Engines

108.52.92 As of Buildcraft 2.0.1 there is the option to use pneumatic engines to power the various machines in BuildCraft. Engines may be picked up by breaking them with any type of pick above stone.

Each has various strengths and requirements to function.

Engines can be daisy-chained. That is, one engine can send its energy to another, which can then send the combined energy to another engine or to the mechanism to be powered. This is useful for driving a mechanism faster, but incurs a danger of overheating. If the energy is not being removed from the system at about the same rate the system is producing it, the engine at the machine end of the chain may explode. A more efficent way to do this is to use Conductive Pipe. This can be used over longer distances with no chance of exploding for redstone or steam engines . Although this more efficient, it is also more expensive, as energy losses are rampant over long distances while using stone conductive pipes, the cheapest conductive pipe that will transport energy.

Steam engines and Combustion engine connected to pipes

You can monitor the temperature of the engine by the color of its core. Blue represents a cold engine, green represents an engine that is warming up, yellow represents an engine that is running at the optimum efficiency, red represents an engine that is in danger of overheating and an engine that is bright red has overheated and will explode if not turned off or cooled down very quickly.

In SMP for beta 2.2.1 of buildcraft, the energy folder should be installed last or the engines won't work properly.

Redstone Engine

A Redstone Engine.

Redstone engines only need a redstone current for power, and will never overheat or explode; in fact, they gain power as they heat up, with them being most efficient in the blinking-red stage. However, they produce the least power out of all the machines.

Power: It will pump one item from a chest per pump.

Steam Engine

Steam Engines require coal as a fuel source it still must be powered on by Redstone such as a lever or Redstone torch. These engine can explode if left running too long when running on anything other than sticks you will know they are about to explode when they alternating orange-red

Power: It will pump half a stack per pump.

Combustion Engine

Combustion Engines are the most powerful type out of all the engines but are also the most complicated, dangerous and the most expensive to build. they must be fueled by oil or fuel, also cooling them whit water is a good idea to prevent them from overheating and then explode. filling them whit water/oil/fuel can be done manually with buckets,but it can be automated with pipes that fill them whit the different fluids. they can be made self sustaining if you have them first fueled with oil or fuel, and then using them to turn oil into fuel in a refinery, once you have fuel you can use the that fuel to power the same engine working at the refinery. this produces more fuel from oil than the fuel it uses to power the refinery. They are, however, notoriously unstable and they explode very easily if they lose cooling when left unchecked even for just I small amount of time. so if you notice that your water source is drying up then you better shut the engines off straight away!

Power: It will pump an entire stack per pump.

Configuration of Power Source

In the directory .minecraft/buildcraft/config the config file "buildcraft.cfg" contains a line starting "power.framework=".

It defaults to "power.framework=buildcraft.core.RedstonePowerFramework" - This allows Buildcraft devices to be run directly from redstone pulses. To use engines, you must use the setting "power.framework=buildcraft.energy.PneumaticPowerFramework".