Black-Out Safe Full Magma Pump -- "Zarquan Pump" v1.1

[Zarquan]

I saw a post on Reddit recently about an unfortunate soul who tried to build my original full magma pump, which some people seem to be calling a Zarquan Pump now, without accounting for the error in the magma flows that causes the magma to overflow and break everything. While I have moved on to pumps using microscopic pockets of gas to pump magma with a full sized pump, there still seems to be interest in the original, so here is a new updated version that is extremely safe and stable that operates in a vacuum.

Note, I intentionally made the "magma blade" 9 tiles to allow for constant overflow. That is not an accident.

The way this magma pump works is through the pump range mechanics. The falling liquid, the naphtha, triggers the large pump. The waterfall is then broken by the insulated tile to the right in to droplets so that it is never in the large pump's range. The pump then picks up the magma, as it is in range. The naphtha drops on to a small puddle to be picked up by the small pump. The small pump sends 55 g/s to the array of EZ-Bead pumps, each one set to output 11 g/s. The 5 bead pumps are required to create a continuous waterfall.

The amount of naphtha in the waterfall is tiny. There is a total of 30 kg of naphtha in system. This is below the overflow threshold, so even if there were an extended blackout and the waterfall broke, then the naphtha will not overflow in to the magma, making it black out safe.

The overflow magma flows under the blade and back in to the magma source through an escher waterfall.

This is a proof of concept build made in debug. It could be made smaller, but the 5 vents for the waterfall are required. Unless an insulated insulite pipes are used on the output of the large pump, the naphtha requires cooling.   There are also probably cleaner ways to handle the overflow, but I wanted to get a proof of concept that did not rely on automation and doors to control the magma.

[6Havok9]

About that overflowing magma/whatever liquid thing fun destroyer: I've seen it happen twice with niobium in around 1500 cycles of testing. This was when using three 100 mg gas pockets. A 100 kg niobium tile materialized on the bottom left corner of the pump. The result was catastrophic failure.

I've installed sensors and a notifier on pause + zoom to alert me of this rather unpleasant event. I couldn't figure out what caused it.

About magma: I've been using a pump operating in a vacuum at the end of a 10 tile long blade and I didn't experience any kind of overflow bug. But I only tested it for 374 cycles.

I'm thinking that this magma overflow bug is not a bug at all. Multiple layers of magma will compress the bottom layer until the blade is forced to become one tile longer. By using a high enough magma column or a compressed storage you can achieve a magma blade longer than 10 tiles.

But the niobium one.. I'm clueless.

 

Edit:I just tried making another vacuum 10 tile magma pump in a new save, now I get a magma overflow 100% of the time. It breaks immediately.

I'm at a loss for words.

 

[Zarquan]

5 hours ago, 6Havok9 said:

About that overflowing magma/whatever liquid thing fun destroyer: I've seen it happen twice with niobium in around 1500 cycles of testing. This was when using three 100 mg gas pockets. A 100 kg niobium tile materialized on the bottom left corner of the pump. The result was catastrophic failure.

I've installed sensors and a notifier on pause + zoom to alert me of this rather unpleasant event. I couldn't figure out what caused it.

About magma: I've been using a pump operating in a vacuum at the end of a 10 tile long blade and I didn't experience any kind of overflow bug. But I only tested it for 374 cycles.

I'm thinking that this magma overflow bug is not a bug at all. Multiple layers of magma will compress the bottom layer until the blade is forced to become one tile longer. By using a high enough magma column or a compressed storage you can achieve a magma blade longer than 10 tiles.

But the niobium one.. I'm clueless.

 

Edit:I just tried making another vacuum 10 tile magma pump in a new save, now I get a magma overflow 100% of the time. It breaks immediately.

I'm at a loss for words.

 

There is a fail state for the 100 mg systems based on heat.  They do slowly heat up due to the temperature of the pipes in the liquid and the gas, slowly heating up the pump and water.  I normally thermally link it to a nearby biome and that fixes it.

Also, you do need the 4th gas, as the contents of the pipe acts like debris on the lower left tile of the pump, which is in thermal contact with a solid below.  If it gets too cold, it will form a tile and it also contributes to heating the pump and water.  You could use aerogel too if you are feeling fancy.

 

[Zarquan]

On 9/10/2024 at 12:55 PM, 6Havok9 said:

Edit:I just tried making another vacuum 10 tile magma pump in a new save, now I get a magma overflow 100% of the time. It breaks immediately.

I'm at a loss for words.

I think this happens because the magma mass hits a sweet spot that causes it to be small enough that the magma next to it flows in to it but large enough that, once that happens, it is large enough to flow itself.  I'm not sure whether this is actually the cause, so I think the best way to handle it is either with overflow management, like what I have in this post, or by forcing it to not flow at all with gases.