Mekanism has three machines for color, which work together as a small line. The 
Pigment Extractor pulls pigment out of dyes, flowers and colored blocks, the 
Pigment Mixer blends two pigments into a new one, and the 
Painting Machine uses a pigment to recolor a block or to make dye.
Pigments are chemicals, so they’ll need to be moved with Pressurized Tubes and stored in Chemical Tanks, the same as something like Hydrogen would be. The main reason you’d want to build the line is that a single flower will make 3 dyes this way, and a tall flower makes 6, whereas crafting them by hand only gives you 1 or 2.
How to Make It
All three of them share the same shape of recipe, which has a 
Steel Casing in the middle. The Pigment Extractor is the cheap one, as it only needs 
Flint on either side of the casing, and then a 
Basic Control Circuit above and below it with 
Redstone Dust in the corners.
3The Painting Machine is a step up from that, as it wants 
Infused Alloy in the corners, 
Advanced Control Circuits and 2 
Dye Base. The Pigment Mixer is the late one of the three, since it needs 
Reinforced Alloy, 
Elite Control Circuits and 2 
HDPE Rods, and HDPE is only available once you’ve got an Ethene line running.
Dye Base
Dye Base is a blank dye, and it’s crafted from 2 
Sawdust and a 
Clay Ball, which will give you 3 of them. The Sawdust comes from the 
Precision Sawmill, so you’ll want to have one of those running first. It’s used in the Painting Machine’s recipe, and it’s also the item that gets turned into dye later on.
How It Works
The Pigment Extractor takes one item at a time, and it needs 5 seconds for each of them at 80 FE/t (200 J/t). Its tank is able to hold 20 buckets of pigment, but it’ll only hold one color at once, so the tank has to be emptied before you’re able to put a different color in.
| Item | Pigment |
|---|---|
| Tall flower (Rose Bush, Peony, Lilac, Sunflower, Pitcher Plant) | 1,536 mB |
| Small flower or dye source (Poppy, Dandelion, Lapis Lazuli, Ink Sac, Bone Meal, Cocoa Beans, Cactus) | 768 mB |
| Dye | 256 mB |
| Candle | 224 mB |
| Wool | 192 mB |
| Carpet | 128 mB |
| Banner | 64 mB |
| Concrete Powder | 32 mB |
| Concrete, Terracotta | 24 mB |
| Stained Glass | 16 mB |
| Stained Glass Pane | 6 mB |
A dye is worth 256 mB, so a small flower is three dyes’ worth of pigment and a tall flower is six. The colored blocks will give you much less than that, and the item is used up when it’s extracted, so those rows are really only there for getting rid of blocks that you don’t want anymore.
Painting Machine
The Painting Machine holds 15 buckets of one pigment, and it takes 10 seconds for each item at 40 FE/t. It’s used to recolor Wool, Carpets, beds, Banners, candles, Concrete, Concrete Powder, 
Terracotta, 
Glass and 
Glass Panes, and it’ll take them from any color to any other, so you don’t have to craft them again.
Wool, beds, Banners and candles will cost you 256 mB each, which is a dye’s worth, whereas everything else on that list only costs 32 mB. If you put a Dye Base in instead, it’ll use 256 mB of pigment to make 1 dye of that color, and that’s how the flowers get turned into more dye than they’d normally give.
Pigment Mixer
The Pigment Mixer has two input tanks that hold a bucket each, with an output tank that’s twice the size, and it works a little every tick for 80 FE an operation. It follows the same rules as mixing dyes by hand, so whatever pigment goes in will always come out as the same total amount.
| Pigment | Pigment | Makes |
|---|---|---|
| Red | Yellow | 2 Orange |
| Red | White | 2 Pink |
| Blue | White | 2 Light Blue |
| Blue | Yellow | 2 Green |
| Blue | Green | 2 Cyan |
| Blue | Red | 2 Purple |
| Green | White | 2 Lime |
| Black | White | 2 Gray |
| Gray | White | 2 Light Gray |
| Purple | Pink | 2 Magenta |
| Light Blue | Red | 2 Magenta |
| Cyan | White | 2 Aqua |
| Light Blue | Lime | 2 Aqua |
| Aqua | Yellow | 2 Lime |
| Black | 4 Red | 5 Dark Red |
| Gray | 2 Red | 3 Dark Red |
Aqua and Dark Red are two extra colors that only exist as pigments, and the mixer is the only way you’re able to get them. None of the painting recipes in Mekanism itself will use those two though, so unless another mod in your pack asks for them, it’s the 16 normal colors that matter.
Upgrades and Automation
You’re able to put Speed, Energy and 
Muffling Upgrades in all three of these machines. On the extractor and the Painting Machine, a 
Speed Upgrade will shorten the time it takes for each item, whereas on the mixer each one doubles how much it blends in a tick, which is how the other chemical machines work as well.
The extractor pushes its pigment out of the right side by itself and the mixer out of its front, so a Pressurized Tube there is all they’ll need. Having a Chemical Tank for each color that you use is the easy way to keep them apart, as one tank or line of tubes is only able to carry a single pigment at a time.
The whole line is optional, and nothing else in Mekanism depends on it. If you’re here for the Sawdust side of Dye Base, the Precision Sawmill page has what every wooden item gives.
FAQ
It turns dyes, flowers and colored blocks into pigment, which is a chemical the Painting Machine uses. A dye gives 256 mB and a small flower gives 768 mB, so extracting a flower and painting Dye Base with it makes 3 dyes from one flower.
Put Dye Base in the item slot and pipe in a pigment, and each Dye Base uses 256 mB to become 1 dye of that color. Dye Base is crafted from 2 Sawdust and a Clay Ball, which gives 3.
It’s able to recolor Wool, Carpets, beds, Banners and candles, as well as Concrete, Terracotta and Glass, and it will change a block that’s already been dyed just as easily as a plain one. Wool, beds, Banners and candles cost a dye’s worth of pigment each, and the rest only cost 32 mB.
They’re two extra colors made in the Pigment Mixer, like Cyan with White for Aqua. Mekanism’s own painting recipes only use the 16 dye colors, so those two are there for other mods to use, and you might never need them.
