PneumaticCraft: Repressurized is a Minecraft tech mod that runs everything on compressed air instead of electricity. Every machine stores air and shows it as pressure in bar, and keeping that pressure in the right range is the main thing you’ll be doing, as too little and a machine stops, too much and it can explode.
It starts simple, with blowing up Iron with TNT and building a Pressure Chamber, and it goes a long way from there, through heat, an oil Refinery, circuit boards, programmable Drones and a suit of Pneumatic Armor you can fly with. This guide goes through it in the order you’ll actually build things, with the recipes and the mistakes that cost people their machines.
Getting Started
PneumaticCraft doesn’t add any ores, so everything starts from Iron and Stone. You’ll want roughly a stack of each before you begin, and a bit of TNT, as the very first item in the mod is made by blowing Iron up rather than crafting it.
Blow up some Iron
Your first Compressed Iron
Throw your 
Iron Ingots on the ground and set off an explosion next to them, and TNT is the easiest way. The ingots that survive turn into 
Compressed Iron Ingots, but you’ll lose about a fifth of them in the blast, so it’s worth doing a stack at once and standing well back while it goes off.
Make tubes and a compressor
Somewhere for the air to come from
Use the Compressed Iron to make some 
Pressure Tubes, which carry air between machines, and a compressor to fill them. A 
Manual Compressor works by holding right-click on it, which costs you hunger, and an 
Air Compressor burns any fuel a Furnace would, so that’s the one to get running as soon as you can.
Build a Pressure Chamber
The mod’s first real machine
The Pressure Chamber is a hollow multiblock made from 
Reinforced Stone, and it’s used to press items into other items. Once it’s built, it makes Compressed Iron without any losses, so you can stop blowing things up, and most of the mod’s components come out of it later on as well.
Get a Charging Station and a Wrench
For tools and upgrades
A 
Charging Station fills tools and armor with air and lets you fit upgrades to them, and a 
Pneumatic Wrench rotates blocks, opens and closes tube sides and picks machines up without losing what’s in them. From here the mod unlocks more of its in-game manual as you earn its Advancements, which is a handy way to see what’s next.
How Pressure Works
Every machine and tube has a volume, and the air inside it gives it a pressure in bar. Air always flows from higher pressure to lower pressure, so connecting a compressor to a big machine slowly fills the machine, and any tube or machine side left open to the world will leak air out with a loud hiss and a stream of particles.
Machines use up air when they work, not pressure, and pressure is just how full they are. Many machines need a minimum pressure before they’ll start, and all of them have a danger level shown as the red part of the gauge in their screen. Go into the red and the machine can explode, and exactly when it goes isn’t predictable.
| Tier | Safe Up To | Tube |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | 5 bar | Pressure Tube |
| Tier 1.5 | 10 bar | Reinforced Pressure Tube |
| Tier 2 | 20 bar | Advanced Pressure Tube |
Most early machines are Tier 1 and happy up to 5 bar, and the Advanced machines go up to 20. The easy way to stop explosions is a 
Security Upgrade in the machine, as it vents air out of the top of the machine once it passes the danger level instead of letting it blow, which does waste some air but saves the block.
A Pressure Gauge Module on a tube, or a 
Manometer, will tell you exactly what the pressure is at that point. 
Volume Upgrades increase how much air a machine holds, so it drops pressure more slowly when it’s working, and they’re one of the simplest ways to smooth out a network that keeps dipping.
Compressors
Compressors are where all of your air comes from, and there are several of them for different stages of the game. You’ll usually start on the Air Compressor and move to liquid fuel once you have a Refinery, though each type has its own trick that can make it worth keeping around later.
Manual and Air Compressor
The Manual Compressor is only there to get you started, as it’s pumped by hand, and each pump gets slower as the pressure rises. The Air Compressor is the real first compressor, and it burns Coal, Charcoal, Wood or anything else a Furnace will take, which makes it easy to feed from the start.
It won’t take Lava Buckets or any other liquid fuel, which catches people out. Putting Speed Upgrades in it makes it produce air faster but it also burns fuel faster, and a Security Upgrade is the thing to add first, as a compressor left running into a closed network will keep pushing until something gives.
Liquid Compressor
The 
Liquid Compressor burns liquid fuels instead, and that includes Lava as well as the fuels you’ll make in the Refinery later. Lighter fuels burn better, and the compressor’s own screen has an Available Fuels tab that lists everything it’ll take and how good each one is.
