Project UCGO Refinery.

[Ashaman42]

After being unavailable for a while the mining rig from this thread http://orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=13880 is back up on OrbitHangar.

Currently it produces a rock resource and I'm now moving to the next stage which is a refinery that will take the rock and produce an ore resource that can be used to make metal.

This time I'm doing the modelling and texturing as well as coding so it may not look quite as good as the mesh/textures that Buzz313th made for the miner but I'm slowly improving.

So far I have this:

The logic being that the crane on top (prob won't be functional/animated) deposits the rock in the opening on the left and pulls out an ore cargo from the door on the right.

Currently pondering how to control the refinery, could either have it vc controlled from having focus on the refinery like the miner. Or I could simply have it turned on/off via an ummu action area?

What do people think? Any suggestions are welcome.

 

[mc_]

Is it packable? Looks like somethig big and stationary...

 

[Ashaman42]

Not entirely sure yet, the miner is packable and was thinking of having this about the same size though I'm aware that's not entirely realistic.

I could make it a larger building that can only be placed rather the scenario editor. I do however like the idea of carrying a few cargos to the moon and unpacking them to form a mining base/colony.

So I guess the choices are having a relatively small unit that packs out of a cargo box but is larger than it should be from the box (sort of like the tardis) or I could probably program it so it needs 3 or 4 different packed cargoes to form the final refinery.

 

[flying coffin]

What you've got there, from your description is a called a mill, not a refinery.

A long time ago, they used a stamp mill to crush the rocks into ore. A stamp mill uses heavy weights to smash the rocks into ore. Here is a picture of a typical stamp mill:

These days a ball mill is typically used. A ball mill uses steel balls in a rotating drum to crush the ore. Here is a typical ball mill.

The ore is then sent to a smelter, which heats it up, and melts the metal out of it.

A refinery takes crude oil, and turns it into gasoline, kerosene etc. I could definitely use a refinery on Titan.

Hope this helps, even if only for educational purposes.

-Chris

 

[Ashaman42]

Well the smelter is the next step planned so I got that right at least.

I did know that a refinery works with crude oil, was just borrowing the term for this as it 'refines' the rock into ore.

I like the look of that ball mill, think I may well change the design of my (refinery) mill. Plus it would work out for a relatively simple first attempt at animation.

The rock cargos from the miner are 2000kg, was thinking of 4:1 ratio of rock into the mill vs ore out. What do people think of that ratio?

It may not be hugely realistic but I'm thinking more or the playability side of it. I'm sure people won't want to cart loads and loads of rock to make one ore cargo.

 

[flying coffin]

The rock cargos from the miner are 2000kg, was thinking of 4:1 ratio of rock into the mill vs ore out. What do people think of that ratio?

The mass that comes out of the mill is the same as what goes in. The volume is less. a 4:1 volume ratio is good.

 

[Ashaman42]

Hmmm, well I'm sort of confined on volume with the cargos being a set 1.3m^3. And it would be a little odd having each rock cargo producing a ore cargo, would basically just be a label/name change.

I think maybe I will have it that the mill, in this case, is separating useful ore from the rock and so 4 rock cargos result in a ore cargo that can be taken to the smelter.

Or maybe I should just have a 2:1 ratio and then another ratio for the smelter (ore:metal).

****************************

Ok, have started on reworking the design, this is where I'm at at the moment:

for reference I'm imagining this being about 2 metres tall. Rock is loaded into the boxy part on the left and transferred to the cyclinder (box and cylinder not connected at the momnet but they will be).

I still need to model something at the other end of the cyclinder to package the milled rock but that will have to wait till tomorrow as I need to go to bed.

 

[flying coffin]

That looks pretty good. If you can make it so four 2000kg boxes in =
one 8000 kg box out for the mill, that would be excellent.

The smelting process usually
ends up with ounces (or grams) per ton of ore in. (we're talking gold/silver/copper here, because that's what they mine around here.)

