Steam Engine

Steam Engines are the second tier of engines in Buildcraft. They output 1 MJ/t.

They use vanilla minecraft fuels or Equivalent Exchange fuels to operate (EE fuels can sometimes be buggy). Note that they still require a Redstone signal to run, as do Combustion Engines. You can supply this with Redstone or with Red Alloy Wire from RedPower - it may be more effective.

Steam Engines can explode if left running for too long with any fuel stronger than sticks. The temperature is represented by the color of the central pylon. Blue means its cool, Green means it's warm, Green - Orange toggle means it's beginning to get hot, Orange means that it is hot, and when its an orange -red toggle then it means it's near or in danger of imminent explosion, but its also where the engine runs most effectively (see "using EU as fuel" below)

Recipe
15x Cobblestone, 1x Glass, 8x Sticks, 3x Wooden planks, 1 Iron ingot and 1 redstone dust.

Usage
Steam Engines can be used to run a Quarry, but it's recommended you use 3 or more to run it. It also pumps out 16 items per pump if used to take out items from a chest (Note: It sometimes pulls 52 per pump). Unlike a Redstone Engine, it DOESN'T pump out items faster the hotter it gets. Using this on a Pump will pump out liquids much more efficently than the redstone engine can. It is debatable whether or not water surrounding it slows down heat building up.

PROTIP: If you are using Equivalent Exchange, you should favor Charcoal over Coal, since Coal is worth 4x more EMC than Charcoal. So by using a Transmutation Tablet, Philosopher's Stone, or an Energy Condenser you can trasmutate one Coal into four Charcoal, and since Coal and Charcoal will power a Steam Engine the same amount, using this process will make your Steam Engines four times more effective.

There also seems to be a rare bug in SMP when removing any amount of coal from a steam engine, it doesn't come out.

Effects of Temperature
Steam engines, like Redstone and Combustion Engines, pump faster as they get hotter. The table below shows various speeds as compared to a blue steam engine and a blue combustion engine. (Note, ratios are approximate)

A red steam engine pumps faster than any other engine in any state. However, the only reliable way to keep a steam engine there would be to have a very precise redstone timer hooked up to cycle power from an Energy Link so as to keep the steam engine just right.

Fuels
Coal & Charcoal: Each piece equals a total of 32 pumps of the machine. That means with a full stack, it will pull out a total of 2048 pumps. Putting in a stack of this will never cause your engine to explode if you give a buffer time of 5 minutes after the consumption of each stack. However, supplying it with non-stop coal will eventually overheat your engine. (Note, in equivalent exchange, coal is worth 4 charcoal, so always convert your coal to charcoal before you use it in your steam engine.)

Sticks & Saplings: Last for a total of 3 pumps each. That means that with a full stack, it will pump a total of 192 times. Your pump will NEVER heat up from this, regardless how many you put in.

Planks & Wood: Last for a total of 7 pumps each. That means with a full stack, it will pump a total of 448 times. Your pump will RARELY heat up from this method of fuel.

Lava bucket: One will last for 260 pumps, however, since you can immediately put a second bucket in to be used "when needed," this effectively means that it has 520 pumps without touching it. A constant supply of lava buckets will never overheat your steam engine. This means that if you are using an automatic system involving an energy condenser, it would be preferable to use lava buckets rather than coal, as it will not require the 5 minute buffer.

NOTICE: This is what you get if you use conductive pipes to transfer electricity instead of directly into the device. I found this out while testing. (Someone who understands this please clarify)

Clarification: I connected twenty four steam engines to one quarry, as an experiment. Thankfully, the steam engines were some blocks away from the quarry... Because they blew up. An awful lot. Lost all 24 steam engines, and their load of coal. I'm not sure how long, precisely, it took to explode.

Using EU as Fuel
Warning, this is bugged in SMP: They will explode with much less power than in Single Player. All the following values are for Single Player.