It’s the compressor most bases end up running, as it can be fed from tanks and pipes rather than by hand. A single Lava pump or a tank of Diesel will keep one running for a long time, which frees you up from topping up Coal every few minutes.
Advanced, Thermal and Solar Compressors
The 
Advanced Air Compressor is Tier 2, safe up to 20 bar, and it makes five times the air of the basic one, but it heats up as it runs and slows down as it gets hotter until it stops completely. Put a 
Heat Sink or two on it to keep it cool, and it’ll hold its speed.
The Thermal Compressor makes air from a temperature difference between opposite sides, like Lava on one side and Packed Ice on the other. The Solar Compressor runs on sunlight but needs its heat managed, as it works best around 350°C and breaks down if it goes over 425°C.
Pressure Chamber
The Pressure Chamber is the most searched-for part of the mod, and for good reason, as nearly everything in PneumaticCraft goes through it at some point. It’s a hollow cube that you fill with air and load with items, and the pressure turns them into something else.
How to Build a Pressure Chamber
The chamber can be a hollow 3x3x3, 4x4x4 or 5x5x5 cube. The edges and corners have to be 
Pressure Chamber Walls or 
Pressure Chamber Glass, and each face can be Walls, Glass, a 
Pressure Chamber Valve or a 
Pressure Chamber Interface, so you’re free to put glass wherever you’d like to see inside.
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2You need at least one Valve, which is where the air goes in, so run a tube from your compressor into it. It’s best to add two Interfaces as well, one with its blue side facing out to put items in and one with its orange side facing out to take them out, as that lets hoppers and pipes run the whole thing for you.
Pressure Chamber Recipes
Each recipe needs a certain pressure, and the chamber crafts as soon as it reaches it with the right items inside. Items have to be piped into the input Interface with a hopper or a pipe, and the results come back out of the output Interface once the pressure’s high enough.
| Input | Pressure | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Iron Ingot | 2 bar | Compressed Iron Ingot |
| Block of Iron | 2 bar | Block of Compressed Iron |
| 8 Blocks of Coal | 4 bar | Diamond |
| Milk Bucket + 4 Green Dye | 1 bar | 4 Slime Balls |
| 2 Redstone Torches + 3 Wiring + Plastic | 1.5 bar | 3 Empty PCBs |
| Item + Enchanted Book | 2 bar | Enchanted item |
| Enchanted item + Book | -0.75 bar | Enchanted Book |
Compress Blocks of Iron rather than Iron Ingots whenever you can, as the Interface uses air for every item it moves, so one block costs a ninth of the air of nine ingots. The Coal to 
Diamond recipe needs 4 bar, which is close to the chamber’s 5 bar limit, so it’s worth putting a Security Upgrade in the Valve before you try it.
Enchanting and Disenchanting
Putting an item and an Enchanted Book in the chamber at 2 bar moves every enchantment that fits from the book onto the item, and you get the plain Book back. That’s handy because it skips the Anvil, so there’s no level cost and nothing gets too expensive to work on.
Going the other way needs a vacuum, which is negative pressure, so you’ll need a 
Vacuum Pump. At -0.75 bar, an enchanted item and a normal Book will take one random enchantment off the item and put it on a new Enchanted Book, which is a good way of pulling a single enchantment off gear you don’t want.
Heat, the Vortex Tube and the Heat Frame
PneumaticCraft has its own heat system, and heat moves from hot blocks to cold ones, faster the bigger the difference. Several machines make heat that has to be got rid of, and others, like the Refinery, need heat to run, so you’ll end up moving heat around almost as much as air.
Vortex Tube
The 
Vortex Tube turns air pressure straight into heat and cold, heating one end and cooling the other, and the hot end faces you when you place it. More pressure gives a bigger difference but uses more air, and it’s much more efficient if you put a Heat Sink on the end you’re not using so it doesn’t fight the other side.
Any heat source like this placed against a vanilla Furnace, Blast Furnace or Smoker will fuel it once it’s past 100°C, so a Vortex Tube or the side of a hot compressor can run your furnaces with no Coal at all. The hotter it gets, the faster they smelt.
How to Use a Heat Frame
The 
Heat Frame goes on any inventory, like a Chest, and it heats or cools what’s inside. Heat it and it smelts the items in that inventory, up to an item a second, and cool it and it freezes things instead, as long as there’s room for the result to go.
