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[Min KSP 1.12.X] Sandcastle: 3D printing for parts and vessels


Angelo Kerman

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5 hours ago, 4nxs said:

Looking good! What is the reason it is turnable? Separation of the metal from the slag or something like that?

Yup! On Earth the slag floats to the top and gets skimmed off, so I figured that in microgravity the smelter would use centrifugal force in place of gravity.

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4 hours ago, SkyFall2489 said:

@Angel-125, it's looking great! Question is, how will it function? will it be a Survey Station, requiring markers to be placed in advance, or a launchpad, with a designated spawn space some distance off to the side?

It works like a launchpad with a spawn point some distance away from the printer. It'll work by moving the spawn point away from the "ready" position (when you deploy it from its stowed position, it'll be at the ready). The printer doesn't require kerbals to function, making it like the NASA 3D habitat printer concepts. The sand caster design was inspired by

AI-SpaceFactory-Mars-Habitat-Exterior-Co

and

1200px-JCB_3CX_Backhoe_loader.jpg

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7 minutes ago, Lach_01298 said:

What will the plugin do? Also will there be a way to unify material costs from sandcastle and EL because currently the material costs for a part are specified quite differently in both mods.

The plugin will move the launch position so that the vessel won't collide with the printer.

The Sandcastle 3D printer is designed to use Ore, but you can create module manager patches to use different resources if desired. I chose Ore for the sake of simplicity. What does EL use to print individual parts, is it RocketParts? If so, then you can do this patch:

@MATERIALS_LIST[Default]
{
	@RESOURCE[Ore]
	{
		@name = RocketParts
	}
}

I'm not familiar with how EL handles individual parts.

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8 hours ago, Angel-125 said:

The Sandcastle 3D printer is designed to use Ore, but you can create module manager patches to use different resources if desired. I chose Ore for the sake of simplicity. What does EL use to print individual parts, is it RocketParts?

If the sand caster 3d printer uses your system then that's ok. I just didn't know if it used your resources or EL's.

So do you need EL at all?  Or do you still need it to make new craft?

Edited by Lach_01298
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13 minutes ago, Lach_01298 said:

If the sand caster 3d printer uses your system then that's ok. I just didn't know if it used your resources or EL's.

So do you need EL at all?  Or do you still need it to make new craft?

The Sandcaster uses EL's resources to make vessels. That means it needs RocketParts. In fact, it uses all of EL's plugins- I'm just moving the spawn point so your vessels don't run into the printer.

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2 hours ago, Hyperspace Industries said:

@Angel-125Could this work with simple construction and not EL installed? It provides all the same resources (metal, rocketparts) and uses EL's plugins. Just curious as to whether I would need to install EL too.

I think it should. Sandcastle effectively just uses the EL plugin.

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I ran into a problem with trying to move that launch position but I have a backup plan that is looking good: use the survey station on the Sandcaster. The problem is the survey stakes- they need kerbals to plant, and the printer is supposed to be fully automated. But after studying the EL plugin I can now spawn parts into the game:

imYEw4m.png

I can make a traffic cone- like part that serves as a survey spike and drop them on the ground. Then I need to figure out how to tie that in with removing an item from inventory. With a kerbal it is as easy as dragging the inventory item and dropping it, but you need a kerbal to do that. It might be as simple as a button to “Drop construction cone” to remove one from the inventory and another button to “Print construction cone” to make one.

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Getting there...

This is the CD-10 Cone Dispenser. It holds up to 10 STK-1 Survey Cones. You can drop one onto the ground without the need for a kerbal:

xAZyCfT.png

It's hard to tell from this shot, but the cone dispenser has an animation that runs when you drop one of the survey cones.

SALEOgs.png

It isn't done yet, but I'm also working on a part module that will sweep up a survey cone and place it back in the dispenser's inventory. You won't need  a kerbal to do that. :)

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