Silent’s Mechanisms Mod: The Complete Beginner’s Guide

Silent’s Mechanisms is a Forge-compatible tech mod that keeps things approachable — no overwhelming complexity, just useful machines, smart ore processing, energy systems, and a satisfying plastic production chain. Whether you’re brand new to tech mods or just picking this one up for the first time, this complete guide walks you through everything the mod has to offer, step by step.

Ores Added by Silent’s Mechanisms

Silent’s Mechanisms adds a wide variety of new ores that generate naturally throughout your Minecraft world using standard ore-generation rules. The ores added include: copper, tin, silver, lead, nickel, platinum, zinc, bismuth, bauxite, and uranium. You’ll find these distributed across different biomes and depth levels, just like vanilla ores.

Drying Racks

One of the first craftable items worth making is the drying rack. It has two notable uses. The first is crafting a zombie lever — simply right-click rotten flesh onto the drying rack and wait 30 seconds. The rotten flesh will dry and convert into a zombie lever, which can be used as a functional lever in your builds. The mod also allows you to dry raw meats into jerky, giving you a convenient food preservation option.

Machines and Forge Energy

Silent’s Mechanisms adds a suite of machines that all run on Forge Energy (FE), making them compatible with most other tech mods you might already be using. Here’s a breakdown of each machine and how to get started with them.

Coal Generator

The coal generator is your starting point for power generation. Craft it using a stone machine frame (made with copper ingots) and place coal inside to begin generating energy. It supports redstone control, so you can automate when it turns on and off. It can also be toggled to export energy to adjacent machines.

Alloy Smelter

To craft wires, you’ll first need redstone alloy ingots, which are made in the alloy smelter. Combine iron ingots and redstone dust inside it to produce redstone alloy ingots. There are two tiers of alloy smelter: the basic alloy smelter and the upgraded alloy smelter. The upgraded version is crafted using tin and copper bricks along with more advanced materials, including a heating element (made from copper and redstone alloy) and an alloy machine frame (made with steel).

The upgraded alloy smelter features four upgrade slots that accept the following upgrade types:

Energy Efficiency — increases processing range but uses more energy

Output Chance — higher chance of secondary outputs at the cost of more energy

Processing Speed — significantly faster processing, but much higher energy use

All alloys used throughout the mod — including bismuth brass (made from bismuth ingots, zinc, and copper) — are crafted in either the basic or upgraded alloy smelter.

Wires and Energy Transfer

Once you have redstone alloy ingots, you can craft wires to connect your machines. Wires display a red dot when connected to a machine that can receive energy, indicating that energy will flow into that machine. To control the direction of energy flow, craft a wrench using refined iron (simply smelt iron ingots). Right-clicking a wire connection point with the wrench cycles through three modes: export energy into the machine, pull energy from the machine, or do nothing.

If you haven’t crafted wires yet, you can simply place the coal generator directly adjacent to any machine and it will transfer energy without wires.

Crusher

The crusher is one of the most important machines in the mod because it doubles your ore output. Place any ore into the crusher and it will produce two ore chunks (dust equivalents), which can each be smelted into one ingot — effectively doubling what you’d get from smelting raw ore directly. The crusher can produce up to four outputs per operation. For example, putting bismuth ore into the crusher yields two bismuth ore chunks plus a 10% chance of cobblestone as a bonus output. It can also process clay into four clay balls and handle various other recipes. There is a basic crusher and an upgraded crusher, with the upgraded version supporting the same upgrade slots as the alloy smelter.

Compressor

The compressor compresses materials into denser forms. Key recipes include:

Iron ingot → compressed iron ingot

Blaze powder → compressed blaze powder

16 blocks of coal → 1 diamond

Electric Furnace

The electric furnace functions like a standard Minecraft furnace but runs on Forge Energy instead of coal, making it faster and more automation-friendly.

