Module: Hard Hoof: Tech (hardhoof_tech)
Travel I, part 2.
A lift is a head over a shaft, a car hanging from it, and a counterweight on the other side of the rope. The head is the controller: it moves the car, checks the shaft row by row as the car goes, and stops the car against anything in its way. The same engine drives every lift: the Hands tier's Pulley and the Circuits tier's Headframe (Travel II's elevators will reuse it).
Balance is the lesson. Gravity pulls only on the imbalance: the car's side (car, riders, load)
minus the counterweight. Moving the car at v against m kilograms of imbalance takes
m × 9.81 × v watts, plus friction (0.4% of the weight of everything on the rope). A balanced lift
is fast on little power; an unbalanced one crawls.
Hands: the pulley lift
| Block | Id | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Pulley | pulley |
The head. The car hangs below it; 256 m of rope |
| Crank | crank |
Beside the Pulley. Hold use to wind up, sneak to wind down |
| Lift Brake | lift_brake |
Beside the Pulley. Use to let it off: the heavier side runs at a governed 2 m/s |
| Counterweight Box | counterweight_box |
Beside the head. 9 slots of weight on the other side of the rope |
| Lift Platform |
lift_platform (item) |
A 1 × 1 plank car for one rider, 40 kg |
A person keeps up about 100 W on the crank, and its gearing tops out at 3 m/s:
| Imbalance | Crank speed |
|---|---|
| balanced | 3 m/s |
| 5 kg | 1.7 m/s |
| 10 kg | 0.9 m/s |
| 120 kg (empty box, a rider aboard) | 0.08 m/s |
| about 200 kg or more | will not turn |
A rider hauling the hand line (holding forward or back) turns the crank the same way. The Brake lets gravity work hands-free: an empty platform is lighter than a box set for a rider, so it rises by itself; loaded, it comes down.
First working lift
- Dig a 1 × 1 shaft. Put the Pulley over it, with two blocks of air under it above the top floor.
- Use a Lift Platform on the Pulley. It hangs at the top, its deck level with the floor.
- Put a Crank and a Counterweight Box beside the Pulley. Fill the box with 120 cobblestone.
- Use the platform to board. Hold forward to go up, back to go down; sneak to step off.
Recipes (crafting table)
Pulley Crank Lift Brake Counterweight Box Lift Platform Lift Landing (x2)
P P P _ _ T _ T _ P I P _ I _ Y B Y
S I S P I P E I E P _ P S _ S I I I
P _ P P L P P P P P I P W W W
P planks, S string, I iron ingot, T stick, L log, E leather, W wooden slab, Y yellow
dye, B stone button.
Circuits: headframe, winders, cage and skip
| Block | Id | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Headframe | headframe |
The head. 2,048 m of cable |
| Electric Winch | electric_winch |
Beside the Headframe, on copper wire: up to 16 A at 24 V (384 W), a 12 kJ store |
| Steam Winder | steam_winder |
Beside the Headframe, on a Boiler's Fluid Pipes: 0.4 J of work per mB, up to 512 W |
| Lift Landing | lift_landing |
Beside the shaft: a stop, the deck level with its top. Use it (or a redstone pulse) to call the car |
| Lift Cage |
lift_cage (item) |
A 3 × 3 steel cage for up to nine riders, 400 kg |
| Skip |
lift_skip (item) |
A steel bucket for goods, 18 slots, 150 kg. Hoppers and item pipes load and empty it |
Winders top out at 8 m/s and speed up and slow down at 1.5 m/s². Riders tap forward or back to go to the next landing that way; tapping the other way while moving stops the car.
| Lift | Power | Speed |
|---|---|---|
| Balanced cage with a rider | 384 W wire | 8 m/s (draws about 363 W) |
| Cage 80 kg heavy | 384 W wire | 0.4 m/s up, 8 m/s down |
| Balanced cage | 96 W (one Coal Generator) | 2 m/s |
| Balanced cage | one Boiler's steam (300 W of work) | about 8 m/s |
Energy comes back, honestly. Lowering a load the winch raised drives it as a generator: 70% of the work comes back, first into the winch's store, then (up to 4 kJ more) to the wire, where the winch counts as a source like a Battery Bank. Each lift keeps a ledger of the joules it has raised and not had back, and lowering only returns what that ledger covers. Weight carried up by hand, or loaded into the Counterweight Box (which never moves), lowers for nothing and gives nothing back, so no round trip makes energy. The Steam Winder gives nothing back.
Recipes (Machine Workshop, 5 × 3)
Headframe Electric Winch Steam Winder Lift Cage Skip
P P G P P P W K W P P T G T P B B B B B P _ C _ P
P _ C _ P G C C C G K C C C K B _ _ _ B P _ _ _ P
P _ _ _ P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P
P iron plate, G iron gear, C iron chain, W copper wire, K rubber, T piston, B iron bars.
Weights
Riders, cars and counterweights are weighed as they are, so the balance reads in real kilograms. Goods are weighed on Tech's energy scale (a coal burns for 7.7 kJ in a generator), so hauling ore up a deep shaft costs coal on the scale of smelting it:
| Thing | Weight |
|---|---|
| A player | 80 kg |
| Another creature | by its size against a player's (a pig about 90 kg) |
| A full block (stone, dirt, a log) | 1 kg |
A storage block (c:storage_blocks) |
2 kg |
| A smaller block (a slab, a torch) | 0.5 kg |
| Any other item | 0.2 kg |
Riding
- Use a platform or cage to board; anyone standing on its deck when it sets off is taken aboard.
- Sneak to step off: onto a landing beside the car when there is one, else back onto its deck.
- The deck can be stood on; rails and hangers are for looks.
- A block or a creature in the shaft stops the car flush against it, and the lift says what and where.
- Only a player can break a car, and only an empty one.
Cars move on a trip plan that the server and every client run tick by tick, so a rider's view does not wait on position packets. The server starts a new plan whenever the car does something the old one would not have: a new call, power running short, or a block in the way.
Programs
The Electric Winch (electric_winch) and Steam Winder (steam_winder) are devices:
| Operation | Result |
|---|---|
status |
{status, car_y, speed, target, imbalance_kg, watts, stored, stops, blocked} (heights are the car's floor) |
go(y) |
Sends the car to height y, within its shaft; returns where it will stop |
up / down
|
To the next stop; false when there is none |
stop |
Stops it (a winder slows down first) |