PneumaticCraft: Repressurized

Doing cool stuff with compressed air.

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PneumaticCraft runs on compressed air: compressors fill pressure tubes, and machines spend the air to work. The first thing you need is Compressed Iron. Drop iron ingots on the ground and blow them up with TNT, then compress the rest in a Pressure Chamber at 2 bar with no loss. Oil comes next, and its fuels and plastic lead to circuit boards, drones and Pneumatic Armor.

On this page

Getting started: compressed iron
Air, pressure and explosions
Building the Pressure Chamber
Heat: Vortex Tube, heat sinks and insulation
Oil, the Refinery and plastic
Circuit boards and the Assembly line
Drones and programming
Upgrades and Pneumatic Armor
What ATM10 changes
Questions

Getting started: compressed iron

PneumaticCraft adds no ore. Its metal is compressed iron, made from plain iron. Throw Iron Ingots or Blocks of Iron on the ground and set off an explosion beside them. TNT does it, and so does any other blast. About 20% of the iron is destroyed, so make only what you need to build a Pressure Chamber, which compresses iron at 2 bar and loses nothing.

Gather about a stack of iron and a stack of Stone, the block you get by smelting cobblestone.
Blow up some iron for your first compressed iron.
Craft Pressure Tubes: two compressed iron and a glass block make eight.
Craft Reinforced Stone: eight stone around one compressed iron make eight. Four of it make four Reinforced Bricks.
Build an Air Compressor and a Pressure Chamber, then compress the rest of your iron in the chamber.

A chamber three blocks a side, with one valve and two interfaces, costs only four compressed iron ingots, 16 stone, a Hopper and a glass block. The Air Compressor adds one more ingot and eight stone, plus a furnace.

Air, pressure and explosions

Pressure is measured in bar above normal air: 0 bar is an empty machine and -1 bar a vacuum. Every tube and machine has a volume in mL, and its pressure is the air inside divided by that volume, minus one. Machines need a minimum pressure to run, and each job uses up air. Air flows from high pressure to low, and an open tube end or machine side leaks with a hiss and a stream of particles. Right-click a tube with the Pneumatic Wrench to close that side.

Tier 1: Pressure Tubes and the early machines. Safe to 5 bar; a tube holds 1000 mL.
Tier 1.5: Reinforced Pressure Tubes, safe to 10 bar. A Pressure Tube coated with 50 mB of molten plastic in a Thermopneumatic Processing Plant at 1.5 bar.
Tier 2: Advanced Pressure Tubes and the advanced compressors, safe to 20 bar; a tube holds 4000 mL. Made on the Assembly line.

Push a tube or machine past its limit and it explodes. The red band on the gauge in every machine's screen is the danger zone, and the exact point inside it cannot be predicted. These keep a base in one piece:

A Security Upgrade inside a machine stops it exploding. ATM10's quests tell you to put one in the Pressure Chamber's valve.
A Safety Tube Module vents air above 4.9 bar on a basic tube and 19.9 bar on an advanced one. The vented air is lost.
A Regulator Tube Module lets air through only up to 4.9 bar by default, so a 20-bar line can feed 5-bar machines.
A Pressure Gauge Tube Module gives a redstone signal of twice the pressure, which can switch compressors off.

Manual Compressor: Hold right-click to pump. It costs hunger, and each pump is slower as the pressure rises.
Air Compressor: Burns anything a furnace burns, for a base 10 mL of air per tick. It takes no lava or liquid fuel.
Liquid Compressor: Burns liquid fuels and hot fluids such as lava. Its screen lists what each fuel is worth.
Thermal Compressor: Makes air from the temperature difference between opposite sides, such as lava against packed ice.
Flux Compressor: Turns FE into air: a base 40 FE per tick from a 100,000 FE buffer. It warms up and needs cooling.
Solar Compressor: Air and heat from direct sunlight. Best at 350 °C; at 425 °C it breaks and needs Solar Cells to repair.
Advanced Air Compressor: Tier 2: safe to 20 bar, a base 50 mL per tick. It slows down as it heats up and stops if left hot. The Advanced Liquid Compressor is the same for liquid fuel.
Electrostatic Compressor: 200,000 mL of air from each lightning strike, far likelier in a thunderstorm. A connected grid of iron bars or lightning rods around it raises the chance of a strike.

