The Stone press is the machine that pays best. Every 6 seconds it combines one kilogram each of dust and sand into a 2 kg block of moon stone, and a block is worth seven times its weight in dust. Running without gaps it turns out 20 kg a minute: roughly $140 at the starting dust price, where selling those 20 kg as plain dust brings $20.
Stone press takes sand from the Pressure chamber
How to feed the Stone press
It needs both ingredients at the same time, so the dust has to be split before any of it becomes sand.
- Put a Splitter on the incoming dust belt.
- Send one branch into a Pressure chamber and the other into the press dust input.
- Run the chamber sand output into the press sand input; one player reads the inputs as sand on the left, dust on the right.
- Belt the stone blocks to the hub.
A press that waits usually lacks one ingredient; add a second chamber before a second press.
Stone press power at night
At 18 kW it draws almost twice what a Pressure chamber does, so one Solar tracker (16 kW) is not enough on its own; plan two by day. A builder who runs presses through the night gives each one three trackers. Check the power before blaming the belts when a press stops after sunset.