Create Wiki · Contraptions

Rope Pulley

The Rope Pulley moves a structure vertically: it lets out a rope ending in a magnet, grabs whatever is below and lifts or lowers it. Goods lift, platform, drawbridge, giant trapdoor: it is Create's vertical piston, with no poles to place.

Create 6.0.8 · Minecraft 1.21.1 · updated on

The rope goes down to a block of planks and lifts it; a lever reverses the rotation; then a glued structure goes up and down.

Quick facts

Category
Contraptions
Stress
4 SU per RPM
Speed
RPM ÷ 512 block per tick: 1.25 blocks/s at 32 RPM, 9.8 at most
Rope
384 blocks at most, nothing to add
Attachment
The block under the magnet, plus whatever is glued or fixed to it
Synchronised
Neighbouring pulleys at the same height follow, with no rotation
Carried
A stopped pulley can be moved with its structure
Version
Create 6.0.8 · Minecraft 1.21.1

Crafting table recipe

Andesite Casing
Wool
Iron Sheet

→ 1 Rope Pulley

Up and down

The rope goes down to a block of planks and lifts it; a lever reverses the rotation; then a glued structure goes up and down.

When it turns, the pulley lets out its rope down to the first block it meets, assembles it into a contraption and lifts it. Our loop draws the rope and magnet the way the game does: a magnet at the end, segments above it.

Direction and speed

Rotation reversed: the platform comes back up

As with the piston, rotation is in charge: one way lowers, the other lifts, and the speed follows the RPM. A lever on a gearshift is all you need for a goods lift.

A whole platform

Structure of glued planks lifted by the pulley

The pulley takes the hooked block and everything holding on to it: with glue, a whole platform goes up. Our simulation finds the same blocks as the scene on every lift.

Back to plain blocks when stopped

A structure lifted by the pulley turns back into blocks when stopped; the value panel changes that behaviour.

When the pulley stops, the structure turns back into real blocks, and the rope stays in place. If the structure runs into a solid block on the way, the pulley stops just short of it.

Three modes

Setting the pulley's stop mode

The value panel offers the same choices as the piston: place at every stop, only at the starting point, or never. For a lift serving several floors, use the Elevator Pulley instead.

Several pulleys together

A powered pulley lifts a platform; the other pulleys of the same row lower their rope along with it.

When a pulley assembles a structure, the other pulleys placed at the same height above it hook onto it and let out their rope at the same time. They need no rotation.

For looks

Platform held by four ropes

These unpowered pulleys carry nothing: they only show their rope. It is purely visual, but a platform held at all four corners looks far more convincing.

A travelling pulley

A piston moves a stopped pulley, and the structure hanging from its rope goes with it.

A pulley can itself be moved by another contraption. Its rope and the hanging structure follow the movement, which gives you, for instance, a crane mounted on a piston or a gantry.

Only when stopped

Stopped pulley before being moved

A pulley can be carried only when it is stopped. If it is busy going up or down, the other contraption refuses to assemble.

Speed and length

The pulley moves at RPM ÷ 512 block per tick: 0.63 blocks/s at 16 RPM, 2.5 at 64, 9.8 at most. Its rope can go down 384 blocks, enough to reach the bottom of a mine from the surface. It costs 4 SU per RPM.

Build ideas

A mine goods lift: a pulley at the surface, a glued platform, a gearshift on a lever at each level. A giant trapdoor sinking into the ground. For a real lift with floors and call buttons, the Elevator Pulley is much simpler.

Common mistakes

Rope going down without grabbing anything? There is no block right under the magnet, or it has no collision. Platform getting stuck? A solid block is in the way. And a pulley cannot be carried while its rope is moving.

Powering the pulley

The shaft enters one side of the pulley. A hand crank is enough for a small goods lift, but it tires the player out quickly: hook the pulley up to an engine instead and control the direction with a gearshift and a lever.

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Sources for the numbers (Create 6.0.8 code)
  • Recipe: crafting/kinetics/rope_pulley.json
  • Stress: AllBlocks.ROPE_PULLEY (CStress.setImpact(4.0))
  • Speed: LinearActuatorBlockEntity.getMovementSpeed (clamp(speed / 512, -0.49, 0.49) block per tick), PulleyBlockEntity
  • Rope: CKinetics.maxRopeLength (384), Contraption.movePulley, PulleyContraption
  • Synchronised: PulleyBlockEntity (mirrorParent), PulleyRenderer.isPulleyRunning
  • Carried: BlockMovementChecksImpl.isMovementAllowedFallback (pulley only while not running)
  • Rope rendering: AbstractPulleyRenderer / PulleyRenderer (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: PulleyScenes.movement, movementModes, multiRope, attachment

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.