Build your first coal circuit

A hands-on introduction to coal power, copper conduit, switches, lamps, and your first useful machine.

TRY THE CONNECTION RULE

A switch works when it breaks the path.

Toggle the lever, then add a route around it. The lamp follows the face-connected path from the fueled dynamo.

A small illustration of the connection rule. It does not simulate fuel consumption, range limits, tick timing, or piston movement.

Machinery connects physical blocks to coal-powered devices. Start with a switched lamp, then reuse the same idea for pistons and booster rails. You do not need a return wire or a complete electrical loop: a device works when the game can trace a face-touching conducting path from a burning coal dynamo to that device.

Your first circuit

Use a Creator world for a practice build, or gather these finished components in a building mode with finite resources:

Component	Needed for the layout	Crafting batch
Coal dynamo	1	Recipe makes 1
Lever	1	Recipe makes 1
Copper conduit	1	Recipe makes 8
Circuit lamp	1	Recipe makes 2
Coal	At least 1 for operation	Add more later, one right-click at a time

Gather the crafting materials

If you craft one batch of every component above, make a new kiln for the dynamo, and craft your own amberlight, the direct ingredient bill is 13 cobble, 3 iron ingots, 10 copper ingots, 5 glass, 1 stick, and operating coal. This counts one new kiln as an ingredient of the dynamo. It does not include a separate kiln to keep for later smelting, ore-smelting fuel, or a building deck.

You can make the deck and your stick batch from 6 oak planks: four planks in a 2×2 square make the deck; two planks stacked vertically make four sticks. Oak-log crafting yields four oak planks per log, so two logs cover those six planks and leave two planks over. You will also have spare conduit, a second circuit lamp, a spare amberlight, and three spare sticks from the batches. If you use your only kiln as the dynamo ingredient, finish smelting the copper, iron, and glass before crafting the dynamo, or make a second kiln.

The dynamo recipe uses cobble in its four corners, three iron ingots around a central kiln, and a copper ingot at bottom center. The lamp recipe uses glass in its corners, four copper ingots around a central amberlight. An amberlight batch uses copper ingot / glass / copper ingot in a row and produces two. Follow the exact grids on the item pages.

Build the line

Choose four neighboring floor cells in a straight line. Place each component on top of its own floor cell, at the same height.
Place them in this order, with their block faces touching: Dynamo → Lever → Conduit → Circuit lamp.
To place the next component, aim at the floor of its empty cell. Aiming at an existing dynamo instead can open its fuel/status interaction; aiming at a lever can toggle it.
Select actual Coal, aim at the dynamo, and right-click once. That adds one coal to its stored fuel. The next machinery update starts its burning reserve.
Right-click the lever to turn it on. The lamp should light.
Right-click the lever again. The lamp should go out because the conducting path is broken.
Select an empty hand or another non-coal item and right-click the dynamo to read its stored coal and burning reserve.

Every arrow in the layout means adjacent block faces, not a gap. Diagonal contact does not connect. The lever occupies a cell in the actual path. Putting a lever next to an unbroken conduit does not control that conduit.

What you should observe

The unlit circuit lamp changes into a lit world state and emits real voxel light. Circuit updates run about ten times per simulation second. Newly placed devices register immediately; loaded nearby devices are also rediscovered by a periodic scan. Try the small circuit near your player before building a long route.

Coal is consumed when a stored unit becomes burning reserve. Turning the lever off disconnects the lamp, but the dynamo still burns its existing reserve slowly. It has no separate on/off switch in the current interaction menu.

What to build next

Replace the lever with a push button for a roughly 0.8-second connection.
Try a pressure plate in the conducting path for a player/animal-triggered connection.
Replace the lamp with a piston and push an ordinary block one cell.
Branch a conduit line to power more lamps. Keep each branch within the generator's reach.
Connect a dynamo circuit to a booster rail, then drive a fueled coal cart over it.

The current machinery toolkit is intentionally smaller than a full factory simulator. A signal relay is a visible conducting signal block; it is not a programmable controller or a range extender. Carts need a rider. Wooden doors and settlement gates do not become electrically controlled doors just because a conduit touches them.

See power and switches for the connection rules and machinery troubleshooting if the lamp stays dark.