Ive played SE from when it first came out, made auto miners and jaz like that but ive never used projection blocks with welders, i need to pull my finger out, after watching your video its really got me thinking, thanks ;)
@@odjwizardo3198 Id love to know more, as I have said, Ive played from it coming out, the only part of SE I know very little about is projectors, any information would be great.
Definitely an interesting take on an inchworm, as you mention at 5:10 it will eventually get to the point where the drill shaft is too long for the piston to hold up, which is why typically for inch worms the printing is and moving is done on the drill head, and the 'shaft' is a static grid mounted back at the base.
Could you also keep things stable by having a wheel under the floating section(s) of the drill so the full weight is always supported elsewhere than the piston itself. Then the problem becomes how much mass the piston can actually push. You can potentially create an infinite power source this way to that also produces a long chain that includes a battery (since they have 30% charge at creation).
Food for thought. Having this as a core for a ship that can land down lock in to the ground and bore like this would be amazing to see. Also you could add a simple set up for the drill part with a printer and welders to make a base floor as it drills. Love seeing other engineers builds. Keep up the awesome work man.
@@CosmicIntroverts I took the ship borehole idea and added a couple of grinders at the top of the print bay (And I set the pistons to move the drill from the side. I set it up so the projection moves with the drill, and actually builds ON the drill shaft instead of on the piston, so it prints as it goes, and there's nothing behind the shaft.) By having all the connections on the sides, it allows me to set the drill rig to go down for a set amount of time (I use 2 sets of timer blocks, an extend and retract set, with paired timer sets for retract and stop, timed so that the final retraction brings the drill-head into the ship, but doesn't feed it into the grinder.). Then I have the depth-timers set for 30, 60, 90 meters so I can just land over an ore pile and run the drill down to the depth of the ore, harvest it, and then collect my entire drill back up. (I also keep the welder and grinder banks on an isolated grid so I have EXACTLY enough components to make the deepest drill the timer blocks allow, and it doesn't fill that storage with stone)
Love the build can’t wait to try this! Also I use this strat where I cut down on size and use a hinge with a small head to create computer room for the even controllers and such to downsize while stacking more in a grid since those blocks cost less to
Cheers dude, I'm a long term owner but due to dad duty I've barely played it in the grand scheme. Thing like this will make me tey and get more grid time.
Ooh, I had a lot of fun developing a vertical variant of this a few years back, thought it would be cool to imitate the oil rig look. I... kinda overcomplicated it and gave up though XD. Tried to optimize too much and got lost at the assembler-balancing step. The first thing I did that might help you though was making the motion all happen on the drill assembly that went into the earth. I didn't like how pistons got more unstable with distance. IIRC my setup was two pistons with merge blocks at the top and bottom with the rest of the drills and conveyors attatched to em. The whole thing would 'inchworm' its way down by releasing one at a time, and build the pipe/merge block anchors as it went. The other thing you could consider (if the goal is resources instead of a shaft) is to put a couple minute delay between extensions like I did, or add refineries, that stone you're throwing out could be turned into sweet sweet ingots. I got pretty far into the project, even had grinders and multiple projectors set up so that after the drill assembly finished with an anchor station, it'd grind away all the extra bits and replace it with cheap piping. Figured every block I could cut from the repeating segment was more 'profit' material. The issue for me came with trying to make sure my welders always had access to enough stuff. Something about getting the assemblers at the base station to ONLY make enough parts for an extra repeatable section stumped me. Repeat-orders, even at the right parts-ratio, would eventually fill storage and jam, trying to trigger the parts-order with timer blocks broke when the refineries didn't keep up or you hit an ore patch and started only having access to one ingot type, and moving the stuff around with connectors was its own headache. Then I realized any loss of power would brick the thing and I quit instead of trying to harden it against disruption-by-violence. I probably should have looked into repurposing someone's inventory-management script and just sunk the base station into the rock, but that was about the time my frustration convinced me to give up and move on to something else. Hope you have fun developing your variant and it actually sees survival use! Remember, 'perfect' is the enemy of 'good enough'!
