Advances in material tech have lead to the theorizing of prototype designs to address the better handling of resources and the limitations of conventional alloy and mechanical production.
The first design: the Nuclear Atomizing Recycling Dynamo System or NARDS. An advanced approach to reclaiming materials and producing new states of matter. This machine can be used, at the expense of station power (For both input and output) and a fractional amount of osmium and tritium (For only output) used as a bluespace catalyst per reaction, to essentially take matter and recycle it.
This is a 3x3 arrangement of machines, plus a separate console and fueling unit that must be in range. There are also grounding towers available for protection.
In the four corners of the machine are each a large supercapacitive array for storing energy and releasing it all in one spontaneous linked surge.
In the center is the NARDS, which is the core of operations.
On two sides 90 degrees from each other, are conveyer belt tiles. These come with the NARDS core. One for input and one for output.
The construction needs to be operated within a vacuum or at least below 20KPA; excess ambient gas will contaminate the process. It is also recommended that all directions are either surrounded by walls or a grounding tower; While the station walls will ground any excess charge, station glass and vacuum/air will not. Any entity or synthetics or delicate machinery coming/placed within ~4-5 tiles while the capacitors are charging risks premature discharge.
Possible Example layout:
KEY:
RED circles: Supercaps
BLUE rectangles (comes with core): Conveyer belts (Suggest attaching more on your own/making it more convenient to use before operation)
YELLOW diamond: NARDS core
WHITE triangle (optional-ish): Grounding tower
MAGENTA star (can be anywhere in range): Fuel Input
GREEN-ish ovaloid (can be anywhere in range): Control console
Component suggestions for:
Supercaps: 4 supercapacitors and an advanced sensor array each
Core: (Variable quality) 4 micro lasers, (Variable quality) 2 matter bin, (Variable quality) 2 manipulators, and an ansible crystal
Grounding tower: Metal and possibly some plasteel and wiring
Fuel input: Basic machine frame construction (doesn't really matter)
Control console: NARDS circuit
Operation:
Assuming that no delicate equipment or personnel are too close and/or not in a grounded direction within about 4-5 tiles (walls count as being grounded, but windows do not because arbitrary space reasons), and that the core is in a vacuum or as close to one as you can make, then, operation is pretty straightforward.
Material is fed in from one direction, the supercapacitors trickle-charge from provided APC power source, and semi-discharged to reduce the incoming material to base components. Higher quality matter bins allow for more to be processed in one capacitor surge(Thus making the process more energy efficient), Better quality micro lasers improve the input reclamation efficiency (You get more out of your input material), and higher quality manipulators reduce the fuel usage of the output reaction.
Input fuel port can be anywhere in range because the output reaction occurs partially in bluespace.
Control console is where you operate the machine from, see the material stores, and choose what it outputs.
The grounding towers can be used standalone, as long as they are anchored to the hull, but can also be anchored above a wire knot. Doing so will reclaim some of the inherent waste electricity created in the process, HOWEVER, it is RECOMMENDED that you run this power through a SMES before feeding back into the power grid. Not doing so may cause electrical surges and light explosions during use.
Input efficiency is based on the micro lasers, and ranges between 50-100%. Basic-50%, advanced - 75%, ultra - 100%
Possible inputs:
Already processed base materials (Metal, bars, coins) - 1:1 ratio. You can now take those iron bars and make them usable again.
Ores and raw unprocessed mixed materials - 2:1 ratio (yes, ore doubling. we minecraft now)
Slag: Fractional amount of a random base material (hooray)
Assistants: Carbon and hydrogen (Some species are exceptions, example: vox, clowns, slimes)
Station Equipment: Probably various metals and carbon and a little gold/silver or plat
Artifacts: ???
etc.
Possible outputs:
Base materials
Processed materials
Alloys
and most importantly: Bluegoo
What's bluegoo? A nearly useless material. Tests on the very small quantities we've been able to produce so far have shown that this material is an almost entirely unremarkable molasses-like material except in two fashions.
1. It is almost entirely conventionally unreactive. That is; We haven't found anything conventional that can react with it. Not even phoron! Or fire! Or Both!
2. (please) Don't ask HOW, but our head nanotechnology department found that specially designed laser-equipped nanobots operating within a contained raging phoron inferno can use the material to open miniature bluespace holes and reform the bluegoo into almost any conventional matter we know of with extreme precision. Combined with a high precision atomic scanning device to create software blueprints to work off of, and a precision matter teleporter, we can essentially use this bluegoo to synthesize whatever we want however we want!
The major problem is of course, getting any sizeable amount of bluegoo to work with, and the advanced components required to make such a machine possible.
That leads into the second design, the BlueForge
The Blueforge - a unique mesh of bluespace and nanotechnology and new advances in material science to create essentially an atomic 3d printer.
Components and possible arrangement:
KEY:
Green Diamond: The BlueForge
Red rectangle: Waste exhaust for gas
Yellow rectangle: Input phoron and oxygen
Cyan star: Control console
White square: Scanning pad
Orange square: Output pad
Magenta square: Hopefully some sort of containment room, as the output pad needs a vacuum to operate in.
Blue rectangle: Bluegoo input conveyer
Function: Using an input of gaseous phoron and oxygen, as well as bluegoo and an input of electricity from a nearby apc, this device can be used to either
A: Slowly replicate anything (non-anchored) placed on the scanning pad down to an atomic level. This, due to safeguards built into the device, excludes a few select specific mission-critical objects.
B: Create anything stored as an atomic digital blueprint (either from another source or scanned in from the pad)
Warning: This machine produces a significant amount of waste heat. Failing to divert excess exhaust away from the machine via provided piping can lead to the heat leaking into the nearby environment and possibly even initiate a cascading failure mode of the BlueForge and possibly initiate nearby bluespace-related events.
Component suggestions for:
BlueForge core: (Variable quality) 4 Micro manipulators, (Variable quality) 4 micro lasers, a Subspace Amplifier and a Subspace Transmitter.
Input and output pad: (Variable quality) Scanner, Subspace Wavelength Analyzer, (Variable quality) 2 Manipulators
Console: BlueForge Circuitboard
Better components in the core reduce the amount of energy, phoron/oxygen, and bluegoo used in the process, while better components in the input and output pad speed up the process.
WARNING: Do not stand on the output pad during operation. Doing so may lead to unfortunate events!
Operation: While output pad is in as close to in a vacuum as you can get, and BlueForge is properly exhausted and fueled, place an object on the scanning pad and scan it in or provide digital atomic blueprint. Select blueprint to print, and allow device to begin operation.
