Thought I'd share this one while it lasts, the MS engine is due to be nerfed in an update but still while it works it allows you to use high power items without mastering rotarycraft...

In its present form the engine converts RF into rotary power and is capable of 2048 r/s at 2048Nm. Step that up 4:1 to 8192 rad/s and it will fully power an extractor. Its not as much of a waste as you'd think as if you feed it stacked items all four stages run simultaneously.

Details: I'm using a diamond gearbox to convert the power. It costs 13 diamonds to make, 5 to make more than enough gears and 6 to make the shafts. The gearbox needs ONE bucket of lubricant. It doesn't use it up. I'm not sure if steel will even take the torque? If you have access to bedrock gears you don't need this tutorial.

I used a grinder powered by the engine to make the lubricant. This is horribly inefficient but worked, it might be worth running a steel 16:1 box dry initially just to save energy? Correction try 8:1 as the instant a 16:1 box takes any damage at all it will lose a bit of torque and stop powering the grinder.

There's a redstone gate located on the water pipe, detecting "inventory has items". This means when the extractor is empty the engine shuts off, so overall the system behaves like a TE machine and doesn't draw idle power.

I'm not good at gates so I bodged it with a redstone trail. You can't put redstone on the engine to trigger it, makes sense really, and it only responds to a signal pointing to it, like a piston does.

if piggles is willing and on, he could show you the "secret" way of getting a lot of bedrock dust easily

i've not got around to upgrading my extractor to my latest idea, but i use a gas turbine (or jet engine as i like to call it) with a CVT unit that switches the RADs/Torque (via a timer) around to make it process a stack per second (per stage).

My newer idea was to just use the jet engine to make the power and store it in the new electric craft battery and then use the electric craft motor to power it directly at the high RADs/Torque needed.

bedrock gears arn't needed with the CVT but u could use them instead.

True, if I recall correctly the CVT needs only one bedrock component. Right now though I'm really looking at big reactors. You've run the timed CVT configuration so you'll be able to see how it compares to a fully powered extractor, but as I understand it the two high torque stages are the first and last, and they should process faster with higher speed. The middle stages do not benefit from extra torque.

I'm using a laser drill as a power sink for my tests (shame to let the power go to waste) and I want to see if the combination of laser drill+5*ore processing and a high reactor efficiency can achieve fuel break-even.

I'm fairly sure I'm seeing way beyond breakeven, it could be luck but I have a couple of stacks of fuel and I'm contemplating building something bigger and with a turbine.

It probably won't break even but its interesting trying. Next step is to try to up the reactor efficiency. That means I need a layout that puts fuel rods in line (not diagonal) and includes a moderator. The data I found is incomplete though and oddly enough the data for graphite blocks is missing.


I'm thinking of using another MS engine to run a bedrock breaker, and when I need to relocate the breaker I'll just use a crazy chain of bevel gears.

Electric craft kind of confused me, is it a standalone mod or an extension?

OK I see its another rotarycraft extension adding yet another power type.

FWIW I've a sneaking suspicion that you could place an autonomous activator next to a gearbox and put a screwdriver in it and have the gearbox toggle between speed and torque.