Extending drill / pistons

Hey guys, basically built a mobile base / ship I want to use the Earthbreaker Drill mod and Pistons to create an extending drill, is there any way around the multiple grids thing? my ship is unbalanced I've tried merge blocks but i cant seem to make them line up.

 

Think u might have to give some more information to us then that. What do you mean multiple grids thing? Pistons are a complex component so you may want to restate your question with more detail.

I'd love to help you as I have LOTS of experience with extending drill pistons but I don't really know what the question is....
...except to say...
... If you are using a single piston you already have multiple grids sorry, no work around here.

 

Basically my ship is dragging another grid which causes it to become unbalanced, its tilting etc.
I don't know if there is anyway to counter act this ( thrusters / gyros etc.) but if there is I'm not sure I would, I'd much rather merge it all up once I don't use it and disconnect when I need to or something similar if that is possible.
Why does the game treat it as separate anyway this experience is also discouraging me to design a piston/rotor solar array, anyway here is a screenshot.

https://postimg.org/image/hfuxufmuj/full/

 

I'll answer my own question here if there might be people with similar problems, appears there is no way to merge grids that are separated by a piston since merging it would cause certain blocks to fill the same block space.
Thrusters and gyro's will counter act tilting depending how they are placed, I tried spamming up and down thrusters and gyro's which had minimal impact, it seems that forward and backwards thrusters need to be placed symmetrically encompassing the grid that is dragged.
There is no way around the unbalanced ship and tilting, the earthbreaker drill was really heavy for my small mobile base which only has a few small thrusters and gyros, I built a few normal drills instead and it became much more stable, though even dragging considerably less weight I still notice my ship behaving strangely while maneuvering IE. getting it to stop moving with inertia dampeners takes considerably longer than without a grid attached to my ship.

I'm not really sure what pistons and rotors are supposed to accomplish in this game if they are so damn cumbersome to build around.

 

now the Maestro will begin the lesson.

each piston has 2 parts that are separate yet joined ships, this creates multiple grids , clue the HEAD part is the separate ship. one these they have a tendancy to remain inert ie they dont want to actually move OR change state so that is what creates the torque (turning force) based on mass and distance and the force applied on it


now merging the head BACK onto the main body removes this because the head becomes the same part of the ship as the base HOWEVER there is an issue. the head is .2m deep so you cna just chuck a merge block in an assume they will meet, you need to actually engineer it by using brains. mainly by using a 2nd piston and having it set to a min distance of 2.3m or there abouts so you get 7 full blocks of travel (asusming large pistons not small) small pistons are even for me a real sod to work with because the constraint force (havoc shizzle) is sooo minuscule you have to treat it liek fine china.

now many people do this FAR to fast (like everyone) and wonder why it breaks. slam 2 thinsg together and they break, gently push them together and they dont. Pretty basic stuff in life eh so kinda follow it

now when drilling you need to control the drill forces.

which are 2 fold.

Shake, which is by 4 thrusters and twisting, which is best done by 4 gyros

and yes this works. (not tested for afew weeks so a few bugs mah have occured so sue me)








and this.

 

Interesting stuff.
However some bits and pieces still don't make sense to me.

Hm, do you have a screenshot of this particular example? I'm supposed to put a merge block on a piston? That doesn't make sense to me atal, I've never been able to merge anything piston related so don't expect me to understand the dynamics involved.
Even if I am able to merge only the head part of a 3 piston series grid; what will happen? Do I need to merge every piston with each other?

So far, shake hasn't been a problem for me and my drill since they are relatively small/short but appreciate the info

 

you need to merge the main mass at the end of the piston chain ie the drill head back to the main mass. there will be some flexing if the acceleration isnt aligned to the movent of the piston, ie you have it like the 1st picture not the 2nd./

and if you try to run it like a strike fighter with insane accel and turn rates they will break so you need to be slower. also you want to merge at a combined speed of NO MORE than .1m/s

so in the lower picture the drill head merges back onto the main ship when retracted with a merge block on the back of the drills.

 

Okay well I tried your advice and I got the merge blocks setup though now my ship is constantly spinning because of the piston force, I set the second piston to min 2.3 and I tried 2.25 etc up to 2.5. How do i stabilize my ship?

 

those are not the stock pistons so it could be an issue with them. try with a lower min setting and try turning the pistons OFF tomorrow evening i will have a much closer look for you

other things could include:

the base ship isnt large enough to overcome the forces, you need more gyros or locking the gyros there apears to be a connector below the pistons that MAY be causing a collision

i personally never use modded blocks as they have always ended up causing more issues than they are worth

 

When the drill head is retracted, use a landing gear and lock the head to your ship. That should help with the physics.

