Crank Age Full Tutorial – Assembly Line Machines

Once you’ve progressed through the Primitive Age and obtained your steel, you’re ready to advance into the Crank Age. This age is a significant milestone in your modding journey, as it begins to automate many of the manual processes you’ve been doing slowly throughout the game. In this guide, we’ll walk you through setting up your first assembly line machines, starting with kinetic grinders and moving toward fully automated systems.

Getting Started with the Kinetic Grinder

The first machine you’ll want to craft is a Kinetic Grinder. To make this, you’ll need your manual grinder from the Primitive Age along with some steel. Once crafted, you’ll set up the machine as follows:

Place the Kinetic Grinder on the ground

Place the crank on the left-hand side

Place a chest on the right-hand side (note: sides matter in this mod)

Right-click the machine to open the GUI. You can insert items like a pure gold dipped blade into the grinder. To operate it, right-click the crank repeatedly to grind materials. For example, if you want to grind iron ingots, simply right-click the crank and watch the progress bar advance. The ground materials will automatically output into the chest on the right side.

One helpful feature: if you stop cranking mid-process, your progress won’t revert. The item you’ve started grinding will continue from where you left off, so you can take breaks without losing progress. As you might expect, this process is still quite manual, but the mod design ensures that automation increases gradually as you progress through the ages.

Grinding Steel Blocks for Steel Rods

You can crank steel blocks in the Kinetic Grinder to produce nine steel rods per block. Be aware that steel blocks take noticeably longer to grind than items like iron ingots, so patience is required.

Introduction to Fluid Tanks and the Kinetic Fluid Mixer

After you’ve produced steel rods, you can begin crafting tanks and the Kinetic Fluid Mixer, which is the automated version of the fluid bath. This machine dramatically improves your workflow.

You have two tank options:

Wooden Fluid Tank: Stores 6 buckets of liquid

Steel Fluid Tank: Stores 19 buckets of liquid

The Kinetic Fluid Mixer works by allowing you to input multiple items that need processing together. For instance, if you want to create pure iron, you simply place your silt and ground iron into the machine, right-click the crank, and the mixer will combine them. The resulting pure iron automatically outputs into the chest on the right side. This eliminates the tedious manual refilling of water and lava between batches.

Crafting Empowered Coal

At this stage, you should set up a Kinetic Fluid Mixer with lava in the tank below. Into this mixer, add your ground coal and redstone dust, then crank it to produce Empowered Coal. This is the first actual fuel you’ll use in the mod and is essential for further progression.

Hammers and Crafting Plates

As you progress, you’ll need plates and gears to craft more advanced machines. To create these items, you’ll need a hammer. At this stage of the Crank Age, you can craft either a Steel Hammer or a Titanium Hammer. Steel is the more practical choice, though titanium works as well.

📸 [ASSISTANT: TAKE SCREENSHOT AT SCREENSHOT AT TIMESTAMP 03:25]

Once you have a hammer, you can use it in your inventory to craft pure iron plates. Each pure iron ingot yields three pure iron plates when hammered.

The Gearbox – Your First Automated Crank

The Gearbox is a game-changing machine: it’s essentially an automatic crank that eliminates manual cranking. To use it, you must place it directly onto a machine (not on the ground). The gearbox displays an arrow showing the direction it will crank the attached machine.

To power the gearbox, right-click it to open the GUI and insert the Empowered Coal you crafted earlier into the fuel slot. The gearbox will then automatically crank the connected machine continuously.

Important note on gears: The gearbox accepts any gear type. While copper is the most efficient and easiest to obtain (being a standard Minecraft material), some recipes may require specific gear types. Always check the recipe to verify which gears are accepted.

The Simple Crank Charger and Crank-Powered Tools

The Simple Crank Charger doesn’t have its own GUI. Instead, you place a chest on top of it. Inside this chest, you can craft crank-powered tools such as pickaxes, axes, hammers, hoes, shovels, and broadswords.

The process works like this:

Set up a gearbox powered by Empowered Coal

Attach the Simple Crank Charger to the gearbox

Place a chest on top of the Simple Crank Charger

Craft your desired crank-powered tool

Place the uncompleted tool in the chest above

The gearbox will charge the tool automatically

For tool crafting, most recipes accept any gear type, but some—like the crank-powered pickaxe—require gold or titanium gears specifically. Copper gears work for machines like the gearbox that accept “all gears,” but always double-check the recipe tooltip for specific gear requirements.

Crafting the Crank-Powered Pickaxe

While all the crank-powered tools are useful, the Crank-Powered Pickaxe is essential for progression. This pickaxe is required to mine Black Granite, which is found in the Nether. Once you’ve obtained Black Granite, you’ll have access to the next age: the Electrical Age.

Summary

The Crank Age introduces automation in phases. You’ll start with manual cranking on the Kinetic Grinder, progress to the Kinetic Fluid Mixer for batch processing, and finally unlock truly automated machines using the Gearbox and Simple Crank Charger. By the end of this age, you’ll have the Crank-Powered Pickaxe needed to mine Black Granite and advance toward the Electrical Age. This gradual progression in automation is by design—Assembly Line Machines rewards patience and careful planning as you build your industrial empire.

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