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Minecraft has a bit of a growing problem. The game’s basic structure has already been established and refined for over 12 years. Now, anytime there is an update to the game, it is either mostly negligible or it is met with harsh criticism from fans who ‘miss the old game.’ However, at 2023’s Minecraft Live, an announcement was made that pleased everybody: the Crafter. The auto-crafter is a legitimate game changer to Minecraft, and we are here to teach you all about it.
How To Use The Auto-Crafter Minecraft
For those out of the loop, the Crafter, colloquially known as the auto-crafter, does exactly what its name implies. It automatically crafts recipes based off of whichever materials it is fed. The implications of this mechanic are huge, but first, it is important to understand how it works.
Using the machine to craft a single recipe is simple enough. Place each ingredient in its correct position as you would in a crafting table, and Minecraft’s Auto-Crafter will spit out the product once it receives a redstone signal. However, things get a little more complicated when you want to automate the process.
By interacting with the Crafter, you will be able to enable and disable slots in the crafting interface. This way, any materials fed into the machine will be directed into the correct slot. This becomes very useful as you utilize hoppers to automate the crafting process, as can be seen below:
The materials for an item (diamond pickaxe in this case) are placed into a chest. The order is important, but we will get to that in a moment.
The chest’s items are fed through a hopper and into the Crafter. As is typical in Minecraft, items are placed into the auto-crafter from left to right, top to bottom.
Finally, by flipping the lever, the completed diamond pickaxe will pop out for the player.
Creating Trains With Auto-Crafters
An equally important mechanic in the latest update of Minecraft’s auto-crafter is the ability for crafters to feed into each other. In the example below, a stack of wood was placed into the first Crafter, where they were turned into planks. From there, the second auto-crafter picks them up and turns those planks into sticks.
It is important to note that any block you wish to dispense an item must be powered. In the example above, the first Crafter is feeding its wooden planks into the second. The second Crafter, however, is not spitting anything out as it is not powered.
It should be becoming clear how impactful auto-crafters will be to Minecraft. We are just barely scratching the surface of what is possible with the block, so get out there and put your redstone skills to work!
To summarize, here are the steps for using the Minecraft auto-crafter:
- Place the materials into a chest.
- Use a hopper to feed the resources into the Crafter.
- Using a redstone signal, such as a lever, the Crafter will produce the desired item.