While drilling, you need to stabilize your ship else it will oscillate wildly from the drill doing its job. The best method is to start drilling with the head completely retracted and get to a point where you can lock the main ship to the asteroid with landing gear. This will create a solid foundation to extend the drill head.

But do bear in mind that the more pistons used and the further they extend, the more unstable the rig becomes. Using a rig isn't as efficient as just creating a mining ship that pushes itself forward with thrusters. It's a great concept that models itself on terrestrial technology, but in Space Engineers, it's not a viable analog.

 

I have done more experimenting after the screenshot was taken, I have since removed the connectors they were not the problem.
It appears to be the pistons, I am about to start some creative tests with my ship and see how I can modify it with normal pistons.
As far as I can tell atm 2.45 is the minimal distance before the merge blocks will snap together though they will snap to a shorter distance approx 2.3 as you said, but the ship starts to move. if i increase it above 2.4 it will spin other directions, I cannot find any value in between that is stable.
Note that the spinning is more like moving as if its a float in calm water, rolling/tilting very slowly while drifting whichever direction it feels like.
I will remove modded blocks and put my ship on the workshop so you can see for yourself if you would be so kind.

I started out with a few small ship miners but constantly moving to asteroids and haul ore back to my base was getting troublesome, I figured if I just make my base mobile I can take my ships with me to explore asteroids while I work on design/engineering etc in between traveling there, then I figured I can just find a suitable ore node, setup up some pistons, gobble some ore while working on other stuff, that way I don't have to manage piloting a mining ship.
I'm not sure if this is the most efficient or smart way to handle production but I figure it sounds like fun so I'll just stick with it and see how far I can go.

Also if this doesn't work in space engineers what do you actually use pistons for? this was the first thing that came to my mind along with doors/platforms etc but after these series of experiences I would never even try to make something like that, also was thinking about making a retractable solar array or partially folding but I'm concerned about losing all my solar panels at this point.

 

I put 4 normal pistons, 1 merge on the ship and 1 on the drills I made a 3x3 cluster with vanilla drills, it snapped together at minimum distance of 1.8 and appeared to be stable.
I'm now doing some stress test and it seems that If you put more weight on the drill side grid the ship start rocking a bit, but after increasing the weight by A LOT I could not reproduce the ship moving as with the modded pistons.

For the rocking I think gyro's and more thrusters or just sheer mass will help?
The rocking means that the ship is under stress from the piston interaction, correct? Is there anyway to alleviate this or is it not harmful?

Thanks a lot to everyone who helped or just shared their ideas, very much appreciated.

 

as i suspected it was the piston mod that was causing it.

for the head 4 thrusters and a gyro is plenty to keep it moving in a reasonably strait line, i have some heads that are 11x11 drills and thats all it takes for them

if you look at my rigs they are very heavy bodys compared to the head so that they actually damp down most things themselves

also you need to remember go SLOW with the mining pistons i use a max speed of iirc .3m/s combined speed but i would use caution and test it yourself. group the pistons and use Cntl to set a perfect figure for them to add up to the desired speed

 

I have lately been experimenting with a drill that gets ever longer via pistons and grinders that "separate" the shaft, open the gap, projection weld a couple more sections of shaft then merge them back. It works sort of but I'm building mk2 and trying to streamline the process. It's more.complex but it seems to be tougher than mounting the drill directly on a piston. The worst part is that when its done with the whole you have to manually grind down the shadt before you move it. I can't seem to get it to run in reverse.

 

mike if you hunt for the prospector challange somone did make a system like that that could reverse as well.

 

I'm gonna have to take a look, ty

 

it was from the testing i did on it, working but not working if you get what i mean. it needed alot of fine tuning to be effective without accidentally raming itself through the ship.

 

I have verified that a piston chain going straight down from a stationary platform at minimum speed with a drill at the end works perfectly fine

 

I've been experimenting with piston chains....but on a small ship, it limits the depth. With 4 chained pistons, I am only able to dig down around 18m ... and most ore is a bit deeper than that. I am guessing I will have to move up to large grid designs

 

Yes, drilling rigs need to be large grids, and probably need to be anchored as well

 

Hmmmm...

Got a decent rig that seems to work well, but now I have one MAJOR issue.

What to do with all the stone! I have a filter setup that is seperating ore and stone, but I have a hell of a lot of stone. I can dump it, but even with trash auto-removal enbled, the rubble doesn't go away. I end up with a great big pile of boulders that I have no use for, get in the way, and don't have any use.

REALLY need to have an option to remove these after a while as I reckon the cumulative effect of these will murder framerates. Otherwise I am going to end up having a load of redundant containers full of stone just to save on framerates and stop the planet getting cluttered with boulders! Either that or come up with a use for it

 

I think you can toss the stone into a thruster plume, and it will be destroyed