Grabbers

Grabbers are mechanical arms that move items from one block to the next: from a belt into a furnace, from a drill into a chest, from a fabricator onto a belt. They are the clock of every factory. The burner-driven Coal Grabber is available from the start; the electric grabbers come with research.

Overview

	Coal Grabber	Grabber T1	Grabber T2	Long Grabber	Grabber T3	Mass Grabber
Epoch	0	1	2	2	3	4
Unlocked by	Start	Automation	Fast Grabber	Fast Grabber	Logistics 3	Mass Grabber
Size	1 × 1	1 × 1	1 × 1	1 × 1	1 × 1	1 × 1
Energy	fuel, 95 kW	electric, 13.2 kW	electric, 46 kW	electric, 20 kW	electric, 100 kW	electric, 130 kW
Cycles per second	0.6	0.83	2.31	1.2	2.31	2.31
Items per grab	1	1	1	1	up to 4	up to 12
Reach	1 block	1 block	1 block	2 blocks	1 block	1 block
Filter	no	no	no	no	yes	no
Recipe	1 Iron Gear + 1 Iron Plate	1 Electronic Circuit + 1 Iron Gear + 1 Iron Plate	1 Grabber T1 + 2 Electronic Circuit + 2 Iron Plate	1 Grabber T1 + 1 Iron Gear + 1 Iron Plate	1 Grabber T2 + 15 Iron Gear + 15 Electronic Circuit + 1 Advanced Circuit	1 Grabber T3 + 15 Iron Gear + 5 Processing Unit

A cycle is one full swing: grab, swing over, drop, swing back. Grabbers only use energy while the arm moves. They make no noise.

Which side picks up and which side drops

A grabber picks up from the block behind it and drops into the block in front of it. Behind is the side away from you when you place it, so a grabber always moves items towards you. Place it while standing where the items should go.

The Long Grabber reaches two blocks: it picks up two blocks behind and drops two blocks in front, over whatever stands in between.

A grabber can pick up from or drop into any block of a large building, not only its center.

Coal Grabber: fuel

The Coal Grabber burns fuel (see Smelting for fuel values). It feeds itself: when its fuel slot is empty, it takes a piece of fuel from the block behind it, even with no energy left. A Coal Grabber next to a coal belt therefore starts on its own. If it runs out of energy in mid-swing while holding fuel, it burns what it holds.

Press Use on a Coal Grabber to see its fuel slot and what the arm holds. You can also crouch and press Use with fuel in your hand to fill it.

The electric grabbers need a power pole nearby (see Power). They have no window.

Grabber T3: filter

To set a filter, crouch and press Use on a Grabber T3 with the item in your hand. To clear it, crouch and press Use with an empty hand. With a filter, the grabber only picks up that item. Without one, it works like a normal grabber that grabs up to 4 at once.

What a grabber takes

From	It takes
Belt	moving items from either lane
Furnace, drill, fabricator, SlaughterHouse and other machines	only finished products from the output
Chest	any item it can carry (only the filter item if a filter is set)
Another grabber, boiler	nothing

A grabber only picks up what the target will accept. It never grabs an item and then stands there unable to drop it, except at a belt, where it waits for a gap.

What a grabber puts in

Into	Rule
Belt	one item at a time, onto the far lane (the lane away from the grabber), as soon as a gap comes
Furnace	ingredients up to twice the recipe amount; fuel up to 5
Fabricator	only ingredients of the chosen recipe, each up to twice the recipe amount
Drill, boiler, Coal Plant, Nuclear Reactor	only fuel, up to 5
Locomotive	only fuel, up to 10
Towers	matching ammunition, up to 20
Machines with rune module slots	rune modules into free slots, one by one
Chest, Goblin Cart, Cargo Wagon	wherever it fits

The small limits keep items from piling up inside one machine while the next one in the line starves. A stack grabber (T3, Mass Grabber) grabs several items, but only as many as the target will take.

The far-lane rule makes belt layouts predictable: a row of grabbers on one side of a belt fills one lane, a row on the other side fills the other.

See also

• Belts
• Smelting
• Fabricators
• Power
• Status Icons and Warnings