(relatively)Efficient Automated Regolith Crusher

[TOOK14]

I've seen some posts about automated regolith clearing, and I'd like to share my current solution.  It takes roughly 360W per blast door when active, and I'm still tuning the timings for max efficiency, but I do like 8 blast doors, as that neatly lines up with 4 solar panels(4 wide doors and 7 wide panels). 

Spoiler

The sensor dish can be placed anywhere along the red wire, and farther if you move the circuitry out of the way.
Sensor dishes are very sensitive to most buildings being placed within 15 tiles of them in any direction, but you only need roughly 35 seconds to get the blast doors closed in time.

Automation Breakdown:
From the dish, left is for the blast doors, nice and simple, while right is for the crusher and "retractable floor" of the crusher.
1st we have a falling edge circuit (BUFFER and NOT gate into the AND gate).  This BUFFER gate dictates how long the crusher will run.  I have it set to 90 seconds, which is probably way too long.  You can put a BUFFER gate set to ~25 seconds before this to save power by not having the crusher running while the blast doors open.
2nd we split off the floor circuit from the crusher, crusher has a filter connection to crusher as a 1 way signal, which keeps the crusher doors open at the end. (The two NOT gates at a right angle, and the FILTER gate directly above them)
3rd we have a 3 second clock, followed by a 1 second buffer.  (NOT and FILTER gates feeding into each other are the clock, FILTER set to 3 seconds.  BUFFER gate right after is set to 1 second)

This setup is going to cost a decent bit of power when running, but should be easy enough to build, and reliable enough to keep your surface clean and damage free, at no maintenance, and you do get all the regolith and other meteor drops just sitting on the glass for your dupes to gather, or an automation system if you are so inclined(be warned, sweeper arms will overheat very quickly when moving 300C material). 
The key to getting such systems to work is making sure the crusher doors are closed for the shortest time possible, because if they are closed too long, the game will basically superheat the doors that closed on regolith, melting them, even wolframite doors. 
Also fair warning, if you lose power, the doors all default to open.

[Glassyfo]

6 minutes ago, TOOK14 said:

Also fair warning, if you lose power, the doors all default to open.

Weird. Shouldn't the lack of signal from the scanners mean the doors stay shut? That's how it is in my builds.

[TOOK14]

Doors need an off signal to close, the sensor gives an on signal when it detects meteors, so I just use a NOT gate.  Unfortunately, that means "no signal" reads as "doors open".

[Glassyfo]

I'm currently in the midst of combining my regolith crushing and cleaning setups. I'll post it here if I manage to get it to work.

[Flying_Banana]

1. You don't need power for Mechanic Airlocks for the setup to work.
2. Leave at least one row below Bunker Doors to avoid damage.
3. Bottom row doesn't need to be Mechanic Airlocks. It is cheaper to use Mesh Tiles.

[Glassyfo]

The whole thing takes no power, and everything ends up pushed over on to one tile.

[thejohn1567]

8 hours ago, TOOK14 said:

Doors need an off signal to close, the sensor gives an on signal when it detects meteors, so I just use a NOT gate.  Unfortunately, that means "no signal" reads as "doors open".

use an xor gate with the meteor in one input and a switch toggle on in the other input

[onlineous]

Isn't the regolith going to overheat the telescope and meteor scanners?

[TOOK14]

The regolith does in fact overheat the telescope, but not the scanners, they don't seem to interact with the temperature of their floor, and even if they did, scanners don't have an overheat temp.  Unfortunately, the telescope can't have ANY tiles between it and the sky, so I don't see any way around having to cool the telescope, which I have started doing by running radiant pipes in the glass floor, cycling AETN cooled oil. 

A thought I'm playing around with is building the telescope over a gassy moo ranch, since gas grass needs friggin LIQUID CHLORINE for irrigation, and a pressurized atmosphere, it should be a decent source of cooling for the glass.

On 9/12/2018 at 12:39 AM, thejohn1567 said:

use an xor gate with the meteor in one input and a switch toggle on in the other input

That would still require a manual input, and I can achieve the same thing by just putting a clock sensor on the line with the scanners, and setting it 100% on or 0% on.  I guess I could do some kind of smart battery setup though...

[TOOK14]

So yea, this little circuit gives me automated protection from a power outage.
 

and this is what the rest of the setup looks like ATM.  Still testing the moo farm, not sure if it's enough cooling, but if I made the ranch larger, I think it'd be pretty safe to assume it'd be able to keep up.  I'm also almost completely ignoring the efficiency reduction of crowding the telescope, so that's something I'll want to revisit eventually.

Spoiler

 

[malloc]

4 hours ago, TOOK14 said:

Unfortunately, the telescope can't have ANY tiles between it and the sky, so I don't see any way around having to cool the telescope, which I have started doing by running radiant pipes in the glass floor, cycling AETN cooled oil. 

It doesn't mind mesh tiles so you can drop the regolith on that above the telescope and avoid cooling it.  At least for now it doesn't seem to heat itself despite claiming to.

[RonEmpire]

the amount of regolith is insane.  just digging out my space section now to start building the space research.  ugh.

[Carnis]

I fiddled with this problem too. Melted 3 telescopes.

So.. layers

Bunker door powered.

Vacuum

Mech Door unpowered

Mech Door unpowered

Telescope

Mechdoor unpowered.

*

Setup uses 120w/Bunker door.

I manually toggle the mech doors, but it would not Be difficult to link it with the scanner.

Im later replacing telescope with a rocket, so manual is best.

You want to have 1 vacuumtile under bunker to avoid mech damage.

You want to have 2 mechdoors under The telescope so you can drop regolith before The scope melts.

*

Edit: By the way, heat does not destroy your mech doors. Its the 2 tile wide damage area of meteor impact. Hence vacuum 1 tile is necessary.

[Mullematsch]

5 hours ago, Carnis said:

I fiddled with this problem too. Melted 3 telescopes.

So.. layers

Bunker door powered.

Vacuum

Mech Door unpowered

Mech Door unpowered

Telescope

Mechdoor unpowered.

*

Setup uses 120w/Bunker door.

I manually toggle the mech doors, but it would not Be difficult to link it with the scanner.

Im later replacing telescope with a rocket, so manual is best.

You want to have 1 vacuumtile under bunker to avoid mech damage.

You want to have 2 mechdoors under The telescope so you can drop regolith before The scope melts.

*

Edit: By the way, heat does not destroy your mech doors. Its the 2 tile wide damage area of meteor impact. Hence vacuum 1 tile is necessary.

All you need to do is open the doors below the telescope early enough that no regolith sits on the doors.