Wow. Sounds like you put a lot of time and effort into that thing. It is really easy to over complicate and difficult to keep things simple in SE. Especially if you are automating.
great idea. Now I think you need the reverse operation to happen so it switches the welders out for grinders and retracts the whole thing back when you are done burrowing through the mountain and finally mount the whole thing on a ship or other vehicle that can rock up, lock itself in place, dig the tunnel, pack it all back up and move on to the next one.
You could set this up to print new sections of floor/tunnel with connectors for the drill to move on. The drill section always stays at the 2 piston blueprint.
@CosmicIntroverts wish I could claim that idea lol, but i think I saw it in another video. Watching yall set these timer and control blocks up for functions is always fun =)
Thanks! I'm glad you like it. I use to watch you and EpikTek play SE. I really enjoyed your content. You did some really cool builds and gave me some good ideas for my own builds.
You could add a pair of station grinders right after the welders that remove/recycle the connectors and merge blocks. Would save on weight and resources
@@CosmicIntroverts Not yet. It needs some polish. If you want a preview it's on my other channel. Try searching for Space Engineers Goron. It doesn't just mine in one direction. When it detects an ore vein it changes direction to get as much useful material as possible.
@CosmicIntroverts yeah I just tried to downsize it to small piston to make a more compact large rig......that was interesting. Think I'm just going to go full bore large block and see what happens lol
I've done something similar, except it was vertical and drilling straight down, and had the drills on a rotor allowing a 15 drill setup to bore a 30 block wide hole. Always ended up with Klang issues though. Probably the whole "Rotors on pistons" thing.
@@CosmicIntroverts It would get deep enough to reach the depth most ores can be found, so it was still useful. Crushed my dreams of "Tunneling to china" though. The design was born of necessity. I was playing on a server that, while it didn't have a PCU limit, it did have a "Per block" limit per player. The limit for drills was 15. I figured if I were to lower a shaft and at the end of it have it "T" off in 2 directions horizontally at the end on a rotor, it would suffice to pull up any deposit I found in one go. It would split in 2 directions, one drill dead center, and branching out would be every other block, offsetting the drills from the opposite arm so they alternated coverage and maintained some sort of balance. The result would be the same if you were to extend 15 drills in one direction right next to each other but rotated them from the end rather than the center, so 15 drills covering a radius of 15 blocks (so a diameter of 30. Technically 29, but 30 sounds better). It was also mounted on wheels so it was portable (This was a rovers server, probably another factor to the Klang, but I would think locking it to the ground with landing gear would eliminate that factor) Anyway, it served its purpose, but could DEFINITELY be improved upon. It also had a problem with releasing the connector before the merge block was able to connect sometimes if things got a little out of alignment. There's been a few updates since then, so event controllers may fix this if I were to try again. The Klang since then may have been improved as well. If you wish to try it and perhaps perfect it, have at it. I would actually like to see it work without exploding every other hole.
@@CosmicIntroverts unfortunately, no it isn't. Never felt it was complete enough to be "workshop worthy". Only thing I have there is an old script that functions as a one button launch system to get your ship from surface to orbit (shameless plug here, launch assistant). Best I can offer is a general description of how it's intended to work. I might be able to slap an example together and pm you a screenshot. The original build is long gone.
No worries. If I get into a situation where I can utilize a setup like your drill, I'll give your system a shot. You'll get credit of course. Thanks for sharing! 👍
seem to have an issue everything is set up right but when it tries to push it from the first it doesnt pistans go crazy then it explodes cant seem to fix or figure out why
The only thing I can think of that may give you an issue would be the impulse axis settings on the pistons. Make sure they are turned all the way up. I didn't have any issues with the pistons going wobbly when I had the impulse axis up and share inertia tensor on. Sorry you're having trouble with it. If I think of anything else that may cause that issue I will let you know.
@@CosmicIntroverts phone's autocorrect got me. It was supposed to say "behind the front merge block" not "being the front merge block." apologies for that.
I can't think of an easy way to retract it or automatically grind it down when you're done drilling. I'm up for any suggestions. If you can think of a way, let me know. That would be cool!
I have found that by having the refinery going while mining, you still get a lot of resources from the stone even if it is being discarded. If you have enough cargo space then I would say go for it!
Seems to be. I had some trouble with the welders on the server I tried it on but it was stable for at least the 8 extensions I did in survival. I have not tested it without share inertia tensors so if you are on a server that does not have that I would use caution.
