Guide to plumbing

This guide will primarily be useful for chemists, or someone else willing to play with pipes.

In summary: Plumbing is the creation of factories to automate chemical production, for bulk amounts of methamphetamine healing chemicals.

The Basics

Plumbing is a system for the creation of piss and shit chemical factories. Plumbing is also an inaccurate name, since you'll be making chemical factories and not toilets.

The plumbing system is made up of three basic parts: A supplier, a duct network and a demander. A supplier supplies chems through a network of fluid ducts to a machine that demands that reagent. Component machines have connectors that duct networks will automatically connect to; red is mean so red ports take, blue is nice so blue ports give. A machine can be both a supplier and a demander. Machines next to each other can be connected without having ducts between them.

The maximum transfer amount is 10 units per 2 seconds.

Fluid Ducts

These can be found in stacks in autolathes and in the chemical laboratorium. Simply click them on a tile to place them down. You can click it in-hand to change the color and layer, and different colors and layers will not connect to one another automatically. You can force two different colors to connect by click dragging them to each other while holding a wrench. You can also connect different layers with a multilayered duct, which is crafted in the Misc crafting menu from ducts and a welder.

To pick up a placed duct and turn it back into an item, use a wrench on it.

Physics

Plumbing physics might not be entirely as you expect. Due to pressure technology, there will never be any leftover in ducts. Thus, reagents transfer instantly from supplier to demander.

If a machine holds 5 water, 5 sugar and 5 mannitol and a machine requests 5 units, the requesting machine will receive 5 water for the first request. Normal chemistry would get you 1.66... water, 1.66... sugar and 1.66... mannitol. This might seem illogical, but it's necessary for Floating Point Errors advanced factories.

Machinery

Most of the basic plumbing machinery is available through a specialized plumbing RCD, which can be found in the chemical lab or medical techfab. These machines can be deconstructed by wrenching, followed by smacking them with the plumber.

Remember, just because they aren't in the plumbing RCD doesn't mean they don't take chems. The smoker is one of those machines. Have fun.

Synthesizer

These buggers create the chemicals, much like normal chem dispensers. You select an amount (from 1u to 5u) and a reagent, and they'll create that every five seconds. They need a valid output to keep going, since the synthesizer only stores one dose.

Reaction Chamber

Extremely important for advanced set-ups. When given a list of chemicals and amounts, it will attempt to pull those chems from the attached supply network, from the first chem on the list to the last. While doing this, the reagents are in stasis and do not react. Once it has all the specified reagents with the given amounts, the chemicals will react in the chamber, and begin emptying into any connected network. Very sane, and a powerful tool for fighting surplus contamimants.

Chambers can get stuck if you are entering target reagents while it can take them. Either let it flow out or empty it with a plunger.

Acclimator

The automated brother of the chemical heater. You simply give it a temperature and it will heat or cool its contents. You should set Allowed Temperature Difference to something aswell. It wont empty till it reaches the target temperature, wich takes extremely long if you want it precise. Setting Allowed Temperature Difference to 4 and target temperature to 379 means it will heat to 379 but start the emptying fase at 375.

The acclimator will not empty until all of its contents reach the desired temperature, which can be painfully slow if it's drawing new chems as it works, or attempting to reach an extreme temperature. To alleviate this, the Allowed Temperature Difference setting will allow the acclimater to release its contents within a certain range of temperature. For example, if the target temperature is 300k, and the ATD is 5, chems will start to be released once the machine reaches 295k or 305k.

The acclimator's holding capacity can also be manually lowered, to avoid the buildup of leftover chems. If you're heating chemicals that are deposited in batches of 3u, consider setting the capacity to a number divisible by 3.

Just like the reaction chamber, the acclimator cannot fill and drain simultaneously, to avoid leftover contaminants.

Filter

A simple filter. Give it one or two chemicals, and those chems will be rerouted to the filter's side, allowing everything else to pass straight through.

Splitter

Got 15 of a reagent and only want 10? This cheap machine allows you to do just that. Set it to a 10 to 5 ratio and it will send 10 through and 5 left.

Disposer

The simplest machine of all, the disposer breaks down any and all chemicals that enter it into nothing. Use it to dispose of any leftovers you don't want in the system.

Note that chemical reactions can occur inside the disposer.

Pill Press

This is where the fun begins. Select a pill color, name, and dose like a regular ChemMaster, and it'll constantly pump out tasty pills made from whatever it's supplied with.

Tank

Technically not a machine, the tank simply holds up to 400u of any chemicals.

Input

Accepts manual chemical input. Pour something into it from a container to add something new to the system.

Output

Accepts manual chemical output. Simply grab a beaker and fill it up with whatever's in the network.

Equipment

In addition to the machines, there are a few pieces of equipment available for chemists wanting to be plumbers. Including these and probably a few more I forgot.

Plumbing Constructor

The magical plumbing RCD. It can construct the basic plumbing machinery; click on it in hand to select what to build. It can also deconstruct plumbing machinery (but not ducts) by whacking it.

The plumbing constructor requires metal to function. If it runs dry, simply add more sheets.

Can also be constructed in a medical techfab.

Plunger

All of the basic plumbing machinery can be plungered to empty their contents on the floor; simply use the plunger on them to flush them clean. Can be very useful if you got some machines that need to be emptied quickly, or for solving clogs. Can be printed in the medical and engineering lathe.

Tips for your Industrial Revolution

• Resist the urge to crank every single synthesizer to 5u. Many recipes require different amounts of each ingredient, such as a 1u/1u/3u mixture.
• Even if you aren't making reactions, reaction chambers are invaluable for being able to pull precise amounts of specific chems out of a network.
• If you're lazy, connecting a ton of tanks to one another from both ends can create an enormous buffer of basic chems that you can simply have reaction chambers pull from. Be careful of accidental reactions!