Automation near/in liquid tungsten

[The Toblin]

I've set up liquid pumps near all my active volcanoes (3 minor, 2 aluminium, 2 gold and 4 iron). Now, on my forest asteroid I have three Tungsten volcanoes and while I can manually control the pump using a switch, I would love to have a hydro sensor that activates and runs the pump whenever the liquid tungsten gets high enough, but if my reading comprehension (and logic) is working, no matter what material I use for the hydro sensor and wires, it would eventually melt, because liquid tungsten is hotter than ANY known material's melting point.

I was surprised to see how ungodly low the melting point for Thermium was. I was expecting it be far surpass Steel, but it's only like 300 degres higher, about a thousand degrees short of the temps of liquid tungsten.

Any advices, or am I bound to do it manually?

[Angpaur]

Yes, tungsten has the highest melting point of any materials you can build the sensor with.

But all is not lost :-)

Here is my idea for automated pumping (assuming you already use the trick to pump liquid tungsten bu tricking pump like desribed here: https://oxygennotincluded.fandom.com/wiki/Hidden_Mechanics#Pumping_superhot_liquids )

Let liquid tungsten gather in a 2 tiles high pool and place tricked pump above that pool. Whenever the liquid level rises to second tile hight the pump will automatically suck it.

[The Toblin]

Originally posted by Angpaur:

Yes, tungsten has the highest melting point of any materials you can build the sensor with.

But all is not lost :-)

Here is my idea for automated pumping (assuming you already use the trick to pump liquid tungsten bu tricking pump like desribed here: https://oxygennotincluded.fandom.com/wiki/Hidden_Mechanics#Pumping_superhot_liquids )

Let liquid tungsten gather in a 2 tiles high pool and place tricked pump above that pool. Whenever the liquid level rises to second tile hight the pump will automatically suck it.

Yeah, but the pump will have to constantly run. While it is a minor quibble at this state of the game, the waste of power annoys me XD

Also, I used to try the waterfall method of tricking the pump, but almost no matter what method I use to prevent catastrophy, it will eventually break and flood the entire place in hot steam.

So I've resorted to the classic visco-gel trick and just accept the halved pumping rate. I've not found a reliable enough waterfall method that doesn't explode eventually.

But that's for magma. For the tungsten, that won't ever work, since tungsten isn't viscous enough to leave a reliable blade. At least not as I've found.

[Angpaur]

Why constantly? Only when there is more liquid than one layer of tiles can store. Pump will probably suck less than 10kg/s, which is a waste of power, but frankly it is neglible and there is no need to worry about it.

But on the other hand if you already have such pump, then there is no difference if you have 1 tile high or 2 tiles high liquid pool - volcano adds liquid at exactly same pace.

[The Toblin]

Originally posted by Angpaur:

Why constantly? Only when there is more liquid than one layer of tiles can store. Pump will probably suck less than 10kg/s, which is a waste of power, but frankly it is neglible and there is no need to worry about it.

Since I have no automation to detect the liquid level, if I want to leave it "fire and forget", the pump must be left on, otherwise it won't pump when there's liquid there. That was my core problem. I have no way of detecting the rising liquid levels, since any sensor will just melt if in contact with the tungsten.

[Angpaur]

Ok so alternative way is to use timer, negative edge detector and buffer gate. You set the timer to values your volcano is emittimg and inactive.

When volvano stops emiting and timer changes from green to red it will send a pulse green signal (via the edge detector), which you keep using buffer gate for number of seconds you want the pump to be active. This should equal to mass that the volcano adds during eruption.

Basically idea is to detect when volcano becomes inactive - not sure if there was added some automation port to analyzed volcanos. If so then this can be used instead the timer.

[The Toblin]

Originally posted by Angpaur:

Ok so alternative way is to use timer, negative edge detector and buffer gate. You set the timer to values your volcano is emittimg and inactive.

When volvano stops emiting and timer changes from green to red it will send a pulse green signal (via the edge detector), which you keep using buffer gate for number of seconds you want the pump to be active. This should equal to mass that the volcano adds during eruption.

Basically idea is to detect when volcano becomes inactive - not sure if there was added some automation port to analyzed volcanos. If so then this can be used instead the timer.

That's a valid option. Not quite as "simple" as a hydro sensor, but should still be relatively reliable.

They don't have ports for detecting when a volcano/geyser is inactive, but if you build a geotuner, THAT has ports to detect if the selected source is active or not, so it should still be doable.

Good idea, thanks! :)