Cleanroom

The Cleanroom is an HV tier multiblock that provides a sterile environment for highly precise and delicate crafts such as circuits. The efficiency rating of the Cleanroom slowly rises while the machine is active and determines the probability of voiding crafts--outputs are only guaranteed at 100% efficiency. Replace any Plascrete Blocks in the structure with machine hulls to route items, fluids, and/or power to the machines inside. The only singleblock machines that really need to be inside the Cleanroom are the precision laser engraver, cutting machine, circuit assembler, biolab, and occasionally the assembler. Everything else can stay outside. Multiblocks automatically fulfill the "Needs Cleanroom" requirement and almost replace the need for one.

The size of the Cleanroom can vary significantly and determines the number of machines that can fit inside. A larger Cleanroom is more expensive to build and takes longer to reach 100% efficiency. A 5x5x5 structure is all that is really necessary because only 3-4 singleblock machines ever require it. There is no restriction on any of the dimensions as long as they are between the minimum and maximum values. Multi-amp and laser energy hatches are not supported and there can only be ONE regular energy hatch which powers the Cleanroom itself, NOT the machines inside. Use the Multiblock Structure Hologram Projector to visualize/build the structure where the projector stack size determines the length, width, and height simultaneously.

There are several optional blocks for increasing the accessibility and visibility of the Cleanroom. They can replace any of the Plascrete Blocks in the structure as long as the Plascrete Blocks still make up at least 70% of the total structure, not including the controller or filter machine casings. An open reinforced door reduces the efficiency of the Cleanroom by 2% every 5 seconds. Ineffable and ethereal glass are transparent alternatives to tiered glass and allow the player to walk through them. Machine hulls can transport items, fluid, and 1A of power while cable diodes can transport up to 16A of power.

Structure

• Controller: Top center
• 20-1007 Plascrete Block
• 0-168 Filter Machine Casing
• 1 Energy Hatch: Any plascrete block
• 1 Maintenance Hatch: Any plascrete block
• 0+ EV+ Tiered Glass: Any plascrete block
• 0+ Ineffable/Ethereal Glass: Any plascrete block
• 0+ Reinforced Door: Any plascrete block
• 0+ Travel Anchor: Any plascrete block
• 0+ Elevator: Any plascrete block
• 0+ Machine Hull: Any plascrete block
• 0+ Cable Diode: Any plascrete block

The Cleanroom provides a sterile environment for highly precise and delicate crafts such as circuits. The sterility of the Cleanroom corresponds to its efficiency value which slowly increases up to 100% while the machine is active and almost instantaneously resets back to 0% while inactive. View the current efficiency in WAILA while hovering over the controller, or by using a Portable Scanner on the controller. The base time in seconds to reach the maximum 100% is ${\displaystyle {\displaystyle 225\times ({\text{Height}}-1)}}$ but that is halved for every energy tier above MV, as seen in the following table.

The power consumption of the Cleanroom is inversely proportional to its efficiency; the power consumption starts at 0.31A at 0% efficiency and ends at 0.03A at 100% efficiency. The only exception is the LV energy hatch which starts at 1.25A and ends at 0.125A.

The efficiency must be greater than 0% to run any recipes inside the Cleanroom and determines the probability of voiding crafts. Outputs are only guaranteed at 100% efficiency so it is highly recommended to avoid crafting anything inside the Cleanroom until then. Other than providing continuous power, the only thing that can reduce efficiency is maintenance issues. More specifically, there is a 10% penalty and therefore a 10% chance to void outputs per maintenance issue. See the automation section below for triggering an alarm whenever there is at least one maintenance issue present--alerting the player that they need to fix it as soon as possible.

Polluting machines cannot be run inside the Cleanroom. Attempting to do so immediately shuts down the Cleanroom and creates maintenance issues. Non-polluting generators such as Magic Energy Converters and Magic Energy Absorbers are safe to use.

Machine hulls are versatile blocks that can transfer items, fluids, and power in/out of the Cleanroom. They do not have an internal GUI to display their contents, but Holo Glasses can reveal what is currently stored inside. There is a single slot available for items and a 4,000L tank available for fluids. There is no auto-pull or auto-push so something else needs to insert and extract its contents (conduits, pipes, translocators, etc.).

Power is slightly different. Connect a GregTech cable to any side of the machine hull to "insert" EU. The output is the side with the dot and acts like a 1A dynamo hatch. Machines automatically pull EU from the machine hull while they are processing a recipe. There is no internal EU buffer so do not treat it like a battery buffer. Always check that the voltage in/out matches the voltage tier of the machine hull to avoid explosions.

There are only five singleblock machines, listed below, that ever require a Cleanroom and four of them have a multiblock equivalent unlocked later on that automatically fulfills the "Needs Cleanroom" requirement. Therefore, the Cleanroom is necessary at first for phosphorous doped wafers and higher tier circuits but quickly becomes redundant once everything is replaced by multiblocks. The only exception is the Biolab which does not have a multiblock equivalent.

• Precision Laser Engraver - Needs Cleanroom to engrave phosphorous doped wafers. Superseded by the Hyper-Intensity Laser Engraver in IV.
• Cutting Machine - Needs Cleanroom to cut phosphorous doped boules and engraved wafers. Superseded by the Industrial Cutting Factory in IV.
• Circuit Assembler - Needs Cleanroom to assemble AE2 storage components and higher tier circuits. Superseded by the Circuit Assembly Line in LuV.
• Biolab - Needs Cleanroom to cultivate various petri dishes for the Bacterial Vat.
• Assembler - Needs Cleanroom to craft neutron reflectors and rocket control computers. Superseded by the Precise Auto-Assembler MT-3662 in IV and the Large Scale Auto-Assembler v1.01 in ZPM.

A simple way to alert the player that their Cleanroom has maintenance issues is to use a needs maintenance cover and a howler alarm. Place the needs maintenance cover directly on top of the controller, or on one of its sides to not obstruct the view. If on the side, use a soldering iron on the cover to set the signal strength to STRONG. That allows the redstone signal to transmit through the adjacent casing.

Next, place the howler alarm on top of the Cleanroom controller or the adjacent casing receiving the redstone signal. Right-click the howler alarm to open its internal GUI and configure the sound range and/or the sound itself. The maximum range is 128 blocks. The three available sounds are listed below.

• Default
• Sci-Fi
• Factorio Rocket

The howler alarm can be very loud and may be quite frightening when it goes off. An alternative is to use a note block or even a redstone lamp, but those are not as noticeable. A wireless transmitter or a wireless needs maintenance cover could also send the signal elsewhere if that helps too.

The Cleanroom controller also emits a redstone signal whose strength corresponds to the efficiency of the machine. If a maintenance issue is present then the signal strength would drop below 15 and that could be used to trigger some sort of alarm.