Bay 12 Games Forum

Inspired by the great work in this old thread (the diagrams from which I had to resurrect via the internet archive's wayback machine), I present a new design for a compact, self-powered minecart repeater which can be configured (via the track stop friction settings) for 104, 144 or 206 tick cycle times, providing nearly-optimally-fast oscillation of doors/hatches/etc, upright spikes, or bridges/floodgates/etc.



Miscellaneous notes:

• This design abuses the impulse ramp and drag-less up-ramp exploits (note carefully the track directions on the ramps), and also benefits from DFHack's ability to change track stop friction settings after construction.
• The four marked pressure plate positions will work with all three cycle length settings regardless of activation order (that is, no matter if the plate or its linked devices are built first). Other track positions may not work for some cycle lengths because the cart may be moving too slowly, causing it to linger long enough on the plate that its next loop comes before the plate or its linked device has fully reset.
• When first constructing the repeater, a hauling route is required to assign a cart to be pushed west from stop #5, and the cart should then be immediately forbidden (and the hauling route optionally deleted).
• The lever and hatch on the upper level aren't strictly required but provide a safe and easy toggle; once the cart is installed, the repeater can be stopped and restarted with just the one lever (anywhere in the fort), without having to wait for a dwarf to reposition or push the cart.

Enjoy!