Why oh why does this happen? (and please go easy on the scolding if the answer is obvious)
The clay blocks are being pushed from right to left, yet they don't seem to be spun evenly. The row of gear boxes just under the turn tables are all turned on at the same time (from the back) to get the system going. The piston and BD are powered from the far right turntable (there is a torch on the block under the piston).
Why do the clay blocks not get spun evenly?
"It's like using a tree to stop your car. It works, but there may be consequences."
My theory: Because of the way you have applied the mechanical power (each turntable being a different number of gearboxes from common source), the turntables are out of phase with eachother. Because of this, the blocks sometimes reset the number of times they have been spun as they enter a turntable which is out of phase with that they were on before. If you could get all the tables to have the same amount of gearboxes from the common source, I think this problem would solve itself. Think.
Maybe before you could just try a line of repeater going to each of the Gear Box that are right under the Turntables (so in the back of your picture).
Send a redstone signal to turn them all of, then start them all at the the time.
It should tell you if it's a Timing synch issue.
If not, maybe just wait a few more ticks before pushing a new clay block in.
Well, it seems that de-powering the turntables all at the same time has no effect on the exact tick that they 'turn'. Also, having all turntables with the same number of gearboxes from the power source doesn't seem to lend itself to having clay pushed over it very well (no matter which relative tick offset I pushed the blocks on). I'm now going to try picking specific numbers of gearboxes from the power source for each turntable and see what the best solution is. This was the method I wasn't quite looking forward to! :D
EDIT: including a picture of all turntables with the same number of gearboxes from the source
Spoiler
Show
If you time the piston right, you get this alternate pattern forming again. Or if it's different by an odd number of ticks, then you get none of them progressing to further pottery stages.
Last edited by Iakovosian on Sun Oct 07, 2012 8:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"It's like using a tree to stop your car. It works, but there may be consequences."
They aren't all getting powered simultaneously BTW. There's a delay for transference of power from each gear box to the next, so if you have a different number of gear boxes between the power source and each individual turntable (which from your screenshot, it looks like you do), they will get initially powered at different times, which is likely the cause of your problem.
Apologies for another post so soon after the last, but I think I've possibly found the game mechanic that's creating the effect shown in the OP's picture.
When the piston is pushing the clay at a certain offset (either only on even tick offsets or odd - not sure which, but it's one or the other) from the tick that the turntables are 'turning', then every second clay block above a turntable will receive the combined rotations from it and the previous clay block to be there, whereas the previous clay block will receive none. So you get the effect seen in the pic where every alternate clay block is advancing by one stage every other turntable. It's kinda hard to describe, but it probably needs to be seen to be understood...
I can't imagine this is a bug of any sort, but it feels confusing to me a bit. :(
*scuttles off to find a larger thinking cap*
"It's like using a tree to stop your car. It works, but there may be consequences."
Help me understand what it is you're trying to accomplish here, and maybe I can help a bit. From what I'm seeing (correct me if I'm wrong), is you're using 1 full rotation of the clay, then pushing it down a line to limit the amount of full rotations it receives. Is this correct?
I'm not sure what else you're trying to do here, but if this is all, then you could much easily do this with a BuddyBlock + DB timer. There is a great thread going about sharing useful builds: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4689, that includes many automated setups. I find when building things and coming up with something that stumps me, that generally there is a much easier way to do it, and someone else has already thought of it.
FlowerChild wrote:They aren't all getting powered simultaneously BTW. There's a delay for transference of power from each gear box to the next, so if you have a different number of gear boxes between the power source and each individual turntable (which from your screenshot, it looks like you do), they will get initially powered at different times, which is likely the cause of your problem.
This explains why my auto urn maker occasionally outputs a vase. I think i managed to fix the system by putting gravel through first, which was left over from when i flushed the system out of any errant urns that hadn't made it to the kiln at the end of the last batch.
Now all i need to do is work out what to do with all these vases...
BTW: Even if you do use the same number of Gear Boxes to each Turntable, you aren't guaranteed they'll all start spinning at the same time due to the way MC block-updates work. You often see this in elevators that use multiple ropes to lift different sections of platforms. Even though the Gear Boxes are powered simultaneously, or should be, you'll end up with the platforms moving at different times, causing "seams" between them.
I believe this is because MC reschedules updates to a later tick if there are too many occurring all at once, to prevent excessive performance degradation in such circumstances.
So yeah, this kind of design may simply not be feasible, or at least not 100% reliable due to the above, no matter what you do.
Thanks for the insights. I was finding it occasionally doing something slightly different from 'normal' too.
I slowed the timing turntable down to half the speed which seems to have increased the reliability - perhaps because the timings aren't so finely tuned any more. Anyway, this means that my turntable line is also halved in length so maybe it's a good thing I can't make it work as fast I was my initial intention! :)
I have started browsing the "Sharing useful builds that get the job done" thread recently and found a few things that are quite similar, and also some that are very different from what I've come up with already! I was going to do a reply with a few optimisation tweaks to some builds, but thought I should at least submit something of my own too. Hence the drive to get a fully automatic (apart from the initial netherrack and clay ball loading) all-pottery-types kiln (where urns come out as soul urns), and an option to divert the urns into steel production too. It's proving quite a journey, especially when trying to coerce my current builds into being nether compatible (as the fashion dictates)! :)
"It's like using a tree to stop your car. It works, but there may be consequences."
Battosay wrote:Maybe before you could just try a line of repeater going to each of the Gear Box that are right under the Turntables (so in the back of your picture).
Send a redstone signal to turn them all of, then start them all at the the time.
It should tell you if it's a Timing synch issue.
If not, maybe just wait a few more ticks before pushing a new clay block in.
I'm not quite sure you have done what Battosay here suggested, since I've had the same problem you had until I turned on and off the gearboxes at the same spot as shown below.
