Quarry



A quarry is a machine added by the BuildCraft mod. It allows for automatic Mining of a large area.

The quarry will occupy an area of 11x11x5 (does not include the actual Quarry block) and excavate a 9x9 area of land. These dimensions can be modified with Landmarks to increase the size, up to 62x62. The Quarry must be powered by one or more Engines, but will require the equivalent of two Combustion Engines to work at full efficiency.



Upon starting, the Quarry will start building its frame and clear the area within it. Once the frame is complete, it will spawn a crane-like structure that will begin to mine the area one block at a time. These blocks will be deposited into any adjacent chest or will be spat onto the ground if there isn't one. You can also pipe out your excavated blocks. There is no need for a Wooden Pipe to fetch the items, the Quarry will place the items into a connected Stone Pipe, Cobblestone Pipe, Gold Pipe, Iron Pipe or Diamond Pipe on its own.

In the event the quarry encounters lava while digging, the rest of the blocks under the lava will not be mined, because the quarry is coded to stop at lava or bedrock. A wise preventative measure to prevent lava from causing your quarries difficulty and a strategy that many employ, is to simply setup in an ocean or to fill the area destined to be quarried with water source blocks so quarry can deal with. If the Quarry has finished all it can (all the bottom of the Quarry is bedrock or lava) it will need to be relocated before it will mine again.

Crafting recipe
Total Supplies: -30 Sticks -28 Cobblestone -28 Iron -16 Gold -11 Diamond -1 Redstone

The combined EMC value of a quarry is 130260 EMC

Underground Operation
A Quarry can function at any level. Simply placing it against a shaft wall and powering it is all that is required to start the default 9x9 area. The blocks in the frame area will be destroyed.

It is possible to create a landmark-drawn frame as per above ground, but it will be necessary to carve tunnels for all of the landmark beams, otherwise they will not link up.

Using BuildCraft
The Quarry, like all other BC consumers has an internal energy storage in which it stores MJ until it can perform an Operation. Because of this the Quarry can be powered by any BC compatible engine. For the Quarry to operate at maximum mining speed it needs 9 MJ/s which translates to 2 internal combustion engines running on fuel (outputting 5 MJ/t each) or 9 steam engines (these put out 1 MJ/t).

As the Quarry has only 4 sides free to stick engines to, If you want to go for the steam engine method you will have to invest in some conductive pipes to fully power the Quarry.



Using An Energy Link
Another way to power the quarry which is much more compact is by using an Energy Link connected to a Conductive Teleport Pipe. This will turn energy from, for example, a Geothermal Generator into Buildcraft energy. Then the energy is teleported to the quarry regardless of where it is. This takes away the need for tricky and somewhat dangerous engines while lowering the amount of pipes and wires around your map. Also, if you have teleport pipes for the conductive teleport pipes you should have more to use as regular teleport pipes to teleport all the harvested materials from your quarry to one main processing line. By doing these things to power your quarry, you can change it from a hassling mess of redirecting pipes to an easy 5 piece (conductive teleport and stone pipes, regular teleport and stone pipes, and a quarry) set-up that takes only a few minutes to take down, move, and reset. {C

Uses In Conversion
The Quarry is instrumental if you would like to create a system that converts blocks into items, and back again, without player intervention. Under this system, blocks that you would like to place into pipes are pushed into the quarry area at a high level, so that the quarry will constantly mine these blocks and place them into Pipes.

If the quarry is close to finishing, or if you are in danger of stopping the quarry, place a Builder on top of the Quarry and put sand or gravel in it. The sand will be built and it will fall into the Quarry. The Quarry will mine the sand or gravel, which can be piped, through a filter, back to the Builder. This will ensure that the Quarry will never stop working.

Watch Excellent Tutorials On How To Set up a Quarry
These videos cover all possible ways of powering the quarry. 8AYSRJck940 SQDwAZNdUBw

Tips

 * Instead of using one Combustion Engine use 2 Steam Engines and with 1 Diamond pipe sorting every coal it finds or half to the steam engines again so it uses itself.
 * The Landmarks specify an area up to 64x64, giving a maximum possible quarry size of 62x62. An area this large provides a low-maintenance quarry that doesn't need replacing nearly as frequently as the default 9x9 quarry, but be advised that mining from a quarry this large takes more than one hour per layer. Also, a few layers will fill several chests of sand, dirt and cobblestone, depending on the selected region (there is a lot of dirt and sand under water).
 * By placing the frame above water, or by placing a water source block on the first layer of the Quarry, any lava encountered will immediately turn into cobblestone or obsidian, avoiding delays. The water will also prevent hostile mob spawning.
 * Mining in this fashion requires very little additional interaction from the player and is nearly fully automated, but is considerably less time-efficient than mining manually, and in particular, gathering the ores encrusted in the walls of a cave while exploring it. A good way to take advantage of both cases is to select a relatively small area to dig (the default is good) and to gather any ore visible on the walls of the quarry once it is finished.
 * Once placed the quarry will begin to clear all blocks inside the area, so remember not to leave stuff like Engines, Pipes or the Quarry itself inside the area, or it will magically disappear!