Barrel Grinder
| Barrel Grinder | ||||||||||||||
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| Compound | ||||||||||||||
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| 11 x 20 | ||||||||||||||
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Overview
A Barrel Grinder is a building used to grind all metals into powder. The grinding process takes time and Endurance, and is usually done by a group.
Once started, the Barrel Grinder begins turning. It must be rewound regularly (every 15–20 seconds, roughly) or it will stop turning, requiring a repair cost of 1-4 leather and 4 oil to restart.
Sources
This building becomes available after you have learned the Mortar Construction tech at a University of Art and Music.
Cost
- 120 Bearings
? - 3200 Boards
? - 20 Steel Cable
? - 600 Leather
? - 4000 Oil
? - 1000 Small Quartz
?
Built inside a compound.
Use
The grinder can be loaded with up to 100 of any metal.
The grinder must be repaired before starting. This requires 4 leather and 4 oil. You then wind the spring and it will grind for 20 secs. If you or someone else winds again in this time period, the timer resets to 20 secs. If the 20-second window is missed, the grinder breaks and must be repaired again before winding can resume. Additional metal can be added to the grinder while it is grinding.
Since winding has an Endurance timer of 120 secs, you need a team, good food and a method to synchronize team members. Endurance of +21 should allow 2 people to wind every 15 seconds. Endurance of +36 allows solo grinding.
10 Silver Powder or 10 Aluminum Powder is produced from 1 of each respective metal every 15 seconds and can be used as a timer if your food permits. Most other known metals may also be ground into powder in the exact same manner and ratios of product - Lead and Cobalt cannot be ground.
Ecological Impact
Barrel Grinders produce Heavy Metals when used - as with all Eco effects, whether you see the impact from use is dependent on RNG, but allowing the Barrel Grinder to break between each restart reliably produces Heavy Metals when grinding, at a minimum, Silver. Other metals likely follow suit - Aluminum is almost certain to, from other reports, and the others I don't need ground in quantity so not motivated to check.
Expert tip
From earlier tales: Because a message in a chat bubble remains on screen for 15 teppy seconds, this is the ideal way to time your 'wind' actions. Working with 3 people, with just 9 End I was able to run a grinder indefinitely using this (plus about 2 seconds real time) as our guide. ~Juspar