Quarry

A Quarry is a machine added by BuildCraft. It allows for unmanned mining of a large area. A Quarry can be powered in many different ways.

Starting a Quarry
The default settings of the Quarry will occupy an area of 11x11x5 (not including the actual Quarry block itself) and excavate a 9x9 area of land. These dimensions can be modified with Landmarks to increase the size, up to 64x64. To adjust the size of the Quarry, 3 Landmarks will need to be placed in a square or rectangular pattern. You will need to activate the Landmarks by right clicking on one of them. The Quarry will then need to be placed next to one of the Landmarks. There will be a black and yellow line when the Quarry is placed. The line is where the frame will be built. There are many ways to run a Quarry which is mentioned in the section below.



Upon starting, the Quarry will clear the area within the black and yellow bars (note: these blocks are destroyed, not mined) and build a frame. 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, the rest of the blocks under the lava will not be mined, due to the fact that the quarry is coded to stop at lava, or bedrock. A preventative measure for this issue is to fill the Quarry's excavation area with water. This will turn the lava into obsidian - which your quarry can mine. If the Quarry reaches bedrock it will need to be relocated before it will mine again.

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/t 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 attach engines to, one way to power a Quarry is to place 4 Steam Engines on all 4 sides. If you want to run the quarry at full speed with Steam Engines, you will have to power the Quarry via Conductive Pipes.



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 Industrialcraft 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.



Provided the MFSU can take the constant drain of power the Quarry will run at max speed. You will need to feed a quarry approximately 22.5 EU/t (9 MJ times 2.5, more on that here) to keep it running full speed. An Energy Link will drain up to 72EU/tick if it's hooked to a power network or power teleport pipes, so you can run 3-4 quarries at max (or near max) speed.

Using a regular generator as a energy link will work but it is less used as a power source through an energy link. The energy link makes the quarry produce faster than it would with a steam engine.

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. It is not necessary for there to be an empty path for all of the landmark beams. The beams may cross through both solid and non-solid blocks

You may also want to carve out the entire area inside the frame as these are not mined, simply destroyed. To know exactly where, after setting your landmarks, place your quarry but DO NOT power it. This will give you a black and yellow frame you can use as guidelines.

Nether Operation
A Quarry can also function in the Nether following all the same principles as above. Nether-specific behaviors to note include: Nether Ores must be Smelted or Macerated into normal ore blocks before being further processed into resources. If a macerator is used, nether ore will produce two normal ore blocks for each nether ore processed. Using a Macerator or Red Matter Furnace on the resulting ore blocks will result in four units of resources for each Nether Ore gathered - making a Nether Quarry a tempting prospect.
 * The Quarry will not provoke Zombie Pigmen when collecting Nether Ores.
 * Nether Ores still have a chance of exploding when mined, just as when mining with a pickaxe. The explosion does not interfere with the operation of the Quarry, however you will obviously not be able to collect the ore or other blocks destroyed by the explosion.
 * Glowstone collected by the Quarry will give 2-4 Glowstone Dust, similar to collecting manually.
 * Obsidian can be mined fast and in large amounts if you can place water in the Nether using ice or waterblocks.
 * If built at level 119 or higher, such that the top of the frame intersects with the bedrock ceiling of the Nether, the bedrock may interfere with the Quarry's ability to collect blocks. If Bedrock obstructs the path from the point where the horizontal beams cross to the mining tip of the Quarry, it will be unable to collect any blocks in that column.

A Geothermal Generator is an obvious choice for power given the practically infinite quantity of lava available.

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. An alternitive would be using a filter (much cheaper) to sort the coal, then condensing the coal into charcoal for four times the fuel, then sending the excess charcoal (or condensing it back to coal first) back to your base with the rest of the ores
 * 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).
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * Like all other items, the orange framework can be recycled for scrap in a Recycler.

Video Tutorials
HV5eERNGsHg TOwQ27Wfzbs I5-WEUllX2Q 8AYSRJck940 SQDwAZNdUBw 0l6euEUqMGI