To freeze fluids, the fluid has to be in a bucket or tank item inside the inventory, not in a placed tank. Water turns into Ice, Lava into Obsidian and Molten Plastic into Plastic Sheets, and the colder you get the Heat Frame the better the bonus output, so a Vortex Tube’s cold end pointed at it works well.
Oil, the Refinery and Plastic
Crude Oil is the only thing PneumaticCraft adds to world generation, and it spawns in lakes, a few on the surface but far more of them deep underground. You’ll need it for fuel, for Plastic and for Lubricant, so it’s a big step in the mid game.
How to Find Crude Oil
The 
Seismic Sensor doesn’t need any air, and right-clicking a block with it tells you if there’s Oil somewhere directly below, how deep it is and roughly how much there is. Once it finds some, that spot is where you put a 
Gas Lift to pump it up.
The Gas Lift pushes Drill Pipes down until it reaches a fluid and then pumps it, and you have to give it the Drill Pipes. It breaks any block in its way without dropping anything, and it needs more pressure the deeper it pumps, so a 
Small Tank, which keeps its contents when you break it, is an easy way to carry Oil home early on.
Refinery
The Refinery is a 
Refinery Controller with two to four 
Refinery Outputs stacked on it, and it needs heat, starting to work at 100°C and running faster the hotter it gets. The more Outputs you stack, the more types of fuel it splits the Oil into, with the lightest going to the top.
| Outputs | From 10 mB of Oil |
|---|---|
| 2 | LPG 2, Diesel 4 |
| 3 | LPG 2, Kerosene 3, Diesel 2 |
| 4 | LPG 2, Gasoline 3, Kerosene 3, Diesel 2 |
It loses heat quickly as it has a lot of faces open to the air, so cover every face you can with 
Thermal Lagging, slabs or trapdoors. A Vortex Tube is the usual heat source, or Lava or Magma next to it, though those get drained over time.
How to Make Plastic and Lubricant
Both come out of the 
Thermopneumatic Processing Plant, which needs heat. LPG and a piece of Coal make Molten Plastic, and pouring that into the world turns it into a 
Plastic Sheet after a moment, which a 
Liquid Hopper with a Dispenser Upgrade can do for you on its own.
Diesel and a piece of Redstone make Lubricant, which is what 
Speed Upgrades are crafted with, so you’ll want a steady supply of it. The Plant can also crack heavier fuels into lighter ones with heat and pressure, Diesel into Kerosene and so on down, at about 80% of what you put in.
Printed Circuit Boards and the Assembly Line
Most of the late game machines need 
Printed Circuit Boards, and making them takes a few steps. It starts in the Pressure Chamber with an 
Empty PCB, which is made from Redstone Torches, wiring and Plastic, and from there you have two ways to finish it off.
UV Light Box and Etching Tank
The first way is chemical. A 
UV Light Box exposes the Empty PCB, which takes up to ten minutes for a guaranteed result, and then an 
Etching Tank full of Etching Acid turns it into an Unassembled PCB. Add 
Capacitors and 
Transistors and you have the finished board.
The UV Light Box needs a 
PCB Blueprint to craft, and you can’t make one, you have to trade for it. It costs 8 Emeralds on the Amadron Tablet, and Mechanic villagers can sell it too, so it’s worth finding one or saving up a few Emeralds before you get to this point.
Assembly System
The Assembly System, often called the assembly line, is a set of machines placed next to each other: an 
Assembly Controller, an 
Assembly Platform, two 
Assembly IO Units, an 
Assembly Drill and an 
Assembly Laser. Only the Controller needs air, and it powers the rest of them from there.
Put the Platform in the middle, as the Drill and Laser can’t reach diagonally and have to touch it, while the IO Units can. One IO Unit imports and one exports, blue for import and orange for export. With the Laser program in the Controller, it turns Empty PCBs straight into Unassembled ones, with no UV or acid involved.
Charging Station and Upgrades
The Charging Station fills items with air by balancing its pressure with theirs, so it needs to be well pressurized to charge them fully. Most tools and armor hold up to 10 bar, and they never explode from overcharging, they just stop taking air once they’re full.
Put a Dispenser Upgrade in it and it becomes a Charge Pad, which charges items lying on top, the player standing on it and any Drone hovering above. It’s also where you fit upgrades to tools and armor, by putting the item in and clicking the arrow above its slot.