Speed Upgrades raise a compressor's output, and its fuel use and heat with it.

Building the Pressure Chamber

The Pressure Chamber is a hollow cube three, four or five blocks a side. Edges and corners must be Pressure Chamber Walls or Pressure Chamber Glass. The faces can also hold Pressure Chamber Valves, where the air goes in, and Pressure Chamber Interfaces, where items go in and out. It needs at least one valve.

Craft walls: eight Reinforced Bricks make 16. A glass block in the middle of the same ring makes 16 Pressure Chamber Glass.
Craft a valve from a Pressure Tube and a wall, or 16 valves from eight compressed iron around a tube.
Craft interfaces: a hopper and two walls make two.
Build the cube with the valve and the two interfaces on its faces. Turn the input interface so its I faces outward, and the output interface so its O does.
Run a Pressure Tube from your compressor to the valve.
Feed the input interface with a hopper or pipe and put a chest against the output interface.

The input interface only accepts items that some recipe uses. When the pressure reaches a recipe's figure the items change, and the output interface pushes the results out. Each item moved costs 1000 mL of air, so compress Blocks of Iron rather than ingots: a ninth of the air for the same iron. Ordinary valves hold the chamber to 5 bar. A Reinforced Pressure Chamber Valve raises that to 20 bar and lets the chamber store four times the air; the walls, glass and interfaces stay as they are.

Compressed Iron Ingot: An iron ingot, 2 bar.
Block of Compressed Iron: A block of iron, 2 bar.
Compressed Stone: Any stone, 1 bar.
Diamond: Eight Blocks of Coal, 4 bar.
Empty PCB, three: Two redstone torches, three copper or gold nuggets and a Plastic Sheet, 1.5 bar.
Capacitor: Two copper or gold nuggets, a slimeball and a Plastic Sheet, 1 bar.
Transistor: Three copper or gold nuggets, a redstone dust and a Plastic Sheet, 1 bar.
Etching Acid: A bucket of molten plastic, two rotten flesh, two spider eyes and two gunpowder, 1 bar.
Turbine Blade: A gold ingot and two redstone, 1 bar.
Solar Wafer: An Upgrade Matrix and an amethyst shard, 2.5 bar.
Ice: Four snow blocks make Ice at 1.5 bar, four ice make Packed Ice at 2 bar, four packed ice make Blue Ice at 2.5 bar.
Slimeball, four: A milk bucket and four green dye, 1 bar.
Wheat Flour, three: Wheat, 1.5 bar.

With a Vacuum Pump holding the chamber below zero, an item with more than one enchantment and a plain book trade a random enchantment onto the book.

Heat: Vortex Tube, heat sinks and insulation

Some machines need heat and some make it. Heat moves between touching blocks that carry it, faster when the difference is bigger. Blocks of Compressed Iron conduct it well; air and torches hardly at all. Any face left open to the air loses heat, so cover it with any block that does not conduct, even a slab or a trapdoor.

The Vortex Tube turns air into heat. Air going through it heats one end and cools the other. The hot end faces you when you place it, and a red or blue band marks each end. More pressure gives a bigger difference and uses air faster. The two ends are weakly connected, so put a Heat Sink on the end you are not using.

Heat Sink: Sheds heat or cold from the block it sits on into the air. Above 60 °C or below -60 °C it hurts to touch. An Air Grate Tube Module at 0.75 bar or more cools it faster.
Heat Pipe: Carries heat between blocks and loses none to the air around it. Heat sinks can sit on it.
Thermal Lagging: Insulation made for hot machines. You can click through it to the machine behind it.
Heat Frame: Placed on a chest or other inventory, it smelts what is inside when heated and freezes it when cooled.
Lava and ice: Lava beside a machine heats it until the lava cools to obsidian; Magma cools to netherrack. Ice, snow and water cool a machine.

A Vortex Tube or any other block that makes heat, set against a Furnace, fuels it from 100 °C upward, so it smelts without coal. Blast furnaces and smokers work the same way. The advanced compressors, the Flux Compressor and the Pneumatic Dynamo work worse as they warm up: give them heat sinks, or a Thermal Compressor to win some of that heat back as air.

