How are drills working

[Adyne]

I launched a small mining base with the small drill and a lander to the Mun. The idea was that the ore I gather gets refined into fuel for the lander so I can get that thing back into orebit and carry goodies down to and around my base.

But I got a slight issue, the drill is not working. I managed to gather 0.06 ore, after that it wouldn't collect any more ore even when the drill is still running. Currently my thermal efficiency, whatever that means, is at 0.7% and slowly (I mean very slowly) rising.

What am I doing wrong?

[Jupiter3927]

Drills work best at 100% thermal efficiency.
It could be out of power or ground contact could be lost.

Having an engineer on board will make drill better.

[Adyne]

The drill has ground contact and the batteries are not depleting (I have two 3x2 solar panels). I haven't an engineer yet, but I doubt that, because of that my thermal efficiency drops to 0.7%.
Also I've landed in one of the highest resource density spots.

[Adyne]

Thanks a lot.
KSP says my radiators are "idle".
I'll try sending an engineer up and see if that helps.

[Adyne]

Found the problem. Drill got too hot.
The drill has 100% efficiency at exactly 500 Kelvin. Mine is currently at 815 Kelvin and rising with an efficiency of ~1.5%.
Have to reconstruct this thing.

[Chibbity]

Some advice:

Static radiator panels only take heat from the part they are attached to and any parts attached to that part. Deployable take from the entire vessel.

They both need to be turned on, and consume electricity when running.

[Adyne]

Thanks a lot guys.
I added two small expandable radiators and 12 small solar panels, that solved the problem.

[Chibbity]

Glad to hear it.

[Toastie Buns]

Originally posted by Chibbity:

Some advice:

Static radiator panels only take heat from the part they are attached to and any parts attached to that part. Deployable take from the entire vessel.

They both need to be turned on, and consume electricity when running.

To expand on this; don't mix static and and the thermal ones together. The game won't care about the static radiator and will happily use the thermal control system to cool a part a static could use, leading to cases where other parts explode because the game is silly.