The Macerator is an all-purpose grinding machine, capable of breaking down ores and other items into their respective Dust, which can later be smelted into their respective ingots. It also efficiently converts Stone to Cobblestone, Cobblestone to Sand, Gravel into Flint, bones to bone meal, and Blaze Rods into Blaze Powder.
One of the main uses of the Macerator early game is doubling mining profit. Every ore block placed into the Macerator creates two ore dust. If macerating Redstone Ore, it outputs 6 redstone dust, instead of the usual 4-5. Each piece of dust can be smelted into a single ingot, yielding two ingots for each ore, if macerated.
The Macerator is also important for turning Coal into Coal Dust, which is an ingredient in Solar Panels and the Nanosuit.
Its data value is 250:3.
Macerator ≈ 2845 EMC
Recipe
Raw Materials Needed | ||
---|---|---|
9 | Refined Iron | |
2 | Redstone | |
3 | Flint | |
2 | Cobblestone | |
6 | Rubber | |
3 | Copper |
Usage
The Macerator is largely used to break down ore blocks into two of their respective Dusts, which can then be smelted into individual ingots, or condensed as they have the same EMC as their smelted form. The Macerator uses 800 EU per ore (without overclocker upgrades, overclocker upgrades use more EU per ore, but it is faster).
When macerating Blaze Rods or Bones, each produces 5 Blaze Powder or Bone Meal, which can then be condensed into the EMC of 2.5 Blaze Rods or 5/3 (1.66) Bones. This provides a quick and easy way to increase EMC exponentially, as described in the Mass-Fab Macerator tutorial. However, many servers disable this method for being too powerful.
Nether Ores
Nether Diamond produces 2 Diamonds when Macerated. Nether Tin and Copper produce 2 ore blocks each, which can then be Macerated into 2 dusts each, for a total of 4 ingots. Nether Gold and Iron produce 4 dusts each, although gold is very buggy. Nether Redstone produces 6 Redstone and Nether Lapis Lazuli produces 8 Lapis Lazuli when macerated.
Powering
Like all other IndustrialCraft machines, the Macerator uses EU (Energy Units). EU can be transmitted to the Macerator by being adjacent to a EU Storage unit, placing an EU Storage item in the Macerator, or by a Cable connection. The Macerator explodes if it receives a higher voltage than 32 EU/packet. Using a transformer upgrade will increase its maximum voltage to 128 EU/p. A macerator containing 16 overclockers requires 8 HV Solar Arrays to fully power.
A macerator can also be powered by placing Redstone Dust in its bottom slot. This will power the macerator with up to 13 overclocker upgrades. Beyond 13, redstone dust will not be enough to power the machine effectively and a different power source will be necessary (either in addition to redstone dust, or instead of it).
Energy
EU | |
---|---|
Input | 2 EU/t |
Output | - |
Storage | 800 EU |
Maximum Voltage: 32 EU/packet before blowing up.
Using Upgrades
The four slots on the right are used to place upgrades in the machine. The three upgrades that are available are the Overclocker Upgrade, the Transformer Upgrade and the Energy Storage Upgrade. You can stack upgrades, but there is no use having more than 4 transformer upgrades or 16 overclocker upgrades. Powering the machine with more than 13 overclockers requires an energy storage upgrade.
The following table shows the exact time in ticks required per operation to number of overclockers and the required EU/t to power the macerator. Note that in-game, processing time is rounded to the nearest tick and EU/t is rounded down to the nearest whole number, from each of their formulas to calculate their respective values. And finally, the operations per second column is derived from the exact time values of the seconds per operation column, where ~ indicates a rounded down approximation while = indicates a value that happens to be the exact number shown.
No. of Overclockers | EU/t Required | Seconds per Operation | Operations per Second |
---|---|---|---|
0 | 2 | 20.00 | 0.0500 |
1 | 3 | 14.00 | ~0.0714 |
2 | 5 | 9.80 | ~0.1020 |
3 | 8 | 6.85 | ~0.1459 |
4 | 13 | 4.80 | ~0.2083 |
5 | 20 | 3.35 | ~0.2985 |
6 | 33 | 2.35 | ~0.4255 |
7 | 53 | 1.65 | ~0.6060 |
8 | 85 | 1.15 | ~0.8695 |
9 | 137 | 0.80 | 1.2500 |
10 | 219 | 0.55 | ~1.8181 |
11 | 351 | 0.40 | 2.5000 |
12 | 562 | 0.30 | ~3.3333 |
13 | 900 | 0.20 | 5.0000 |
14 | 1441 | 0.15 | ~6.6666 |
15 | 2305 | 0.10 | 10.0000 |
16 | 3689 | 0.05 | 20.0000 |
Removal & Recovery
There are several ways of removing and recovering a Macerator with varying degrees of success.
- By hand - Destroys block, returning nothing, 100% of the time
- By Pickaxe - Destroys Macerator, returns a Machine Block 100% of the time.
- By Wrench or Electric Wrench in normal mode - Returns Macerator 80% of the time, returns a Machine Block 20% of the time.
- By Electric Wrench in loss-less mode - Returns Macerator 100% of the time.