Oil, the Refinery and plastic

Oil lakes generate in every Overworld biome, far more often deep underground than on the surface, and ATM10's config keeps them out of every structure. The Seismic Sensor finds them: right-click the ground and it tells you whether oil lies straight below, how deep, and about how many buckets. It needs no air.

Place a Gas Lift where the sensor found oil and load it with Drill Pipes. Three Pressure Tubes make three pipes.
Pressurize it. It pushes the pipes down, breaking what is in the way without drops, until it reaches fluid, then pumps it up.
Give it more pressure the deeper it goes, up to 4.9 bar.
Carry the oil home in a Small Fluid Tank, which holds 32,000 mB and keeps it when broken.

ATM10 has other ways to oil. The Refinery and the Liquid Compressor also take Modern Industrialization's Crude Oil, Ad Astra's Oil and Oritech's oil, because the pack tags them all as crude oil. An Oily Bee's honeycomb gives 50 mB of crude oil in a centrifuge, and the Amadron Tablet sells 1000 mB of oil for one Emerald.

The Refinery is a Refinery Controller with two to four Refinery Outputs stacked on top of it or beside it. It starts at 100 °C and works faster the hotter it gets, and the lightest fuel collects in the top output. What 10 mB of oil becomes depends on the number of outputs:

Two outputs: 4 mB diesel and 2 mB LPG.
Three outputs: 2 mB diesel, 3 mB kerosene and 2 mB LPG.
Four outputs: 2 mB diesel, 3 mB kerosene, 3 mB gasoline and 2 mB LPG, the full 10 mB.

Heat it with a Vortex Tube against any of its blocks, or with lava or magma beside it, which get used up. It has many faces open to the air, so cover every spare one with Thermal Lagging. A comparator on it gives 15 while it has oil and room for the products, which can switch the Vortex Tube's air off when there is nothing to do. The Thermopneumatic Processing Plant then turns the fuels into what the rest of the mod needs:

Molten plastic: 100 mB of LPG and one Coal make 1000 mB, from 100 °C. 100 mB of biodiesel and a Charcoal work too.
Lubricant: 1000 mB of Diesel or biodiesel and a redstone dust make 1000 mB, from 100 °C.
Lighter fuels: 100 mB of diesel cracks into 80 mB of Kerosene at 300 °C and 2 bar. Kerosene cracks into Gasoline and gasoline into LPG the same way.
Upgrade Matrix: 1000 mB of water and a lapis lazuli make four, at 2 bar.
Drill bits: Iron, compressed iron and diamond bits for the Pneumatic Jackhammer, from lubricant. The diamond bit needs a block of diamond, 8000 mB of lubricant, 7.5 bar and 500 °C.

Pour molten plastic out into the world and it sets into a Plastic Sheet in about half a second. For a chance at extra sheets, put the bucket or tank of molten plastic in a chest with a Heat Frame on it and chill the frame, ideally below -80 °C.

Every Refinery fuel also burns in a Liquid Compressor. Air per bucket in ATM10:

LPG: 1,800,000 mL
Gasoline: 1,500,000 mL
Kerosene: 1,100,000 mL
Diesel, biodiesel: 1,000,000 mL
Ethanol: 400,000 mL
Crude oil: 200,000 mL

Circuit boards and the Assembly line

Drones, the Programmer, the Assembly machines and Pneumatic Armor all need a Finished PCB. The first ones have to be made with light and acid, because the Assembly line is itself built from PCBs.

Get a PCB Blueprint. It cannot be crafted: buy it on the Amadron Tablet for eight emeralds, or from a Pressure Mechanic villager, whose workstation is the Charging Station.
Build a UV Light Box, which takes the blueprint in its recipe, and an Etching Tank.
Press Empty PCBs in the Pressure Chamber, three at a time.
Expose them in the UV Light Box. A full ten minutes gives a 100% chance of etching; a shorter time, a lower chance.
Fill the Etching Tank with Etching Acid and put up to 25 boards in. Cold they take 150 seconds; heated, as little as 30, using a little acid.
Craft each Unassembled PCB with two Capacitors and two Transistors into a Finished PCB.

