Factories and Tier Installers

A factory is a Mekanism machine that does the job of several copies of one machine inside a single block. A Basic factory runs 3 items at once, and that goes up to 5, 7 and then 9 at the Advanced, Elite and Ultimate tiers. You’ll make one by crafting a machine with a few parts around it, or by right-clicking a placed machine with a Basic Tier Installer.

Only nine machines are able to become factories, which are mostly the ones in the ore processing line. Each slot in a factory works at the same speed as the machine it came from, so an Ultimate factory is the same as nine machines side by side, and one set of upgrades will cover all nine of them.

Which Machines Have Factories

The name of a factory tells you what it does, and it isn’t always the name of the machine it’s made from. An Energized Smelter becomes a Smelting Factory and an Osmium Compressor becomes a Compressing Factory, so the table below matches each one up. Any machine that isn’t listed here will stay as a single machine.

Every Mekanism Factory Type

Every Mekanism Factory Type

Base Machine	Factory	Factory Type	What It Does	Shared Second Input
Energized Smelter	FactoryUltimate Smelting Factory	Factory TypeSmelting	What It DoesSmelts dusts and ores	Shared Second InputNone
Enrichment Chamber	FactoryUltimate Enriching Factory	Factory TypeEnriching	What It DoesOre blocks and raw ore to dust	Shared Second InputNone
Crusher	FactoryUltimate Crushing Factory	Factory TypeCrushing	What It DoesIngots and gems to dust, plants to Bio Fuel	Shared Second InputNone
Osmium Compressor	FactoryUltimate Compressing Factory	Factory TypeCompressing	What It DoesRefined Obsidian and Refined Glowstone Ingots	Shared Second InputOsmium
Combiner	FactoryUltimate Combining Factory	Factory TypeCombining	What It DoesRaw ore back into ore blocks	Shared Second InputCobblestone
Purification Chamber	FactoryUltimate Purifying Factory	Factory TypePurifying	What It DoesOres to Clumps	Shared Second InputOxygen
Chemical Injection Chamber	FactoryUltimate Injecting Factory	Factory TypeInjecting	What It DoesOres to Shards	Shared Second InputHydrogen Chloride
Metallurgic Infuser	FactoryUltimate Infusing Factory	Factory TypeInfusing	What It DoesAlloys, Steel and circuits	Shared Second InputAn infusing material
Precision Sawmill	FactoryUltimate Sawing Factory	Factory TypeSawing	What It DoesLogs to Planks, with Sawdust	Shared Second InputNone

Each type comes in four tiers, Basic, Advanced, Elite and Ultimate, which makes 36 factory blocks in all. The factory shown is the Ultimate one.

The five factories with a second input only have one slot or tank for it, which every process shares. So an Infusing Factory making Steel draws all of its Carbon from one tank, and a Purifying Factory needs just one Oxygen line going in, however many slots it has.

Factory Tiers

Each tier adds two more slots, and every slot takes the same 10 seconds per item that the base machine does before any upgrades. The power draw is counted per slot that’s working, so a Smelting Factory uses 20 FE/t (50 J/t) for each item that’s cooking, and nothing for the slots that are empty.

A factory takes the same upgrades as the machine it was made from, and they apply to every slot at once. With 8 Speed Upgrades an Ultimate Smelting Factory will smelt 9 items a second, although it’ll draw up to 18,000 FE/t doing it, or 1,800 FE/t if you add 8 Energy Upgrades as well.

Turn On Auto-Sort

A factory has an Auto-sort button on its screen, and it’s switched off when the factory is first placed. Without it, a pipe or a Hopper will only ever fill the first slot, so the factory works one item at a time like the machine it replaced. Once it’s on, the factory will spread whatever arrives evenly across all of its slots.

The side settings on a factory are the same ones the base machine had, with the right side as the output to begin with. A factory also takes Speed, Energy and Muffling Upgrades in the same Upgrades tab that the machine had, so nothing about setting one up will be new to you.

Crafting a Factory

Every factory recipe has the same shape, with the machine or the factory below it in the middle, a Control Circuit above and below it, a metal on each side and four pieces of alloy in the corners. For a Basic factory those corners are plain Redstone Dust, as there’s no alloy for the first tier.

You can’t skip a tier, as each recipe asks for the factory from the tier below it. That means an Ultimate factory costs all four rows of that table added together, on top of the machine you started with, which comes to 12 alloys, 8 circuits and 2 Diamonds.

Basic Smelting Factory

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Advanced Smelting Factory

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Elite Smelting Factory

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Ultimate Smelting Factory

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The other eight types are crafted the same way, with only the machine in the middle changing. Whatever was inside that machine is carried over into the factory, so there’s no need to empty it out before you put it in the Crafting Table.

Tier Installers

A Tier Installer does the same upgrade without you having to break anything. It’s crafted with the same corners, circuits and sides as the factory for that tier, but with any Planks in the middle, and right-clicking a placed machine with it will swap the block for the next tier up.

Basic Tier Installer

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Advanced Tier Installer

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Elite Tier Installer

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Ultimate Tier Installer

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The machine keeps the way it’s facing, everything it’s holding, its energy, its upgrades and its side settings, and one installer is used up. Each installer only works on the tier directly below it, so a Basic factory won’t take an Ultimate Tier Installer, and a plain machine will need all four of them in order.

What Else They Upgrade

Installers aren’t only for factories, as they’ll also move a Bin, an Energy Cube, a Fluid Tank or a Chemical Tank up a tier while it’s full. Those four start out at Basic, so the Basic Tier Installer does nothing to them, and you’ll begin with the Advanced Tier Installer.

Cables, pipes and transporters don’t use installers, as you upgrade those by right-clicking them with an alloy instead, which the cables page covers. Induction Cells and QIO Drives can’t be upgraded in place at all, so those have to be crafted into the next tier.

Installer or Crafting Table

An installer costs the same parts as the crafting recipe does, plus one Plank, so there’s nothing saved on materials. What it saves is the work of pulling a machine out of a line of pipes and setting it up again, which matters most once a factory is part of an ore processing line. That’s where most players will use their first factories, so it’s the page to read next.

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