Yeah. In the assembler you can choose blocks and it queues up the needed components. There is a repeat toggle above the assembler queue. Toggle that on and whatever is in your queue repeatedly gets made.
Ive played SE from when it first came out, made auto miners and jaz like that but ive never used projection blocks with welders, i need to pull my finger out, after watching your video its really got me thinking, thanks ;)
That's what I like about this game. I'm always learning new ways of doing and building things. Glad you liked the video! 👍
i have a rover that self build a drill rig has 2 pistons and no redlining and is auto set and forget if you want to know more let me know
@@odjwizardo3198 Id love to know more, as I have said, Ive played from it coming out, the only part of SE I know very little about is projectors, any information would be great.
Definitely an interesting take on an inchworm, as you mention at 5:10 it will eventually get to the point where the drill shaft is too long for the piston to hold up, which is why typically for inch worms the printing is and moving is done on the drill head, and the 'shaft' is a static grid mounted back at the base.
That is an excellent point. I may have to investigate and try a build with the printing on the drill end. Thanks for the tip!
Could you also keep things stable by having a wheel under the floating section(s) of the drill so the full weight is always supported elsewhere than the piston itself. Then the problem becomes how much mass the piston can actually push.
You can potentially create an infinite power source this way to that also produces a long chain that includes a battery (since they have 30% charge at creation).
@@appuser That may solve some of the stability issues as the drill gets longer. May be worth adding it to the blueprint to see if it works! Good idea!
I tried to make a setup like this many years ago based on how an oil well is dug. Never quite got it to work right, glad to see someone finally did 🙂
Thanks! It's not perfect but it does get the job done.
Food for thought. Having this as a core for a ship that can land down lock in to the ground and bore like this would be amazing to see. Also you could add a simple set up for the drill part with a printer and welders to make a base floor as it drills. Love seeing other engineers builds. Keep up the awesome work man.
Thanks! I like the idea of putting it on a ship. Very cool idea!
@@CosmicIntroverts I took the ship borehole idea and added a couple of grinders at the top of the print bay (And I set the pistons to move the drill from the side. I set it up so the projection moves with the drill, and actually builds ON the drill shaft instead of on the piston, so it prints as it goes, and there's nothing behind the shaft.)
By having all the connections on the sides, it allows me to set the drill rig to go down for a set amount of time (I use 2 sets of timer blocks, an extend and retract set, with paired timer sets for retract and stop, timed so that the final retraction brings the drill-head into the ship, but doesn't feed it into the grinder.). Then I have the depth-timers set for 30, 60, 90 meters so I can just land over an ore pile and run the drill down to the depth of the ore, harvest it, and then collect my entire drill back up. (I also keep the welder and grinder banks on an isolated grid so I have EXACTLY enough components to make the deepest drill the timer blocks allow, and it doesn't fill that storage with stone)
Nice! You should put it on the workshop so I can check it out. I would love to see it in action!
Love the build can’t wait to try this! Also I use this strat where I cut down on size and use a hinge with a small head to create computer room for the even controllers and such to downsize while stacking more in a grid since those blocks cost less to
Going small grid would save on resources and make everything nice and compact. I like that! That's a great idea!
Cheers dude, I'm a long term owner but due to dad duty I've barely played it in the grand scheme. Thing like this will make me tey and get more grid time.
Totally understand dad duty. Family is a top priority. Thanks for the comment and I hope you can find some grid time soon!
WOW, that's amazing!!!
Thanks!
Ooh, I had a lot of fun developing a vertical variant of this a few years back, thought it would be cool to imitate the oil rig look. I... kinda overcomplicated it and gave up though XD. Tried to optimize too much and got lost at the assembler-balancing step.
The first thing I did that might help you though was making the motion all happen on the drill assembly that went into the earth. I didn't like how pistons got more unstable with distance. IIRC my setup was two pistons with merge blocks at the top and bottom with the rest of the drills and conveyors attatched to em. The whole thing would 'inchworm' its way down by releasing one at a time, and build the pipe/merge block anchors as it went.
