Piston doors help

[Eremiyah]

Since a hanger bay I'm building is too big for airtight doors, I opted for piston doors. Problem is that the door part doesn't stick to most of the piston heads and some pistons don't retract properly. Am I doing somthing wrong? (Hanger is big enough to fit a few frigates in it) the doors also seem to move sideways when attached to the pistons

[cptsavarus]

How many pistons are you trying to attach to each door?
If you're attaching more than one you need to use the merge block trick, as each piston top part is effectively it's own separate grid...
So if you're attaching one door to one frame using 2 pistons (for example) you're basically joining 4 separate grids together, not 2.

Without using merge blocks, all the grids will remain independent from one another, which is where weird things start happening like you describe.

To attach multiple pistons between the same 2 grids...

(With all pistons retracted)
1)Add a single armour block / conveyor block / blast door block to the "top" end of each piston.
2)build a merge block on to the armour block. Make sure the merge block is facing along the piston's axis. Do this for all but one piston.
3)On the end of the one piston with no merge block, build your door.
4)Extend the piston with the door built on it.
5)Add merge blocks to the door so that when the other pistons are extended, the merge blocks on them will line up.
6a)Extend the other pistons one at a time.
OR
6b)Retract the piston with the door built on it.

Step 6a) is a slightly less Klang-y way of doing it, as merging multiple merge blocks on pistons at one time can sometimes cause explosions. Both methods work most of the time though.

7)Set all the pistons up in a group in the control panel so they can't accidentally be operated individually (bad things happen)

8)Join the armour blocks on the ends of the pistons to the door itself - you can then safely remove the merge blocks without everything falling apart.

NB: If your grid is dynamic - IE a ship, be sure to add some gyroscopes & thrusters (and a power source) to it before you merge the merge blocks together or it could spin out of control & f**k off across the map.
Static grids don't need gyros or thrusters and *should* never spin.

With extremely big moving parts like you describe - and if there are a lot of pistons in play, there can be wierd effects that cannot be got around. The sideways movement you mentioned could be one of them... or it could just be beacuse the pistons aren't all merged together properly.

[Eremiyah]

Originally posted by cptsavarus:

How many pistons are you trying to attach to each door?
If you're attaching more than one you need to use the merge block trick, as each piston top part is effectively it's own separate grid...
So if you're attaching one door to one frame using 2 pistons (for example) you're basically joining 4 separate grids together, not 2.

Without using merge blocks, all the grids will remain independent from one another, which is where weird things start happening like you describe.

To attach multiple pistons between the same 2 grids...

(With all pistons retracted)
1)Add a single armour block / conveyor block / blast door block to the "top" end of each piston.
2)build a merge block on to the armour block. Make sure the merge block is facing along the piston's axis. Do this for all but one piston.
3)On the end of the one piston with no merge block, build your door.
4)Extend the piston with the door built on it.
5)Add merge blocks to the door so that when the other pistons are extended, the merge blocks on them will line up.
6a)Extend the other pistons one at a time.
OR
6b)Retract the piston with the door built on it.

Step 6a) is a slightly less Klang-y way of doing it, as merging multiple merge blocks on pistons at one time can sometimes cause explosions. Both methods work most of the time though.

7)Set all the pistons up in a group in the control panel so they can't accidentally be operated individually (bad things happen)

8)Join the armour blocks on the ends of the pistons to the door itself - you can then safely remove the merge blocks without everything falling apart.

NB: If your grid is dynamic - IE a ship, be sure to add some gyroscopes & thrusters (and a power source) to it before you merge the merge blocks together or it could spin out of control & f**k off across the map.
Static grids don't need gyros or thrusters and *should* never spin.

With extremely big moving parts like you describe - and if there are a lot of pistons in play, there can be wierd effects that cannot be got around. The sideways movement you mentioned could be one of them... or it could just be beacuse the pistons aren't all merged together properly.

Do I have to fly the door parts and such into the merge blocks? because directly placing them doesn't work very well. if so I guess I might make a ship with landing gear to move large panels..... Although courrently the ship is converted to a station the piston heads shift the blocks around slightlyand won't let me have the pistons + door as "one entity"

[cptsavarus]

No, you shouldn't have to fly anything anywhere. It should all just work off the bat. No towing things into place. I use this method often in my builds - never had a problem with it.

