This post is about a simple, reliable and material-cheap way of bringing up a few globs of magma in the early game (first year) to power surface-level magma-forges/smelters/glass-furnaces.
If you want the volume to fill a moat or weaponise it, this is not for you.
It's driven by impulse ramps and wheelbarrows to avoid the labor cost of setting up tracks and waterwheels everywhere.
Anyway, here it is.
Z
In the bottom left there is a 2x1 stockpile to house one magma-safe minecart and one wheelbarrow (wood is fine, the minecarts should come in empty).
To its right is a NS ramp-track which is pointed into the 2x1 lava well.
To *that's* right is a track-stop set to take the empty magma-safe minecart from the stockpile and dump it left. The minecart will roll down the ramp into the lava well.
Above that is the 2x1 lava-well. It contains 2 EW ramp-tracks and 7/7 magma. It's important that it's 7/7, so the well should be *below* your source of magma so that when you take magma out of it it will near-instantly refill thanks to downwards pressure. A diagonal kink should be placed in your magma input tunnel to make sure it doesn't overflow.
As the minecart falls into the magma-well (needs to come from a ramp and not straight from a track-stop otherwise magma-mist will occur - dangerous) it fills up with 2 globs of lava, leaving a 5/7 tile of lava. The 5/7 tile will try to fill in and cause oscillations inside the well for a few frames. During these few frames the minecart will be able to sneak past 6/7 lava and get out of the pit instead of hitting 7/7 lava and being trapped. It's pretty reliable and rarely gets stuck (if it does, that's what the lever is for but I'll come to that later).
The minecart might come out of either side of the magma-well, so on both sides there are stockpiles set to accept a full magma-safe minecart and give it to a stockpile on the surface (or wherever you want to cart the lava to). The target stockpile needs to have a magma-safe wheelbarrow in it. Wooden wheelbarrows, for example, will burn up en route. You can use dwarfs to haul it by hand safely but that's really slow.
That it for that level.
Z-1
Here we can see the magma source dropping in the top left, where the staircase is.
Underneath that is a kink to equalise the magma pressure.
Then the 2x1 minecart ramps.
Underneath that is a 2x1 raised bridge (it looks like two chairs). If a minecart gets stuck in the well, flipping the switch on Z-level will drop the bridge and partially drain the well. It will also slosh around the minecart and give it enough energy to spit it back out on Z-level. The bridge should be left up during normal operation so that there is less "magma-reserve" on the Z-1 level and the magma the minecart takes has more of a chance to slosh around. It's rare that this gets used but it's a simple guaranteed recovery method for a stuck minecart.
Surface
On the right is the 2x1 stockpile which has a magma-safe wheelbarrow in it.
To the left of that is a track-stop set to take from the stockpile and dump left.
To the left is another track-stop which the magma-filled minecart will land on. It will then dump left.
On the far left is the hole I'm filling with magma.
The empty minecart should now be sitting outside of any stockpiles, so the very first stockpile (down by the magma) which is set to "take from anywhere" will see it and a dwarf will be dispatched to take the minecart back downstairs. Make sure you don't have any other stockpiles fighting to take the minecart, there are more robust methods to complete the loop but this is the simplest early-game and it's easy to keep track of what's-what.
Fin.
Too easy, I set this thing up on almost all of my embarks ASAP. Usually within a year with an aquifer, within just a few months without. It only uses 4 magma-safe metal bars, so only ONE piece of ore is needed to bring with you on embark. All the rest is just wood and quarried rock (I bring some anyway just to be sure).
Uploading an example save if anyone wants to play with it. EDIT : Here it is :
http://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=10869
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Topic: A minimal minecart magma loader (Read 2577 times)