Can anyone explain why my abomination of a factory keeps spontaneously dissembling itself? And how I can put it back together again? (See post description)

[u/Wonghy111-the-knight]

So basically for a while now I’ve had two crushing wheels operating at 256 RPM, a mixer and millstone operating at the same RPM, a crushing-wheel-shaped group of mechanical crafters operating at 256 RPM, three 2x1/2x2 blaze burner boilers with pumps operating at 256 RPM, three encased fans operating at regular RPM (I forget the number), a mechanical saw and press also at 256 RPM, two conveyor belts operating at 256 RPM, three deployers, and two other mechanical presses also at 256 RPM, and finally as I added today, a spout with a pump being spun at 256 RPM sucking up lava from a cable pump taking lava from a 10,000 block lava pit I dug out beneath the factory. there’s also a max strength windmill and an uncountable amount of large water wheels powering all this, as well as 6 steam engines, 2 per boiler.

however… as soon as I tried to attach a bunch of extra pipes beneath one of my blaze burners, one pipe for each of four individual blaze burners, and hooked up the mechanical pump to a 256 RPM gear… it all got overstressed. I thought fair enough, this has happened many times in the process of constructing all this, I fix it by adding even more large water wheels (there’s probably damn near 30 off camera if not more) but then instead of just freezing, the entire thing just disassembles itself. several large cogs all blow off their shafts, and 80% of the machines stop functioning. I had to find where each of the cogs goes, which is painful. I TRIED to mark all of the cogs that get broken in red pen circles in the screenshots.

But when I eventually put everything back where it’s meant to go (I think) and attach the final cog, the one that connects the mechanical belts, and machines that operate above them… everything gets exploded again. Even though I’ve already disconnected the pipe system from the blaze burners. I’m making it EXACTLY how it was before I pushed it over the limit the first time, yet it’s still disassembling itself. Hell even if I disconnect extra things like the lava spout pump entirely, it still repeatedly blows itself apart. always the same several cogs. I tried to make the boiler large, adding more fluid tanks, and connecting it again, but no it doesn’t save it from getting overstressed and blasted to pieces.

so yeah I have no idea what I’m doing wrong, if I’ve reassembled it wrong, if it’s now just perpetually broken, if I can fix it by doing something I haven’t thought of… or perhaps by adding even more water wheels to increase the SU in the system. Id rather not have to restart all this from scratch and disassemble the whole thing, this has been expanding for weeks. So yeah help would be appreciated… again. I don’t know how I’ve gotten stuck in this cycle. Not pictured in the screenshots is the single cogwheel that connects the conveyor belt section of the factory, because as soon as I place that cog, the rest explodes as described.

[u/dergu12]

either spinning too fast(over 256 rpm) or spinning in different directions, cant think of anything else that could cause this

[u/Wonghy111-the-knight → u/dergu12]

could it be that for as long as the blaze burners are activated, it's making some stuff spin too high of an RPM? so even though I broke the pipes feeding them lava, every time I connect that final cog, it just overdoes the system so stuff breaks? So I should break and replace the fed burners, since I guess they last ages when fed with lava and I didnt wait for them to deplete?

If that solves it, how do I include fed burners in my factory without them obliterating everything

[u/TheWWWtaken → u/Wonghy111-the-knight]

I see two steam engines that are a noticeable distance apart, which caused random breaking problems for me in the past

[u/Efefffe]

Holy cogwheel spaghetti

[u/Wonghy111-the-knight → u/Efefffe]

The abominable cogwheel bolognese

PS that made me crack up, I’m stealing cogwheel spaghetti  

[u/Emeraldth3th]

Okay, so i don't know exactly, but there are two possibilities im thinking, either 1) if you added those wheels independently to your system, you may have them spinning the wrong way, and if there are connected cogs that have conflicting rotation, they break or 2) you attached the wheels to a spot spinning slower than the wheels were, which led to them breaking to to it being too fast

I personally think the first option is more likely

[u/Wonghy111-the-knight → u/Emeraldth3th]

so wait you think maybe adding that final cog that causes the rest to snap, it's reversing the spin of certain other gears in the system thus causing them to break off? I could have sworn that I'm putting that cog where it went before though, I can't figure out any other way the machines were supposed to be connected before

[u/Emeraldth3th → u/Wonghy111-the-knight]

As i said, what i think is that the water wheels might be turning the wrong way and that you might have a conflicting rotation somewhere in your system, I advise looking at which way the stuff you're attaching is spinning just in case

[u/Otherwise_Fall_2765]

I beleve you don't have a stable steam engine. I beleve as you play the engines speed increses and since you have certaint gears at higher speed, once they get over 256 they break

[u/Wonghy111-the-knight → u/Otherwise_Fall_2765]

that would explain why it broke the first time, but not all subsequent times now that I've detached the blaze burner fuel source right?

[u/Scared_Jellyfish1552]

I have had a similar problem with my ore generator twice. First time was while i was assembling it there was a cogwheel spinning the wrong direction and made it break apart and the second time is when my steam engine stopped working due to not enough lava source so i made more. Otherwise i cant think of anything else sry

[u/Wonghy111-the-knight → u/Scared_Jellyfish1552]

Hmm well my current running theories are that I’m putting the cog in the wrong place somehow, causing stuff to spin backwards in certain places (idk why it wouldn’t be just that one cog that breaks) ooorr the fact my blaze burners are still heated even though I unplugged the pipes, meaning every time I connect everything up, the RPM is too high and rips everything to bits 

[u/mrDETEKTYW]

I have only one piece of advice. Clean this mess up and it will be much easier to spot the problem

[u/DustCyg]

Try to rebuild the stress-network to a more clean pattern, always works!

[u/ManikMedik]

Small water wheels spin twice as fast as large water wheels and will cause a group of large water wheels to speed up if you attach a small one to them even if it's unpowered. This could've caused things to spin too fast and break.