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Original Post:
I had the sudden urge to invent something again, and this time I wanted to create the fastest physically possible repeater. And I did it!
A repeater so insanely fast, a door can open and close five times before a dwarf walks a single step! The principle behind it is very simple, but the construction of such a repeater is mindbogglingly difficult. The design described here uses about 1700 mechanisms! Also, the order of building is very important, and this order is such that you just cannot designate it all at once, but have to build the units one by one.
Theory as follows: If a pressure plate sends an OPEN signal to a door, the door opens. If the pressure plate sends a CLOSE signal, the door closes. But do these signals necessarily have to come from the same repeater?
If you have three 100-tick repeaters, you can attach them to the same door, and if you manage to kickstart them correctly, then you could get the following order of events:
Time --->
Repeater 1 ---O--C--O--C--O--C--O--C
Repeater 2 -----O--C--O--C--O--C--O-
Repeater 3 -------O--C--O--C--O--C--
What the door sees ---O-OCOCOCOCOCOCOCOCOCOC
So this door opens and closes three times every 100 ticks.
If you manage to combine 50 100-tick repeaters in perfect unison, then the door gets a signal EVERY SINGLE TICK!
There are two major difficulties here:
--- First, how can you ensure that no two repeaters fire at the same time?
The answer is pretty simple: Fire them up mechanically with a 2-tick delay between consecutive starts. A method for this will be shown later.
---Second, how can you ensure that the OPEN signal always fires at the same time?
This poses a greater problem, as most repeaters use water falling onto a pressure plate. The CLOSE signals strictly adhere to the 100-tick period because they are always triggered by water instantly getting sucked from a pressure plate, but then the water is higher up, and in some point in time, has to fall down. This downfall is not immediately, and also not always at the same time. The solution is simple, albeit exploity: There is a bug that allows water to behave strangely in a U-tube:
Side view:
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There has to be absolutely NO FLOW in this setup. If the pump is inactive and you channel away the floor above the underground water, the water won't flow out to the left, because the water above hole level has no flow.
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Now if you start the pump, the water coming out of the pump will "teleport" out of the hole in the left, without creating flow on the right. So the column of water stays there and the pumped water is instantly transported downwards, while staying measurable and reusable.
So how can this be implemented, you say?
Here is a design in ascending z-level order (Levels 0 to 5), designed for horizontal repetition (!).
A red outline around a figure indicates a channel, the brown outlines on Level 1 are open doors.
How to build this correctly:
Preparations: Have enough water. Build three levers somewhere, name them X, Y and Z. Pull X.
How to build one cell:
First, dig out the water teleporting column. Channel out the northeastern channel (it's easier if you use up ramps and just let one dwarf stay in there and channel the rock away under his feet). Dig out the shaft on Level 0 without breaking the ceiling at the southern end. Optionally, you may get your dwarf out of there. Now build the green(!) screw pumps in ascending(!) order and completely (7/7 up to Level 5) fill out the teleport column. Seal it off completely(!), so that no water can enter or escape. Only now you may channel into the southern end of the teleport column. Next, build the two open doors at Level 1 and connect them to X. Pull X twice, so that all the doors connected to X will open and your dwarves will be able to build the two doors in the next cell. Now build the brown, cyan, magenta and green gear assemblies, not(!) the yellow and gray ones. Now build the gray assemblies on Level 2 and 3 in this order, then the vertical axles, then all other gray assemblies, then the horizontal axles and finally the yellow gear assembly. Connect the brown assembly to Y.
Now build the pressure plates. All of them shall trigger on 4/7 - 7/7 water. Connect every plate to the gear assembly of its color, then connect the brown assembly to the previous cell's (!) magenta pressure plate. If you are working on the first cell, connect the brown assembly to Z instead.
Finally, build the cyan screw pump.
Repeat this process another exactly 49 times. Finally, build the thing you want to automash. Connect all green, cyan and magenta pressure plates to it.
Now seal all the cells off so that the only free tiles remaining are exactly the non-black tiles shown in the diagram above. Pull Y. Completely flood the southern passage. Connect the power line to a power source that is VERY sure never to have not enough power. Pull X. Pull Z.
Finally, reach down to your keyboard and pick up your lower jaw again.
If you ask politely, I may explain all the construction steps you don't understand.
Also, the first to build a working version of this gets an Internet.