Drones and Amadron
Drones are small flying robots that carry out whatever you program them to do, from farming and mining to moving items around. They’re programmed in a 
Programmer with Puzzle Pieces that snap together into a program, so they take a bit of learning, but they can automate almost anything.
Drone Basics
A Drone needs air to fly, and when it runs low it’ll go looking for a Charging Station with a Dispenser Upgrade and at least 1 bar within 80 blocks. If it runs out completely it drops to the ground and can take fall damage, so a Charge Pad near where it works is well worth having.
There are also three Drones that need no programming at all. A 
Harvesting Drone farms crops and trees nearby, a 
Collector Drone picks up items into the inventory it’s placed on, and a 
Guard Drone takes a weapon from its inventory and attacks hostile mobs around it.
Amadron Tablet
The 
Amadron Tablet is an online shop, and you bind it to a Chest or tank that it uses for payment and delivery. Order something and one Drone flies in to collect what you’re paying with, then another brings your order, which is how you’ll get the PCB Blueprint and Assembly Programs.
Elevator
The Elevator carries players, mobs and items straight up and down. It’s made from 
Elevator Bases at the bottom with 
Elevator Frames above them, and it can go as high as the number of Frames, or six blocks for each Base stacked up, whichever is lower.
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You can control it with redstone, where signal strength sets the height, or put 
Elevator Callers beside the Frames on each floor and click them to call it up or down. Up to four Charging Upgrades in the Base get some air back on the way down, at the cost of a slower ride.
Pneumatic Armor
Pneumatic Armor starts out barely better than Iron, but it’s built to be upgraded. Two Armor Upgrades make a piece as good as Diamond, and four make it better, and every piece is charged and upgraded in the Charging Station, where you’ll also see what each upgrade does.
The 
Pneumatic Helmet can track mobs and blocks through walls and lead you back to the surface, the 
Pneumatic Chestplate can protect you from fire and pull in items, and the 
Pneumatic Leggings make you run faster and jump higher. The 
Pneumatic Boots stop fall damage and, with a 
Jet Boots Upgrade, let you fly.
Jet Boots use a lot of air, so add Volume Upgrades to the boots and Charging Upgrades to the Chestplate, which lets it top up your other pieces. Item Life Upgrades repair the armor over time, and it can also be fixed in an Anvil with Compressed Iron Ingots.
Tips
Put a Security Upgrade in every compressor and anything else that fills from one, and do it before you go to bed or leave the area. A single compressor running into a closed tube will keep building pressure until something in the line explodes, and a Security Upgrade costs far less than rebuilding a Refinery.
Check your tubes for leaks whenever pressure won’t build. An open tube end or a machine side that isn’t connected leaks constantly, so listen for the hissing, and close any unused tube sides with the Pneumatic Wrench so the air goes where you want it.
Compress Iron in blocks, not ingots, once your chamber is running. You get the same Compressed Iron for a ninth of the air spent moving items through the Interfaces, which matters a lot when you’re still running on an Air Compressor and Coal.
Insulate anything that uses heat. The Refinery in particular leaks heat out of every open face, and covering it with Thermal Lagging or even slabs and trapdoors makes it work far faster for the same Vortex Tube or Lava, so it’s the cheapest speed boost in the mod.
FAQ
Build a hollow 3x3x3, 4x4x4 or 5x5x5 cube with Pressure Chamber Walls or Glass on the edges and corners, and Walls, Glass, Valves or Interfaces on the faces. You need at least one Pressure Chamber Valve to pipe air in, and two Interfaces are best, one facing in and one out, so items can be fed in and taken out.
Place the Heat Frame on an inventory like a Chest, then heat or cool it with something next to it, like a Vortex Tube. Heated, it smelts the items in that inventory, and cooled, it freezes them, turning a Water Bucket into Ice or Molten Plastic into Plastic Sheets, with better results the colder it gets.
Refine Crude Oil in a Refinery, then use a Thermopneumatic Processing Plant with heat. LPG and Coal make Molten Plastic, which becomes Plastic Sheets when poured into the world, and Diesel and Redstone make Lubricant, which you need to craft Speed Upgrades.
Add more compressors or better ones, like the Liquid Compressor or a cooled Advanced Air Compressor, and fix any leaks, as open tube ends waste a lot of air. Speed Upgrades make compressors faster, and Volume Upgrades help machines hold pressure, but keep a Security Upgrade in so nothing explodes.
