Drill Limit?

[EnderDJ1]

I have too much cloutium, like enough to make 151 drills, and I'm not sure if there's a drill limit since one time in creative I made a wall of 200 drills and hardly any worked is there an exact maximum if any max at all?

[Phoenix Cat]

I have seen setups with 100's of drills. Guess it depends on your system specs.

[prtmh]

I start dropping frames bad if I start 35 drills at once along with all the other moving parts. But I have a 3 yr old Dell with a 3060 and my game is full of hundreds and hundreds of other objects so it is what it is for now. Just add a few at a time till your frame rate tells you when to stop. have fun

[Katgoesmoo]

There is no "drill limit". In order for a drill to be producing dirt (or, in the Volcalidus DLC, ice/frost rock) chunks, it needs:
1) diggable dirt under it; for T1, T2, T3, and the regular lava drills found in the DLC, the easiest way to ensure that you have the proper amount of dirt under a drill is to place a 1x1 concrete floor, remove any excess dirt above it, shovel a single scoop of dirt in the middle of the floor, place drill on top, then (optional) remove the floor bit;
2) running water (or lava, in the DLC); if you remove the pipe feeding into the drill, and no water/lava is dripping out, the drill also won't work when connected (check for uninterrupted pipe connection, corks, open valves, broken filters).
3) to be turned on - the lever on the drill must be in the vertical position; also, goes without saying, the drill must not be 100% damaged (it shouldn't be sparking).
4) to be at the appropriate level - T1 drills don't work in T2 soil; T2 drills don't work in T3 soil. If a T1 or T2 drill has dirt under it, has running water, is turned on and is repaired, and you are getting sparks at the bottom of it, as well as a repetitive thunk, the drill is too deep for it to function.* Check the level of dirt by using tiered tools, a T1 pickax won't dig T2 soil, and a T2 pickax won't dig T3 soil.
5) you need to actually own the plot of land you are building in. Mods like "Build Anywhere" allow you to build anywhere on the map, but you won't be able to place dirt for drills to work in most areas.**
* special notes in regard to the Icehelm claim - the different tiers of dirt are stacked horizontally, from the entrance to the mine to the back wall; coincidentally, Icehelm is the only plot where drill walls make sense from a production standpoint, as they would be getting the same tier of dirt all the way to the ceiling.
** the vertical limit at which you can place items in the game above your plot of land is much higher than the vertical limit of diggable dirt. Experiment to see where that limit is for your particular case.

[EnderDJ1]

ok thank you time to make 151 drills yay

[Klandor]

While there is no Drill LIMIT, the Drill's produce Dirt and the Harvester turns the Dirt into Raw Ore or Raw Gems. All those items have physics associated with them. While collision is turned off while in a Pan or Bucket and said Pan/Bucket can be carried to the Jeweler to be Sold, to turn the Raw Ore into Ore Bars will require that Raw Ore to be sorted. The Hand sorter is a starting point, but when you start pouring the Raw Ore/Raw Gems out of the Pan, physics becomes an issue. THAT is where the QUANTITY of Ore becomes a problem, as your FPS will start dropping. I generally find that my RTX 3080 Ti can handle up to around 120 to 150 Drills producing Dirt and Raw Ore before the quantity of Items (Dirt/Raw Ore/Raw Gems/Polished Gems) starts to become too much and places a significant load on the GPU in particular (that's where most of the physics calculations are performed).

That being the case, I'd recommend activating your Drills in batches and then give it a little time to stabilize the load before adding more, especially as you hit 100 or more ACTIVE Drills. You'll eventually find a sweet spot in terms of the number of active Drills vs the quantity of Items they produce vs what YOUR system can handle. An individual's experience will vary based on the configuration of one's system and the efficiency of one's Mine's design.