5s should also work), and I start them with 30s on the buffer and work my way down to 10s.

Finally, you've got a temperature sensor in there but I can't tell whether it's the trigger for the memory or connected to the turbines. If it's for the door I'd relocate it to be in the notch itself, although what you've got might work out for this game.

Since you used two-layer liquids to prime your steam chamber and it hasn't yet warmed up, you can still fix it by turning everything off and sending a dupe in through the top. In future designs if you use a petroleum slick as the bottom layer it will not only help spread heat but make it so that you can cool the chamber back down to perform maintenance or replacement.

So you suggest putting three tempshift tiles into this area? I'll also need to fix my automation yeah. I misread the timings on the recipe.

[MartinAndel]

Alright, the tungsten tempshift plates did the injection trick!

The timings aren't right tho. With 0.5 sec on filter gate and 10 sec on the buffer, the magma had solidified in the mesh after about two or three airlock openings.

[Prince Mandor]

9 hours ago, MartinAndel said:

putting three tempshift tiles

One, not three. One tempshift plate at bottom-right corner

[meekay]

Correct, just one tempshift. @MartinAndel based on the screenshot you posted, the meshes were already full of magma, so you'll need to clear them out with vacuum and try again. Try starting with 30s on the buffer and 0.1s on the filter, and work your way up on the filter until about 200kg of magma falls into the mesh at a time. Any more than 500kg and you risk solidifying into a tile. (I don't remember the exact amount but it's about 30-35% of the mass of a "full" tile of the liquid.)

One other thing that might be messing you up is you've got the liquid stacking up on top of the door, instead of next to it. That might be causing you to build up more magma there than you can handle. You want the liquid to seep sideways instead of all falling down at once. But you do still need a gap above the door to handle liquid that gets pushed up when the door closes -- it will even teleport through neutronium. So you might need to rebuild the area around the throat on yours.

Here's a shot from my current game to help illustrate. I've also attached my automation overlay.

 

[MartinAndel]

@meekay Thanks for the great advice and schematics!

Installing a single tungsten temp shift plate into that 1x1 nook as well as moving the thermometer there as you kindly suggested has fixed it and I finally achieved a working volcano / steam power plant!

I wasn't all plain sailing because I later found out I forgot to pump the coolant into the cooling loop! But that was an easy fix lol.

Timings wise I settled on 0.3 seconds on the filter and 50 seconds on the buffer gate. I'm getting about 380kg of magma dropping in. Not every time the door opens for whatever reason, but that's fine. I find that if I increase the amount or the frequency, I'm going through the available magma way too quickly. The system has been stable for a few cycles now.

Petroleum boiler next!