Failed PCBs turn back into Empty PCBs in a Blast Furnace. The Amadron Tablet is a shop: right-click a chest to bind it, and a drone takes the payment from that chest while another delivers what you bought. In ATM10 it is seven plastic around a GPS Tool, with an Air Canister below, and the plastic can be PneumaticCraft's, Industrial Foregoing's Plastic or Oritech's Plastic Sheet.

The Assembly line skips the light box and the acid, and it is the only way to make Advanced Pressure Tubes. Its machines work when they stand next to each other on one level, and only the Assembly Controller needs air.

Put the Assembly Platform in the middle.
Place the Assembly Drill and the Assembly Laser right beside the platform; they cannot reach diagonally.
Add an import IO unit, blue, next to a chest of inputs, and an export IO unit, orange, next to a chest for results. IO units can reach diagonally.
Put a program in the controller and pump air into it.

Assembly Program: Drill: A Block of Compressed Iron into 20 Pressure Chamber Valves, a Solar Wafer into a Solar Cell, and the Netherite Drill Bit.
Assembly Program: Laser: An Empty PCB into an Unassembled PCB, 20 valves into eight Advanced Pressure Tubes, and the Reinforced Pressure Chamber Valve.
Assembly Program: Drill & Laser: Both steps one after the other, from compressed iron blocks straight to Advanced Pressure Tubes.

Programs cannot be crafted either. The Amadron Tablet sells the Drill and the Laser for eight emeralds each and the Drill & Laser for 14.

Drones and programming

A Drone is four Turbine Rotors around a Finished PCB. It does nothing until it gets a program, written in the Programmer with Programming Puzzle Pieces. Eight plastic sheets around a PCB make eight pieces.

Place the Programmer; it needs no air. Keep enough puzzle pieces in your inventory or in a chest touching it.
Put the drone in its slot and drag a Start widget into the programming area.
Snap a task under it, such as Dig or Harvest, and attach an Area widget on its right.
Right-click a block with a GPS Tool to store its position, then click the tool onto the Area widget.
Press the arrow to write the program, charge the drone and place it.

Writing a program uses the pieces up, and overwriting it with a smaller one gives them back. A drone low on air flies to a Charging Station that has a Dispenser Upgrade and at least 1 bar, if one is within 80 blocks. When its air runs out it falls and can be hurt by the fall. Right-click a drone with the Pneumatic Wrench to pick it up.

Harvesting Drone: Four rotors around any crop. Harvests crops and trees in a 17-block cube around where you place it, and replants when placed against a chest holding only a hoe. It leaves the drops on the ground.
Collector Drone: Four rotors around a hopper. Gathers items around it into the chest it is placed against.
Guard Drone: Four rotors around an iron sword. Takes a weapon from its chest and fights hostile mobs within 16 blocks.
Logistics Drone: Moves items between inventories marked with Logistic Frames, within a 33-block cube.

These four need no programming. The Programmable Controller runs a full program with a small drone that passes through walls. It uses 10 mL of air per tick against a drone's 1, and it cannot attack, carry mobs or teleport.

Upgrades and Pneumatic Armor

Upgrades go into a machine's screen, or into a tool or armor piece through a Charging Station: put the item in and press the arrow above its slot. Most upgrades are crafted with four Lapis Lazuli, and an Upgrade Matrix can stand in for each one. One lapis and 1000 mB of water make four matrices.

Speed Upgrade: A bucket or tank of Lubricant, four sugar and four lapis. Glycerol in place of the sugar gives two. In ATM10's config each one multiplies speed by 1.5 and fuel use and heat by 1.65.
Volume Upgrade: More room for air, so pressure drops more slowly. An Air Canister, four compressed iron and four lapis.
Security Upgrade: Stops a machine from exploding. A Safety Tube Module, four obsidian and four lapis.
Dispenser Upgrade: Lets hoppers and tanks act on the world and turns a Charging Station into a charge pad.
Item Life Upgrade: Makes the tool or armor piece it is in repair itself.

The Charging Station also fills pneumatic items with air. Most stop at 10 bar, and none explode from it. With a Dispenser Upgrade it charges drones above it and players standing on it.

Pneumatic Armor starts as Compressed Iron Armor. Each piece is crafted from the compressed iron piece with Air Canisters and a Finished PCB, and keeps the canisters' air. Without upgrades it protects a little better than iron.

