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[flameaway]

I did a search and didn't see anything pertinent on creating water.  My apologies if this has already been written up.  Point me to the thread and if I'm duplicating someone's idea, I'll go ahead an delete this.

NOTE:Urist Da Vinci noticed this bug last year and provides a quote below.  However, loading a quantum minecart stockpile with fluid seems to be a new idea. Since UDV seems agreeable I think I'll keep this topic active while I work through my attempts to create an working model.

The Cart loading doohickey I mention in the title works splendidly.  Should enable relatively small, easy to setup water cannons with an extremely high rate of fire from a single gun tube.

But that's not the neat part.
 
The loader also seems to create water.  I'd appreciate it if someone would either confirm that this is a known deal in which case I'll be bummed, or confirm my results so all dwarfs lost in deserts might worship me until Toady stomps this bug, in which case I'll be moderately delighted.

So, as it turns out creating water is quite simple.

In short, load an extant quantum minecart stockpile with water.

My initial test setup is quite trivial and consists of two 1x1 bridges in setup whose functional components span 4 z's on a 1x1 footprint.  The lower bridge supports the bottom minecart in the stack.  Which is above a constructed south track ramp one level below. The quantum stack rests one 'z' up.  My test setup contained 10 minecarts . Above the upper stack is my second bridge which I set up to support a non fortress destroying 1x3 tile column of water.

Please note that I'm starting with 21 units of water; and according to the http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Minecart each minecart when fully loaded with 833 units contains enough water to raise the water level of a single tile by 2.

I single stepped through the loading phase and do have three extremely long vids confirming my results.  Considering the size of the download, it will probably take less time to just build the setup and confirm my result.  I'll post the vids if it becomes necessary.

At the end of the loading phase I had 7 carts with 833 units of water.  Six of the carts remained dry on the outside the bottom cart has a water covering.  Three carts failed to load.  This leaves me with 14 units of the original 21 in carts.  I also have 14 units of water on the ground.  That's 28 units of water.  Seven extra, one for each cart that actually loaded.

Theory:

Carts loaded with fluid while in a quantum stockpile only require one unit of water to completely fill them. 

So given that my results are as stated; it should be possible to create a minecart pump that once primed and operational infinitely pumps water, or you know magma...

Portable infinite magma supply anyone?

So, I really hope that we can figure out a way to recycle fluids through a recycling quantum minecart stack.  That will be interesting.

If this works, the best thing about it will be that I will have discovered a turbo charged way to have fluid !!Fun!!

Extended note; for those interested in the water loading idea.  Unfortunately, I didn't record the number of steps that it took the water to load; The carts filled in the time it took the water to fall three z's.  Some filled much more quickly than that.

At the end of my test the entire stack hung up.  So the bottom cart did not proceed south as I intended.  I speculate that this is due to weight of the water supporting the carts as the water rushed through first. Had I accounted for rapid drainage, I'm rather certain the carts would have been pushed out with the flow of water.  Indeed, in an earlier two cart test with 7 units of water, both cart separated and proceeded south.

The water in the test I detail here, did not load all at once.  The first cart to load was the top one in the top stack.  The bottom cart loaded as soon as the level around it hit 6/7 as you'd expect.  But it looks like every time a block of water ticked into a cart it ticked into it from the top down... excepting the bottom cart which loaded third or fourth.

***Edit Given how the carts loaded it seems likely that I loaded seven carts in six to eight clicks.  I think the last cart took an extra bit to load; I'll have to rerun the test and check.  Given the one tick one load possibility, we might be able to design a cannon that creates it's own water/magma while firing.

***Edit:  several grammar edits.

***Edit  Content; link showing water being created.

http://mkv25.net/dfma/movie-2577-onebucketonecartloaded

All my other vid are too long; because I was using them for testing.  I'll see if I can't run a couple short vids and post them
http://mkv25.net/dfma/movie-2578-unloading.  This shows my beta water generator unloading some water I created.

I have some movies that show exactly how the cart loading works.  The bottom carts loads normally; getting no extra water.  However the top carts load first to last on the 'k' list.  I'm using buckets at this point because I don't have a good design for the recycling phase.  I also wanted to watch exactly what happened when water is created in this way.

I'm going to rerun my earlier tests that started with the hole already full of water.  I got some odd results and want to see if they repeat.

****EDIT

http://mkv25.net/dfma/movie-2584-recyclingaction. 
http://mkv25.net/dfma/movie-2585-bridgeopen
http://mkv25.net/dfma/movie-2586-settlesdown
http://mkv25.net/dfma/movie-2587-oddballmister

This is neat.  Haven't tried it with carts yet; but I thought it would be neat to build one of these out of glass and and set it up in your dining hall as a self contained waterfall.  No mess; no hazard spam...  I wonder if I can setup access points for bathing?

I babble sometimes.  Too many ideas; not enough patience.

{waves}

[flameaway]

Something like this should create an arbitrary amount of water determined by the number of minecart you start with in the quantum stack.

A three level pumpstack.  With the bottom pump pumping from the bottom minecarts tile.  So the pumps is set on the same level with the minecart stack and pumps from it's tile.  The second pump bumps it up and out, the third dumps it back down onto the mine cart stack, to recycle until an arbitrary number of carts are full; at which point the pumps would have nothing left to pump because water is no longer being magically created.

