Create Wiki · Contraptions
Mechanical Harvester and Mechanical Plough
The Mechanical Harvester and the Mechanical Plough are actors: they do nothing on their own, but get to work as soon as a contraption moves them. Fixed to a piston, a bearing or a train, they make a fully automated farm: the plough prepares the soil, the harvester picks and replants.
Quick facts
- Category
- Contraptions
- Stress
- None: they work while a contraption moves them
- Harvester
- Ripe crops only, then replants (server settings)
- Crops
- Wheat, carrots, potatoes, beetroots, berries, sugar cane, cocoa…
- Plough
- Breaks blocks without collision and tills the soil below
- Spared
- Nothing is broken above farmland
- Crop goes to
- The contraption's chests and barrels, else the ground
- Version
- Create 6.0.8 · Minecraft 1.21.1
Harvester crafting recipe
→ 1 Mechanical Harvester
A contraption actor
The harvester fixes onto a face of a block of the structure, blade facing out. It holds on by itself, no glue needed. As soon as the contraption moves, its blade spins and it works in the direction it travels.
Placing the actors well
The harvester and the plough are placed facing out of the structure, in the direction of travel: an actor moving backwards does nothing. On a bearing, point them towards the front of the rotation. They can sit on the floor, the ceiling or the sides of a block.
Harvesting and replanting
It only picks ripe crops and replants them at once: the field grows back with no one touching it. Green shoots are spared. Both behaviours are server config settings.
Which crops?
The harvester takes wheat, carrots, potatoes, beetroots, sweet berries, sugar cane (above the base), cocoa and other crops that have an age. Plants without an age, such as flowers, are simply broken.
Storing the crop
If the contraption carries chests or barrels, the crop goes straight into them; otherwise it drops on the ground. A Portable Storage Interface can then empty those chests without stopping the farm.
The plough clears the way
The plough breaks anything with no collision: grass, flowers, torches, rails, snow. Solid blocks stop it, like any contraption. It leaves alone the plants growing on farmland.
Tilling on the move
On its way, it does to the block below it what a hoe would do: grass and dirt become farmland, ready for seeds. A plough in front, a deployer with seeds behind: sowing is automatic.
Tossing without harm
Players, mobs and items in front of the plough are tossed aside without damage. A small plough at the head of a train clears stray animals off the track.
Crafting the plough
The plough is crafted with three iron sheets on top, three andesite alloys in the middle and an andesite casing at the bottom. Like the harvester, it hangs on its back face.
A complete farm
A slow bearing in the middle of a round field, a row of harvesters on an arm, a chest in the centre: the farm runs by itself. Add Contraption Controls to switch the harvesters off when the chest is full. Mobs are not drawn in our loops.
Common mistakes
Harvester doing nothing? It must be moving on a contraption, blade forward. It breaks young plants? The server may allow harvesting unripe crops. The plough tills too much? It tills everything it passes over: adjust its height.
What the loops do not show
The harvester blade spins as in the game, drawn by us. The parrot tossed by the plough is not drawn, and broken blocks drop their items with a small fall. Crops grow back instantly in the scene, as the storyboard asks.
On our server
On Create France, a harvester farm on a bearing is often a player's first contraption: simple, useful and nice to watch turning.
Related pages
Sources for the numbers (Create 6.0.8 code)
- Recipes: crafting/kinetics/mechanical_harvester.json, mechanical_plough.json
- Harvesting: HarvesterMovementBehaviour.isValidCrop (ripe only), CKinetics.harvestPartiallyGrown (false), harvesterReplants (true), moveItemsToStorage (true)
- Plough: PloughMovementBehaviour.canBreak (no collision, nothing above farmland), visitNewPosition (diamond hoe on the block below), throwsEntities, onBlockBroken (snow)
- Attachment: BlockMovementChecksImpl (AttachedActorBlock hangs on its back face)
- Blade rendering: HarvesterRenderer.transform (added by us, see engine_create/REQUESTS.md)
- Simulation: WIKI/contraption_sim.py (carried blocks, movement times, ropes and actors recomputed from Create's code)
- Scenes: MovementActorScenes.harvester, plough (tossed parrot not drawn)
Original texts and animations by Create France, rendered from the mod's Ponder scenes. Create is a mod by the Create Team, not affiliated with Create France.