Energy Generation

Lava Generator

In addition to the coal generator, Silent’s Mechanisms includes a lava generator. Place a lava bucket into the top input slot and it will pump lava into its internal tank and begin generating energy. Alternatively, you can pipe lava in using any fluid pipe from a compatible mod.

Diesel Generator

A diesel generator is also available and runs on diesel fuel, which you’ll produce later in the plastic crafting chain described below. Simply place diesel canisters into the generator to produce energy.

The Pump

The pump draws up whatever fluid is placed directly beneath it while powered. For example, placing water under the pump will cause it to automatically collect and store the water in its internal buffer. You can then use fluid pipes to route the output wherever needed. The range upgrade can be installed in the pump to extend how far it searches for fluid sources.

Battery Box

To store your generated energy, craft a battery box. By default it holds a set amount of Forge Energy, but you can increase its capacity by crafting batteries and inserting them directly into the battery box. For example, a single battery box starts at 3,000,000 FE storage, and adding another battery raises it to 3,500,000 FE. Use the wrench to set each face to input or output mode — green means pulling energy from the machine and red means pushing energy into the machine.

Making Plastic: Step-by-Step

Plastic is required to craft upgrade cases, which are needed for all machine upgrades. The plastic production chain involves several machines and fluids, but it’s straightforward once you understand the flow.

Step 1 — Collect Oil

Oil generates naturally in the world as large oil pools on the surface of your landscape. You can collect it using buckets or by using a pump. If you want to carry large quantities of oil without filling your inventory with individual buckets, craft empty canisters using four aluminum ingots (smelt bauxite to get aluminum ingots). Canisters are stackable fluid containers, so you can carry up to 64 at a time.

Step 2 — Refine Oil into Diesel and Ethylene

Place your oil buckets or canisters into the refinery. The refinery processes oil and outputs two products: diesel and ethylene, stored in two separate output tanks.

Step 3 — Mix Ethylene and Water into Polyethylene

Take your ethylene canisters and place them into the mixer. Also pump or bucket water into the mixer. Combining ethylene and water in the mixer produces polyethylene.

Step 4 — Solidify Polyethylene into Plastic Pellets

Feed your polyethylene into the solidifier. The solidifier converts fluids into solid items. Polyethylene becomes plastic pellets. Note that the solidifier has other uses too — for example, it can turn water into ice and lava into obsidian.

Step 5 — Craft Plastic Sheets

Finally, craft your plastic pellets into plastic sheets using the crafting table. You now have plastic, which is used in upgrade cases and other advanced recipes throughout the mod.

The Hand Pump

The hand pump is crafted using a battery and plastic sheets. It serves as a portable fluid collection tool. Right-click a fluid source block while holding the hand pump and any empty canisters in your inventory will automatically fill up with that fluid. You can also use it to charge a battery box by inserting it directly — the hand pump will transfer its stored charge into the box.

Summary

Silent’s Mechanisms is a well-rounded, beginner-friendly tech mod that adds meaningful progression without overwhelming complexity. Here’s a quick recap of everything it offers:

Ten new ores including copper, tin, silver, lead, nickel, platinum, zinc, bismuth, bauxite, and uranium

Drying racks for crafting zombie levers and drying meats into jerky

A full suite of Forge Energy machines: coal generator, lava generator, diesel generator, alloy smelter, crusher, compressor, electric furnace, and pump

A battery box with expandable storage via craftable batteries

A complete plastic production chain: oil → refinery → mixer → solidifier → plastic pellets → plastic sheets

Machine upgrade system using upgrade cases (requiring plastic sheets)

Canisters as stackable fluid containers and a hand pump for portable fluid collection

Ore doubling via the crusher for efficient resource processing

Whether you’re using Silent’s Mechanisms as a standalone mod or as part of a larger modpack, it’s a solid foundation for any Forge-based tech setup. Get your coal generator running first, work toward ore doubling with the crusher, and then push into plastic production to unlock the full upgrade system.

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