I will be building a setup to test this immediately.

If I drain the extra water slowly, say through a diagonal opening on the bottom level with another pump taking from  that hole, I should be able to fill all the carts and have that number of units of water stored away in temporary holding tank nearby.

In the next step, I'll have to empty these full carts into a cistern (or drain) and then use the created water in the temporary holding tank to restart the water creating process.

[Urist Da Vinci]

Quoting myself from a thread from last year:

...
Quantum Fluid Generators:

If a cart passes through a 7/7 fluid tile and leaves it as 6/7, then later dumps 2/7 fluid on top of that tile, you have created 1/7 fluid due to a rounding error or something. This could be mechanized to create magma generators based on carts driving in circles at high speeds. The design would have to prevent 1/7 fluid spots from evaporating.

If the cart instead leaves the tile as 5/7, then it will be refilled to 7/7 later, and you have net zero.

This could be used to make an above-ground structure (such as a floating fortress) have the ability to shoot magma from refilling storage tanks without having to build a pump stack. The "original" magma can be brought up by minecart.

So the concept is not completely unknown. You are the first person I have seen who is attempting to exploit the bug by building a fluid generator. I never did more than just stumble across the bug. Good luck and keep at it!

[PDF urist master]

quite dwarfy. i'm surprised that there are still so much we don't know about the current edition of DF when it came out over a year ago.

[Hans Lemurson]

Hmm...so when looking for a method of efficiently loading water into minecarts, you ended up with one that was so efficient, it was over-unity!

[flameaway]

Hmm...so when looking for a method of efficiently loading water into minecarts, you ended up with one that was so efficient, it was over-unity!

Seems so.

What a remarkably satisfying game this can be.

A toast to Toady and Three-toe.  Health to those who follow their dreams.

[Baffler]

This is relevant to my interests.
(PTW)

[PDF urist master]

this could end up replacing magma pumpstacks. it's fairly simple to build and generates infinite magma.

[flameaway]

Yup and water pump-stacks too.

Right now I'm trying to figure out an efficient way to recycle fluid from a two tile deep column.  I can build a fluid generator with four pumps, and the output is strictly dependent upon how many carts I use.  35 carts in this loader will fill a 10x10 room with fluid, in one pass through the loader.  NO, they will not.  They will fill a 1x7 room; I have no idea what I was thinking. 

That's from one two tile deep column of fluid.

Making it small, recyclable and free of micromanagement is the difficulty at this point.

[PDF urist master]

to make a magma generator viable would also mean having it closer to the surface. which would require either set up or volcanoes.

[WanderingKid]

to make a magma generator viable would also mean having it closer to the surface. which would require either set up or volcanoes.

It's not hard to get a few squares of magma to the surface with trackless cart hauling.  It's getting it up there in any kind of volume that'll kill your dorfpower.

[PDF urist master]

even better then! dwarven !!SCIENCE!! is improving as we speak!

I really want pictures of the fluid generator.

[WanderingKid]

I suppose I should explain the method briefly for those curious.

Setup a magma lifter.  Stuff a roller in a hole and have it fill with magma after powering it.  Have it ramp your minecart in/out on a two stop route.  Set a trackstop next to the hole you want to fill dumping into it.  Add that track stop as the third stop on the route.  Set the second stop to guide (not into the magma pipe) always.  Cart will be dorf-carried to the track stop on the third stop, dumped into hole.  If you need more magma, set the third stop to guide back to stop 1.

Repeat until hole is full.  2/7 magma does not evaporate quickly enough to matter to a 400+ step walk using this method, if ever.

[flameaway]

I've built four so far and have been unhappy with them for various reasons. I'm building one now that I think will work correctly.  I'll try and have pics tomorrow.

[flameaway]

More information on how the carts actually load.

If a 2 tile deep hole is created and filled so that both tiles are at 7/7, when a mine cart is dropped into the holed it loads twice on successive completely the tick after it hits the bottom.

The top hole now has 5/7.  Oddly enough the dwarves will not fill it to 7/7 from the level of the 6/7 tile.  However, they will go ahead an fill that hole from one z-level up.  For some reason once the level hits 6/7 the dwarves consider the column full.  A mine cart pushed into the hole now will create a quantum stockpile but the top cart will not load if it is pushed in.  The cart will load if a single slice of water is dropped into the pit. 

Water was just created.

I've also created a machine that salvages all the water.  However it does not cycle successfully yet.  I'll see if I can figure out how to post a couple of movies of the machine in action on a file server.

To date the extra slice of water per cart in the quantum stockpile is holding up.  The most carts I've tried through this machine is 11 and I ended up with 11 slices of water.
 
I'm still testing the loading possibilities and at this point I will continue with that rather than working on perfecting a design.

***edit  My well has become contaminated.  I'm wondering if I'm creating pure water that is immediately becoming fouled; or if the game simply creates a copy of the fluid's characteristics.  Do contaminated fluids become less concentrated by adding more water; or does all water that comes in contact with a contaminate instantly become contaminated?