 

[Ashaman42]

Ok, have done a bit more modelling work:

The little pillar on the left is where the Ummu action area will be, rather than 'E'ntering this like the miner it's going to be controlled from ouside by action areas.

I feel this will be too big to unpack out of a single cargo so am going to code it to require 4 boxes for complete construction, hopefully all done by action areas too.

Is going a bit slowly as haven't much time to work on it but am getting there gradually. I think texturing will be my hardest bit as I really don't know what I'm doing, think the modelling is ok so far though.

Haven't started coding yet but have my miner code as a basic framework and have been thinking over how to code it so that bit shoudln't take too long.

 

[PhantomCruiser]

Sweet! This is a shiny add-on that Spectre Mining Corp will need as soon as it's released.

 

[Interceptor]

Good stuff!

 

[Bloodworth]

This is good work, we need this. My colony on Mars is gonna have to support itself somehow

 

[Ashaman42]

Work is progressing slowly. I think the picture a few posts up is where I'm going to stop modelling wise.

Have exported everything and UV mapped it, next step will be to start the texturing.

No rough release date yet as no idea what's going to happen in real life but have definite plans for a smelter once this is done.

And maybe a shipyard/factory to make use of the metal produced at the smelter


***********************

Some rough placeholder textures for now:

As you can see I'm no good at texturing, going to take a break for a bit and start working on the code. Will come back later to try and improve the texturing but I think the modelling at least is finished.

Does anyone know of some decent tutorials regarding texturing?

 

[Ashaman42]

Ok, a bit more progress on the ore mill, still on the same bad textures but the code is coming along.

So far you need four different cargo boxes to create the functional mill:

We start off by unpacking (via Ummu) boxA

That produces the initial state of the mill which is just the base plate and control console.

From this point on control is via Ummu action area, boxB is consumed when the action area is triggered and builds the input section of the mill.

The same process using boxes C & D finishes contruction of the ore mill.

Boxes B through to D can only be added in the correct order, if you have the base plate constructed and box C within range but no box B then triggering the action are will have no effect.

Only once all parts have been constructed will the mill function with regards to consuming rock cargo and producing ore, at the moment the only control available is to turn the unit on or off via the ummu action area.

Like the GDI Miner the speed at which autospawning occurs will be configurable via the scenario file.

 

[mc_]

:thumbup:

 

[Dambuster]

Looks awesome! Perhaps this could be used for the upcoming Orbiter Forum Mission to Mars?

 

[docabn]

Well the smelter is the next step planned so I got that right at least.


The rock cargos from the miner are 2000kg, was thinking of 4:1 ratio of rock into the mill vs ore out. What do people think of that ratio?

4:1 sounds good but it might be slightly more realistic if the result was a bit random. Not sure how hard that would be to code, but some hauls might be worth more than others in reality

 

[Ashaman42]

Well I certainly wouldn't mind the miner and ore mill being used on the OFMM
That's my plan for them though will probably start with a moon base first.

It certainly would be possible to code a random yield but I might leave that for a MKII version and just have a constant yield for MKI.

Regarding the current texturing, is it that bad that people wouldn't want to use the mill as is? Or can people forgive that I'm really not an artist?

 

[PhantomCruiser]

Soon after you release the mill I'm going to put it to use on my own moonbase.
Are you taking requests for another project or do you have something in mind already? (forge, foundary, etc?)

Any texturing you do is better than what I can come up with. I'm not sure if it's art or voodoo. My own textures are pretty simple.

 

[Ashaman42]

My textures so far are a combination of the patterns available in Gimp (free Photoshop type software) and materials allocated from within Anim8or.

I'm going to try and improve then a bit but it's the sort of thing I could spend days working at for very little improvement.

Currently planning to make a smelter next that will take the ore from the mill and produce 'metal', whether I specify it as steel (or another metal) or simply a generic metal cargo I'm not sure about yet.