Has anyone tried to make a drilling rig?

I recently made a tall tower and then chained pistons all the way to the ground, stuck a drill on the end, turned the drill on, and extended it. I worked surprisingly well. Has anyone else tried this?

 

Drilling down seems to be the easier way.

 

Something like that seems like the best way to make a wheeled drilling vehicle. Is yours stationary?

 

I was also thinking of this, any pictures OP?

 

the drill was vertical and stationary. the rocking of the bit and the pistons seem to require a stationary platform

 

will get pics as soon as possible

 

You mean something like this? The Earth Breaker.
I'm still working on the a few technical issues and aesthetic, although I'm not sure it will ever be pretty because of MASS!
I'm also going to work on a mini version that is more suitable for early survival.




Fully Deployed....

The result a hole 25m Deep, all the way through the ice.

Compact travel mode.


P.S: I will have a Blueprint on the workshop soon.

 

I built this a while ago. Designed specifically for planets but also works on asteroids, I have yet to test it on a planet.
Actually this one consists of 2 parts, the drill itself and the drill carrier. The drill gets pulled down by gravity and comes back up with the help of thrusters and is held safely in position by its wheels. Bear in mind this is the old version, recently I upgraded the whole thing with hydrogen thrusters (haven't taken the time yet to take some new screenies).

EDIT: Oh and it can be remote controlled from the carrier, so at the same time you can watch it drilling from the surface

 

Hi!

A Vertical drill like @M1stery made works quite well. But what if the ore is deeper inside or you just want to dig a tunnel?

Has anyone managed to build a good tunnel drill? I tryed serveral aproches and did not succssed.

What I wanted to do:

-> A tunnel drill device able to drill a tunnel while following its drills in the hole.

First Try: " Lets extend the drill with pistons"

Second Try: "Lets skip the pistions and tilt the drills directly using a rotor"

Third try: "Lets skip the rotor and make it fly"

Fourth try: "Lets get back on the ground"

Did you make similar desing approches? Did you encounter similar problems? How did you fix them?

 

I've been trying to design a small ship atmospheric thrust miner but the drills seem to break far too easily. Designing a drive around drill also doesn't seem to work; they just explode. Are there any good workshop planet surface miners that are tried and tested? I did a search but there are so many miners designed for space they're probably in the 'white noise'.

 

I did come with similar designs and I have had the same problems as you did, flying seemed to be the best approach but the atmospheric thrusters are just too week, I made a small miner with a decent amount of thrusters 6 in each direction 1 large cargo container and it couldn't move once full, also the drills seemed to break too easily.

I'm going to keep trying, making a tunnel borer seems to be quite the challenge (I like it even though it make my head hurt ), there is just so much to do and so little time to do it....

Conveyor cable might be the solution to mine without holding cargo but a lot of work is needed to make it work on a planet.

 

Yup- second version
works alright still needs a bit of love. so far this can roll up to a site after a survey truck has mapped the area and start digging a deep tunnel.
want to fix it to have a wider effect, and in the next iteration want to see If I can have a system that has connectors every little bit that can drop the drill, and then re attach to another connector along the rail.
Still want to make-

• An elevator truck that can lower a boom down
• Truck with an arm of drills out front on a rotor armature where I can set the grade- for leveling roads
• and need a couple more drilling trucks for tunnels and such

Make sure to take note of the the unfoldie bits, such as work lighting, and armature locks.





Also not sure if its just me but I had pistons around the truck that would lift it a few meters and then lock to landing gears but every time they lock it detaches the piston head? anyone else having this.?