The other thing you could consider (if the goal is resources instead of a shaft) is to put a couple minute delay between extensions like I did, or add refineries, that stone you're throwing out could be turned into sweet sweet ingots.
I got pretty far into the project, even had grinders and multiple projectors set up so that after the drill assembly finished with an anchor station, it'd grind away all the extra bits and replace it with cheap piping. Figured every block I could cut from the repeating segment was more 'profit' material. The issue for me came with trying to make sure my welders always had access to enough stuff. Something about getting the assemblers at the base station to ONLY make enough parts for an extra repeatable section stumped me. Repeat-orders, even at the right parts-ratio, would eventually fill storage and jam, trying to trigger the parts-order with timer blocks broke when the refineries didn't keep up or you hit an ore patch and started only having access to one ingot type, and moving the stuff around with connectors was its own headache. Then I realized any loss of power would brick the thing and I quit instead of trying to harden it against disruption-by-violence.
I probably should have looked into repurposing someone's inventory-management script and just sunk the base station into the rock, but that was about the time my frustration convinced me to give up and move on to something else. Hope you have fun developing your variant and it actually sees survival use! Remember, 'perfect' is the enemy of 'good enough'!
Wow. Sounds like you put a lot of time and effort into that thing. It is really easy to over complicate and difficult to keep things simple in SE. Especially if you are automating.
great idea. Now I think you need the reverse operation to happen so it switches the welders out for grinders and retracts the whole thing back when you are done burrowing through the mountain and finally mount the whole thing on a ship or other vehicle that can rock up, lock itself in place, dig the tunnel, pack it all back up and move on to the next one.
That's a great idea. I would have to flesh that out in creative before trying it in a survival situation.
@@CosmicIntroverts Then turn it face down, throw on some wheels and make it a mobile drilling beast!
I enjoyed this!
You could set this up to print new sections of floor/tunnel with connectors for the drill to move on. The drill section always stays at the 2 piston blueprint.
Good idea. Maybe I will try a version 2! Thanks!
@CosmicIntroverts wish I could claim that idea lol, but i think I saw it in another video. Watching yall set these timer and control blocks up for functions is always fun =)
This looks amazing 😁
Thanks! I'm glad you like it. I use to watch you and EpikTek play SE. I really enjoyed your content. You did some really cool builds and gave me some good ideas for my own builds.
its so cool to watch
You could add a pair of station grinders right after the welders that remove/recycle the connectors and merge blocks. Would save on weight and resources
That would be an easy addition. Good idea!
Nice build
Thanks!
looks good
Thanks!
loved it, will try a vertical version, maybe will drill trough the planet🤣. awesome, really
This is a magical idea.
I want a drill snake. 😅
I would love to see a drill snake! That would be awesome!
@@HashknightGaming we did lol, it gets strange after 300 meters, but its really cool lol.
@@CosmicIntroverts maybe with the right angles on hinges running oposite ways 🤷♂🤣🤣🤣 i will try.
May I show off my take for an automatic mining platform?
Is it on the Steam Workshop? I would love to take a look at it. I'm always up for seeing how other engineers build.
@@CosmicIntroverts Not yet. It needs some polish. If you want a preview it's on my other channel. Try searching for Space Engineers Goron.
It doesn't just mine in one direction. When it detects an ore vein it changes direction to get as much useful material as possible.
Gonna have to see if i can build this onto a rover platform
That would be a cool build!
@CosmicIntroverts yeah I just tried to downsize it to small piston to make a more compact large rig......that was interesting. Think I'm just going to go full bore large block and see what happens lol
You are a true space engineer 👍
Built a couple of these in the past to core out an asteroid or when playing with deep ores mods.
You definitely need something that can go deep with that mod.
I've done something similar, except it was vertical and drilling straight down, and had the drills on a rotor allowing a 15 drill setup to bore a 30 block wide hole. Always ended up with Klang issues though. Probably the whole "Rotors on pistons" thing.
That's and impressive size hole! How deep did you get before it clanged out?