Pneumatic Helmet: The Entity Tracker shows creatures within 16 blocks through walls, the Block Tracker shows chests and spawners within 30, the Coordinate Tracker can lead you to the surface, and the Search Upgrade makes a chosen item glow.
Pneumatic Chestplate: Holds the most air. The Security Upgrade fights fire and lava with air, the Magnet Upgrade pulls items from five blocks or up to ten with more, and the Charging Upgrade fills your other pneumatic items.
Pneumatic Leggings: Up to four Speed Upgrades for running, and four tiers of Jumping Upgrade.
Pneumatic Boots: Fall protection and step assist built in. Five tiers of Jet Boots: tier III adds Builder Mode, tier IV stops you dead when you let go of thrust.

Jet Boots burn air fast. Fill the pieces with Volume Upgrades, up to 25 each, and put Charging Upgrades in the chestplate. A Charging Module on a tube pointed at an Aerial Interface charges the items in your own inventory. Repair the armor in an anvil with compressed iron, with Item Life Upgrades, or with Mending.

What ATM10 changes

The Compressed Iron Gear is four compressed iron ingots around an iron nugget; the mod's own recipe takes an iron ingot.
The Amadron Tablet takes seven of any plastic: PneumaticCraft's, Industrial Foregoing's or Oritech's.
The Creative Compressor can be crafted: an ATM Star, an Advanced Air, Advanced Liquid, Flux and Electrostatic Compressor and 256 Advanced Pressure Tubes, in the Pressure Chamber at 4.9 bar.
The Creative Compressed Iron Block, which holds any temperature you set, is an ATM Star and 512 Blocks of Compressed Iron at 4.9 bar.
The road to the ATM Star needs PneumaticCraft: an Aerial Interface goes into the Improbable Probability Device and Micromissiles into the Pulsating Black Hole.
Modern Industrialization's crude oil, Ad Astra's oil and Oritech's oil all count as crude oil, so the Refinery and the Liquid Compressor take them.
Silent Gear's Salvager takes Compressed Iron Armor apart for its compressed iron.
The Air Conditioning Upgrade has no recipe: it needs the Cold Sweat mod, which ATM10 does not include.

Questions

How do I make compressed iron in ATM10?

Drop iron ingots or blocks of iron on the ground and blow them up with TNT; about 20% is lost. Once you have a Pressure Chamber, compress iron in it at 2 bar with no loss, as blocks to save air.

How do I build a Pressure Chamber?

Build a hollow cube three, four or five blocks a side from Pressure Chamber Walls or Glass, with at least one Pressure Chamber Valve and two Pressure Chamber Interfaces on its faces. Pipe air into the valve, feed the interface with I facing out and take the results from the one with O facing out.

Where do I find oil in ATM10?

Oil lakes are in every Overworld biome, mostly deep underground. Right-click the ground with a Seismic Sensor to find one below you and pump it with a Gas Lift full of Drill Pipes. The Amadron Tablet also sells a bucket of oil for an emerald.

Why is my Refinery not working?

It needs at least 100 °C, oil, room in its outputs, and two to four Refinery Outputs stacked on or beside the controller. Heat it with a Vortex Tube and cover its open faces, or it loses the heat to the air.

How do I make plastic in PneumaticCraft?

Refine oil for LPG. Put 100 mB of LPG and a piece of coal in a Thermopneumatic Processing Plant at 100 °C or more for 1000 mB of molten plastic, then pour it out into the world and it sets into a Plastic Sheet.

How do I get a PCB Blueprint?

It cannot be crafted. Buy it for eight emeralds on the Amadron Tablet, or trade with a Pressure Mechanic villager; his workstation is the Charging Station.

Why did my machine explode?

It went past its pressure limit: 5 bar for basic tubes and machines, 10 for reinforced tubes, 20 for advanced. A Security Upgrade in the machine stops it, and a Safety or Regulator Tube Module keeps the line below the limit.

Can I craft the Creative Compressor in ATM10?

Yes. ATM10 adds a Pressure Chamber recipe at 4.9 bar: an ATM Star, an Advanced Air, Advanced Liquid, Flux and Electrostatic Compressor, and 256 Advanced Pressure Tubes.