Pro tip-
From what I just learned setting your drills to be controlled manually (Activated by mouse press) instead of just on or off will eliminate drill shake. wish you had different levels of drill speed like low setting could be left on in-case I wana step away with out it going chaotic

 

Well, This isn't a drilling derrick in the strictest sense of the phrase, however it is a mechanical contraption that can be used to dig on planets



A couple things you will notice:

1. Given how slippery wheels currently are, i did need to build this little platform to work on a 30deg slope (keen pls tracks)
2. Hole really isn't all that deep, it's quite efficient at stripping off the top layer in a large area. After actually getting some use on planets, i think it'll be modified into something for salvage or construction, as it cannot easily reach the required depths of ores.
3. Minimal power supply: The entire rig runs off of two (2) small reactors and it probably doesn't even need one of them.
4. It does have an inherent max capacity at max extension: Which is basically when all drills are full it's struggling to move the weight around.
5. All controls are driven by a terrifying system that i made a rough approximation of and @Sinbad programmed, and refined the hardware a bit. You drive the whole rig using WASD and the UDLR arrow keys in the same way a real excavator (ISO controls) is driven. This essentially means that the involvement with the tool bar is minimal, only real usage is to switch on lights, view cameras, and change modes (driving or digging)
6. PISTONS AND ROTORS EVERYWHERE! Really, i can't understand all of the complaints about them breaking, i've got tons of them and they seem to all work fine. only time i have trouble is when moving high mass loads around as the pistons tend to stretch a bit before the load starts to move. (damn you newton!)
7. I do plan to build a drilling rig based off of a similar chassis (think replace second segment with the drill and no bucket.

 

I'm thinking of making something like the quarries in tekkit.

 

I built a great miner that could tunnel at angles using wheels. It had 4 wheels and 3 drills + baggage stuff. I won't spoil the fun of building one yourselves, but I will give you a hint: look closer at wheel settings and what you can change using the toolbar.

 

How do I post screenshots?

 

currently my plan of attack is a two part system a wheeled vehicle to transport the ore (as well as batteries and solar panels for charging) and a flying drill bit. the way I see it, more moving parts you have the more oportunity there is for something to go wrong and the problem that flying atmopheric miners have is getting over filled so if I stow the cargo away periodically, i shouldn't have that issue- if needed though I plan on providing a way for the operator to return to the transport truck with some of the ore if they get over filled.

EDIT actually the personal flying transport is next on my to do list, just after adding a horizontal connector to the base

 

Upload your pictures on a hosting service, there are plenty of them on the web. One of the most known and used worldwide is Imgur. The host will then give you links you can copy-paste in a message on forums.

 

Just upload them to steam, its very easy if you use F12 when in the game, then upload them to the steam server, once done you can can see them on your profile page, then copy the link and paste it with the "Insert edit image" of the forum, Remember to click a few times on your picture in steam to get the final version and the correct link (if you just copy the page address it wont work).

 

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=555998516

A Little miner

I now just let the weight of the ore filling the container pull the miner down so that the drills don't break. It makes it semi autonomous.

 

This was made before pistons and mass block was introduced.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=219256648

 

Such a shame to see this thread dry up! I would love to see what people come up with... Anyway, this is what I got build in the bast few days:

What are your miner designs? How do you think I can improve mine?

 

In concept form at the moment, requires a bit of adjustment but otherwise working decently. Rail guided

 

I'm just working on some new designs. Has anyone tried a strip mine/buildcraft quarry type design?

 

I toyed with a strip miner. The problem I had was back that most of the ores are thin shallow strips it made it highly uneconomical time wise to build. By time I finished building it I could have hand mined the entire thing several times over except for things like the large lake like ice fields. Perhaps I was unlucky in the spawned ores but none of them warranted a large setup to clear out. They tended towards moderately wide, 50-75m below the surface and only a few meters thick.

 

I modified my zero-G miner for planets. Rotary drill that cuts a 30 drill deep trench (one arm so the bit is 60 drills wide) and up to a full tunnel 30x30 ( in space it manages 120*120). Result of the initial cut in the pic below. (photo taken from the bottom of the trench looking up at 45 degrees. Not sure how economical it is given the stone to ore ratio.

 

I like that idea, how do you bring it back in again?

 

No need for big contraptions quite yet. Ive been able to keep my refineries running boosted with 4 retrofitted drones. Just have to plan for the extra weight.

 

I'm trying to make a boring machine that mines tunnels horizontally but I'm failing miserably at it, after 2 days of trying wheels, thrusters, Large ships, small ships, I gave it a break for now because I ran out of aspirin....

 

I wonder how hard it would be to build a drilling rig which uses a welder and projector to insert new piston segments each time it's fully extended.