You can power a steam engine with EU by supplying an Energy Link with EU, then plugging the engine directly into the side of the Energy Link, or by using conducting pipe to send the power to the engine. However, supplying the Energy Link with 512 EU/t from an MFSU will blow up a Steam Engine in about 5 seconds. Below is a list of how much EU it takes to consistently run one steam engine at a given temperature. You can easily control the exact number of EUs going into the Energy Link by using a combination of Low Voltage Solar Arrays (8 EU/t) and Solar Panels (1 EU/t). You can also get the right amount of power by figuring out the correct height to place a Windmill

Blue:

You need a minimum of 3 EU/t to get the engine moving. This is easily produced with a Windmill at low altitude or 3 Solar Panels. You can supply up to 5 EU/t without the engine heating up to Green.

Green:

At 6 EU/t, the engine will flash green, after it has been running long enough, though it will be mostly green. At 7 EU/t, it will spend about as much time in Green as a fully warmed up Redstone Engine does in Red. At 8 EU/t, it will stay steady in green, occasionally dropping into blue. It will not heat into yellow.

 Yellow: 

At 9 EU/t, it will flash yellow for one frame every pump. It will steadily increase the ratio of yellow to green until 14 EU/t, when it has one frame green per pump. Note that a Generator will supply 10 EU/t, holding it in Green/Yellow stage. This is advantagous because you can use a Fuel Can filled with Coalfuel Cells to power it for a long time.

 Red: 



If you supply it with 15 EU/t, it will very slowly increase in temperature until it heats up to red (if you dont want to wait, supply far too much power for just a couple seconds). At that point, every fifth pump will have one red frame. 16 EU/t will have 1 red frame every pump, and it will steadily increase until 22 EU/t - the magic number. At 22 EU/t, it will have one yellow frame every pump. This is the most efficient you can possibly make your steam engine and still be perfectly safe (note: In SINGLE player). With 23 EU/t, it will very, very slowly increase in temperature and eventually explode.

WARNING: If the pump is turned off via a switch or something else, but still receives power (EU) it will explode. At 22 EU/t this happens after 18 seconds!

The pump will not explode if it runs out of materials to pump

You can supply a large number of Steam Engines with one solar array, so long as you evenly distribute the power between the engines. Go back and use a EU reader to check how much EU each Energy Link is receiving. So long as you're not over 22 EU/t, you'll be fine. In the example above, there is one MV-Solar Array (64 EU/t) and 3 LV-Solar Arrays (8 EU/t each) which add up to 88 EU/t. This is divided by the pipes into 44 EU/t, then divided again by the Energy Links so each engines get exactly 22 EU/t. You can see the bottom two engines are in the yellow "flash". These engines will never overheat.

Note: When hooked up to conductive pipes or BC machinery, they will take much more power. In the setup in the picture above, when all four engines were hooked to conductive pipe and machinery, each engine took 34 EU/t without overheating.

You can power a steam engine with HV, MV, or LV EU via an energy link too! Note that an energy link can be switched off on a redstone signal. By keeping the energy link mostly off and pulsing it on only once every 2.5-3 secs (varies in testing) we found steam engines gradually warmed up to red, but did not explode.

This can be accomplished by inverting a timer output and setting the timer at 3 seconds. If your engines do not go red, you might try and lower it gradualyy to 2.5

Efficient & safe powering
Running a steam engine for long periods of time can be tricky. Although coal and charcoal lasts long and rarely has to be resupplied, the engine has a cooldown period afterwards. One way to avoid this is to feed the engine saplings, which, although not lasting very long, removes the possibility of a catastrophic failure. Having a Mk II Energy collector with a torch on top condensing oak saplings (EMC value: 32), it will supply exactly 2 engines with extremely little off time. This can be useful for safely powering engines in places you rarely come by.

Lava is also fairly safe - one lava bucket powers the engine for at least 100 pumps (didn't sit there to count them all), and in testing found that 8 lava buckets back to back still couldn't get it to green temperature.

Video tutorial
tutorial how to make a steam engine and make it power itself with redstone engines.&nbsp f0YVSZDIOMw



How to make and use a steam engine