Pressure Chamber vs Stone Press ratio in Moon Sweepers

The balanced ratio is 2 Pressure Chambers for every 5 Stone Presses. A chamber turns dust into sand at up to 25 kg/min, a press consumes 10 kg/min of sand, so a single chamber can keep 2.5 presses busy. The popular small build, 1 chamber for 2 presses, makes 40 kg/min of moonstone and keeps a little sand headroom. Everything on this page is derived from machine specifications published by community databases. The studio has not published machine numbers, so treat each figure as community data (see Data and sources).

The Pressure Chamber takes 5 kg of dust per cycle and returns 5 kg of sand after a 12 s cycle. That is 25 kg/min of sand at full power, for 10 kW and $500. When a batch is incomplete it waits about 3 s after the last input before it runs. It buffers 20 kg of dust on the way in and 10 kg of sand on the way out.

The Stone Press has two input ports, IN DUST and IN SAND, and one output. Each 6 s cycle it consumes 1 kg of dust and 1 kg of sand and outputs 2 kg of moonstone. That is 20 kg/min, or 10 blocks per minute, drawing 10 kg/min of dust and 10 kg/min of sand. It costs $1,000 and draws 18 kW, and it stores up to 12 kg of each input.

• Sand supply: one chamber makes 25 kg/min.
• Sand demand: one press eats 10 kg/min.
• Presses per chamber: 25 divided by 10 is 2.5. Whole machines give 2 chambers for 5 presses.
• Stone output of the 2:5 build: 5 presses at 20 kg/min is 100 kg/min.

There is a useful shortcut. The sand comes from dust at a 1:1 mass yield, and the press adds 1 kg of dust per 2 kg of stone, so each kilogram of moonstone costs exactly one kilogram of raw dust. A 2:5 factory making 100 kg/min of stone therefore needs 100 kg/min of raw dust, which matches the published figure. The shortcut depends on the chamber yield being really 1:1, which is shown by two databases but not formally proven (see below).

Power and cost add up from the machine specs: 1 chamber and 2 presses is 10 + 2 x 18 = 46 kW, and $2,500 in machines. The 1:1 build only uses 10 of the 25 kg/min of sand a full-speed chamber makes, which is why 15 kg/min piles up unused. The 4:8 build is the 2:5 idea scaled up with a little extra sand capacity: its 4 chambers can make 100 kg/min of sand, while 8 presses use 80.

For a 1 chamber, 2 press build, two sources disagree on the raw dust: 45 kg/min against 45 kg/min. They do not describe the same operating point. Two presses need 10 x 2 = 20 kg/min of sand and 20 kg/min of dust directly. If the chamber is throttled to exactly 20 kg/min of sand, the total is 40 kg/min. If the chamber runs flat out, it eats 25 kg/min of dust, the total is 45 kg/min, and 5 kg/min of sand is left over. Both are consistent with the specs. Foundry shows both rather than picking one.

• Starting out: 1 chamber and 2 presses ($2,500, 46 kW) is the cheapest build that does not waste most of a chamber.
• Scaling up: repeat 2:5 blocks. Each block adds 100 kg/min of stone for $6,000, and nothing is left over on paper.
• Avoid 1:1 unless space forces it: it leaves 15 kg/min of sand unused.

Machines are only half the problem. Dust arrives on conveyors, and a single lane carries at most 88 capsules per minute in the ideal case, so a 100 kg/min line needs more than one lane of 1 kg capsules. The conveyor guide covers lanes, and the solar guide covers the 110 kW a 2:5 block draws.

• The 1:1 dust to sand yield is displayed by MoonSweepersDB and MoonSweepers.me. Another guide says the specifications do not prove it. If it were wrong, every figure above would shift.
• Values come from game files read by third parties (build f87fd7e5) and from database pages mixing 1.0.4 and 1.0.5. None is mapped precisely to a patch.
• How a splitter shares items between two presses is undocumented. An uneven split can starve one press even when the totals balance.