Tutorial:Crafter

This tutorial explains how to use a crafter.

The crafter is a block that allows for automatic crafting.

Crafters allow for automated crafting. It takes items from the top, bottom, and sides. If a crafter receives a redstone signal, the product drops out of the front of the crafter akin to a dropper. If no item can be crafted from the arrangement of items in the crafter, the crafter doesn't drop anything.

Comparators can emit a redstone signal when reading from a crafter. The signal strength is equal to the number of crafting slots that are either disabled or occupied by an item. This means that with a simple redstone circuit, the crafter can power itself.

Hoppers distribute items based on a crafter's empty slots. If one of the crafter's slots is empty, a hopper "pushes" an item from the hopper's first slot. If none of the crafter's slots are empty, a hopper will push items that match the items already in the crafter's slots.

Comments from creator:

"The composter on the [right] is filled completely, making the redstone dust a power level of 8. This design doesn't work for any item to craft with 3 or less items, for that I recommend a simple comparator with a redstone line."

Any half-filled container can be used instead of the composter (a decorated pot only needs 32 items).

The above design can also be inverted (with added barrel).

The double pulse from the observers may cause unexpected results with crafts like paper when a single ingredient (sugar cane) is also a valid crafting recipe (sugar). It will also not craft anything that uses a single item (eg logs into planks) due to an input hopper feeding items in too quickly.

The composter on the right should be filled so it gives a comparator signal of 8 (when bone meal has been produced). Any unused item slots in the crafter should be disabled so a comparator reading the crafter gives a signal strength of 9 when it is ready to craft.

This design will craft any item recipe requiring only a single type of item (e.g. blocks of bamboo from bamboo, melons from melon slices, or if you disable some crafter slots, clay blocks from clay balls.

This design is 4 blocks wide, 3 blocks deep and 2 blocks high. It uses comparators in subtract mode, and a partially-filled hopper, to set the required redstone signal.

When a crafter is "full", either with disabled slots or items, an adjacent comparator will output a redstone signal of 9.

The hopper on the left of the schematic feeds items into the crafter e.g. iron ingots.

The hopper at the top of the schematic must contain 15 of an item that stacks to 16, or 60 of an item that stacks to 64. The adjacent comparator will then output a redstone signal of 3. You can also use a composter filled with 3 layers of compost or any other redstone component that outputs a signal level of 3.

Note that the comparator on the bottom row of the "Top layer" schematic is in subtract mode.

Using subtract mode, the two comparators output a signal of 6, which is looped around, below the hopper, into a solid block below the crafter.

Therefore, whenever the crafter is filled, the signal level will reach 6, which is enough to power the crafter and it will craft the appropriate item. The feed hopper will then refill the crafter slots. The crafter will continue to craft the item until the feed level falls below what is required for the craft, and then it will stop.

This design activates the crafter every time the crafter slots are updated. It is therefore not suitable for many ingredients (e.g. iron ingots may craft into iron nuggets, heavy weighted pressure plates, etc.). Originally proposed for crafting dried kelp blocks.^{[citation needed]} The constant powering of the crafters also produces noise which may be undesirable.