Skip to content

Grinding Wheel

An abrasive stone wheel. It's the hardest cutter in the game, and the only machine that can shape hardened steel.

Crafting

C C C
C B C
  S

C is Cobblestone, B is a Bearing and S is a Shaft.

Using it

It sits directly on a shaft line; connect it from any side. Faster turning grinds faster. It's a 45 Su load.

The wheel's hardness is 30, above every metal but netherite (40). It cannot cut quartz or amethyst (40); for those, see the Diamond Grinding Wheel below.

  • Right-click with an item to put a workpiece in (or take the current one back).
  • Right-click with an empty hand to take it out.
  • Sneak-right-click with an empty hand switches between coarse and fine grit.

What it makes

Ingot → Ground Ingot → Swarf

It doesn't stop when the ingot is ground. Leave it and the ingot is ground down to swarf.

It also grinds gun parts: a plate into a Slide, a rod into a Bolt, a drilled plate into a Trigger Group. And it shortens a Gun Barrel, 5 mm per Fu: grind it under 5 cm and it's swarf.

Grinding makes heat

The wheel heats whatever it's grinding, 0.4 Tu for every Fu it grinds. Enough grinding on hardened steel can push it back into tempering range. A piece that has been on the wheel a while comes off warm or hot, and it cools down like any other hot item.

The wheel wears out, and that's normal

Every other machine wears only when misused. A grinding wheel is different: it wears every time it cuts, because the grit is being used up.

  • Coarse (16 St) cuts fast and wears the wheel fast: a wheel lasts 250 Fu of grinding.
  • Fine (6 St) cuts slower and makes the wheel last longer: about 670 Fu.

A fully worn (bald) wheel can't cut anything at all. Breaking and replacing it doesn't help, because the wear goes with the item. Craft a new one.

Diamond Grinding Wheel

The same wheel with diamond grit. Its hardness is the diamond material's own (100), so it cuts everything the stone wheel does and the crystals too: quartz and amethyst (hardness 40), which is how you get the plates for a Mass Probe.

D C D
C B C
  S

D is a Diamond, C is Cobblestone, B is a Bearing and S is a Shaft.

It works exactly like the stone wheel: it sits on a shaft line, 45 Su, coarse and fine grit by sneak-right-click, heats what it grinds. Grit is still the consumable: it wears at the same rate per Fu as the stone wheel and a bald one cuts nothing. A harder grit does not last longer yet; that's untested.