@@CosmicIntroverts It would get deep enough to reach the depth most ores can be found, so it was still useful. Crushed my dreams of "Tunneling to china" though. The design was born of necessity. I was playing on a server that, while it didn't have a PCU limit, it did have a "Per block" limit per player. The limit for drills was 15. I figured if I were to lower a shaft and at the end of it have it "T" off in 2 directions horizontally at the end on a rotor, it would suffice to pull up any deposit I found in one go. It would split in 2 directions, one drill dead center, and branching out would be every other block, offsetting the drills from the opposite arm so they alternated coverage and maintained some sort of balance. The result would be the same if you were to extend 15 drills in one direction right next to each other but rotated them from the end rather than the center, so 15 drills covering a radius of 15 blocks (so a diameter of 30. Technically 29, but 30 sounds better).
It was also mounted on wheels so it was portable (This was a rovers server, probably another factor to the Klang, but I would think locking it to the ground with landing gear would eliminate that factor)
Anyway, it served its purpose, but could DEFINITELY be improved upon. It also had a problem with releasing the connector before the merge block was able to connect sometimes if things got a little out of alignment. There's been a few updates since then, so event controllers may fix this if I were to try again. The Klang since then may have been improved as well.
If you wish to try it and perhaps perfect it, have at it. I would actually like to see it work without exploding every other hole.
I would love to take look at it. Is it on the workshop? If so what's the name of it, I'll look it up!
@@CosmicIntroverts unfortunately, no it isn't. Never felt it was complete enough to be "workshop worthy". Only thing I have there is an old script that functions as a one button launch system to get your ship from surface to orbit (shameless plug here, launch assistant).
Best I can offer is a general description of how it's intended to work. I might be able to slap an example together and pm you a screenshot. The original build is long gone.
No worries. If I get into a situation where I can utilize a setup like your drill, I'll give your system a shot. You'll get credit of course. Thanks for sharing! 👍
DRILL THROUGH THE EARTH
I bet it could 😄
It's like a two stroke engine!
I can see that lol.
seem to have an issue everything is set up right but when it tries to push it from the first it doesnt pistans go crazy then it explodes cant seem to fix or figure out why
The only thing I can think of that may give you an issue would be the impulse axis settings on the pistons. Make sure they are turned all the way up. I didn't have any issues with the pistons going wobbly when I had the impulse axis up and share inertia tensor on. Sorry you're having trouble with it. If I think of anything else that may cause that issue I will let you know.
That port 🙈 I'd change one piston by like .5% so they line up better, and wheels may help with stability to hold the shaft for unlimited lengths
The wheels would be a really good idea. I’ll have to try that out. Thanks, great idea!
I cannot get the piston to pull back after disengaging the merge block seen at 4:04
Make sure your impulse axis setting on the pistons are all the way up. I had that same issue and that was what fixed it for me.
Great build! For stability, what about adding a wheel behind* the front merge block?
I would have to see an example of what you're thinking. Not sure I understand what you mean.
@@CosmicIntroverts phone's autocorrect got me. It was supposed to say "behind the front merge block" not "being the front merge block." apologies for that.
I'm feeling like doing this vertically instead of horizontal and just bore my way to the core.
Go for it! That would be awesome to see!
How would you make it retractable
I can't think of an easy way to retract it or automatically grind it down when you're done drilling. I'm up for any suggestions. If you can think of a way, let me know. That would be cool!
I cant wait to try it, but use the rock for basic materials
I have found that by having the refinery going while mining, you still get a lot of resources from the stone even if it is being discarded. If you have enough cargo space then I would say go for it!
Unwanna make it slower reverse one piston at a time instead of then both going together
Hey Bearded, I like the simplicity of this tunnel boring machine, is it as stable in survival mode?
Seems to be. I had some trouble with the welders on the server I tried it on but it was stable for at least the 8 extensions I did in survival. I have not tested it without share inertia tensors so if you are on a server that does not have that I would use caution.
Working well. Does it sag at all?
I've done eight extentions and it has been very stable and straight.
One question though do you have scripts to always have the components for each extension?
No. I queued up the blocks in the assembler and set it to repeat to make sure the proper components are there.
@@CosmicIntroverts wait you can do components on repeat?
Yeah. In the assembler you can choose blocks and it queues up the needed components. There is a repeat toggle above the assembler queue. Toggle that on and whatever is in your queue repeatedly gets made.
Nice work but a bit overcomplicated from the point of view of an engineer, useful mods, Drillsystem