You say that directly placing the blocks doesn't work very well...
This leads me to think there's something in the way that's preventing block placement.
Also, it would explain the sideways movement you're seeing - the pistons are fighting against something that cannot move and it's causing them to go off-centre.
You need to make sure there's nothing that could possibly interfere with the door or pistons when they move.
Sometimes things interfere even when they look like they shouldn't / aren't.
The best way to be sure is to leave a clear 1-block gap between the door / pistons and the frame... at least while you're constructing it.
Once it's built you can look at adding blast door blocks or whatever around the edges to cover the gap.

Are you able to post / link some screenshots of your build? It'll be easier to help you figure out what's wrong if I can see it.

[Eremiyah]

Originally posted by cptsavarus:

No, you shouldn't have to fly anything anywhere. It should all just work off the bat. No towing things into place. I use this method often in my builds - never had a problem with it.

You say that directly placing the blocks doesn't work very well...
This leads me to think there's something in the way that's preventing block placement.
Also, it would explain the sideways movement you're seeing - the pistons are fighting against something that cannot move and it's causing them to go off-centre.
You need to make sure there's nothing that could possibly interfere with the door or pistons when they move.
Sometimes things interfere even when they look like they shouldn't / aren't.
The best way to be sure is to leave a clear 1-block gap between the door / pistons and the frame... at least while you're constructing it.
Once it's built you can look at adding blast door blocks or whatever around the edges to cover the gap.

Are you able to post / link some screenshots of your build? It'll be easier to help you figure out what's wrong if I can see it.

https://imgur.com/a/VZ6WC3s if you look closely at it not all of the armor blocks are aligned (its unaligned by very little) all of the pistons are aligned, but the part where the hanger door is attached isn't. (I tred using a singular pair of pistons, but the door is too heavy. The hanger door operates like a colapsable telescope. thats why I asked about the towing ship thing so I can make sure the door is fully aligned. if I try using the line tool upwards only one of the piston is connected. if I indiviually place blocks on the piston system, the misalignment prevents blocks from being placed. having one set of pistons does the exact same.

[cptsavarus]

I see where you mean - they're misaligned on the right hand side, 6 blocks from the top, yes?

Hard to tell exactly how you have everything spaced there but you do have a few obvious problems.

Firstly, get rid of the merge blocks in the middle, between the two sets of pistons. You only need merge blocks on the very ends...

P=Piston
M=Merge Block
A=Armour

So instead of looking like PAMMPAMMA, it'd look like PPAMMA - if that makes sense.

Second, forget the idea of trying to link two pistons by drawing a line of armour... it can't be done. They'll ALWAYS be misaligned. You have to use merge blocks... but the merge blocks don't get built onto one another or it'll still be misaligned - you build them apart, then extend the pistons to merge them together.

Next, the armour wall you have behind the pistons is going to interfere with the piston heads. Get rid of that whole wall for now - you can build it back when you're done, though you'll need to build it out of Blast Door blocks, not armour, as armour has a larger colision model & will always interfere. That's why the pistons are moving sideways & also why they're not extending & retracting properly.

Then...

-Delete the door you've built.
-Retract all but one pair of pistons.
-Build the door again as it is in the screenshot but out of Blast Door Blocks, not armour. Build it directly onto the only piston that's extended - don't use merge blocks on that one.
Don't worry about alignment. Just build the door.

Finally, extend each of the other piston pairs one at a time until they're all merged to the door.
With this many pistons, things will probably get klangy if you try to retract the extended piston & merge them all at once.

Hope this is a clear enough explanation. Let me know if you need more help. I'll be happy to build the thing for you & post it to the workshop if you'd like, so you can see how it's done. Let me know if you want me to do that & I can try to get it up over the weekend.

[Lander1]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBTuzSKfOOE

[Xilo The Odd]

i wonder if a similar principle can be used with multiple rotors...

[Lander1]

@Xilo; It can, but I think the proceedure is slightly different...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjdLVDzQLnY

[cptsavarus]

@Lander1... good shout with the videos. I didn't know they existed. Bit old but the how-to is still accurate.

Does anyone remember back before there were pistons & we used to make our own pistons from rotors? (for those who didn't know, yes, this is actually possible!)
Ah, the good old times! Engineers these days don't know they're born!
It'll be self-mining ore next, just mark my words!
Now where did I put my dentures?!