Industrial crafters & pipe automation

The Industrial system (introduced January 2023, refined heavily through 2024-2026) turns Rust bases from manual sweatshops into self-running factories. Sulfur goes in one end, rockets come out the other. This page covers every component, the power math, and the three builds that pay for themselves in a single wipe.

What Industrial is

Industrial is a pipe-based automation system that moves, filters, and crafts items between containers using rWatts (Rust's electrical power unit). Five components do all the work:

• Industrial Conveyor — the pump. Moves items through pipes on a timer.
• Industrial Crafter — auto-crafts blueprints from fed materials.
• Industrial Combiner — merges 3 input pipes into 1 output.
• Industrial Splitter — splits 1 input into 3 outputs.
• Industrial Pipes — placed with the Pipe Tool, physically connect everything.
• Storage Adapter — attaches to any container so pipes can dock to it.

Pipes pass through doors and deployables but not through walls or vending machines. Two conveyors cannot connect directly — they must be separated by a Storage Adapter or another industrial entity.

Industrial Conveyor

The Conveyor is the active mover. Without one, pipes are just decoration.

• Power cost: 1 rWatt while active.
• Cycle: moves items every 5 seconds by default (server.industrialCrafterFrequency).
• Throughput: up to 60 items per tick; stacks over 60 split across cycles.
• Filter slots: up to 30 items or categories (resources, ammo, components, clothing, etc.).
• Filter rules: set min, max, and buffer quantities per filter — e.g., "keep 500 sulfur in destination, never pull below 200 in source."

Without a filter, the Conveyor moves anything it can. With filters, it becomes surgical. Toggle each Conveyor on/off with a wire input — connect to a Smart Switch for remote control.

Industrial Crafter

The Crafter is a deployable furnace for blueprints. Snap it to any Tier 1/2/3 workbench, drop in a blueprint, feed it materials via pipe, and it crafts continuously.

• Power cost: 1 rWatt idle; pulses 5 rWatts per craft operation.
• Speed: same as a player would craft — typically 2-10 seconds per item depending on recipe (gunpowder is fast, rockets slow).
• Blueprint slot: one BP per Crafter. To chain recipes (sulfur → GP → explosives → rockets), chain multiple Crafters.
• Input/Output: built-in industrial slots on both sides. Left is input, right is output — reversing them is the #1 newbie mistake.
• Logic: the Crafter scans BPs left-to-right and crafts whichever has materials available.

Output items drop into the output slot — pipe them to a Conveyor pointed at a destination container.

Crafter mechanics, start to finish

Setting up a single Crafter correctly is the foundation every multi-stage chain is built on. Get one Crafter wrong and the whole factory inherits the fault. Walk it step by step:

1. Place the workbench. The Crafter snaps to a Tier 1, 2, or 3 workbench. The tier only gates which blueprints the Crafter can run — a T1 bench can auto-craft low-grade fuel and arrows, but rockets, C4, and explosives need a Crafter snapped to a Tier 3 bench. The bench itself draws no rWatts; it is purely a recipe-tier license.
2. Snap and power the Crafter. Run a wire from a power source into the Crafter's electrical input. It draws 1 rWatt the instant it has power, whether idle or busy. There is no separate “on” toggle — power present means the Crafter is live.
3. Insert exactly one blueprint. The blueprint slot accepts a single learned BP. That BP becomes the only thing this Crafter will ever produce until you swap it. This one-recipe-per-crafter rule is the single most important fact about the device: there is no recipe menu, no queue of different items. One Crafter = one product.
4. Feed the inputs. Pipe ingredients into the left-side industrial slots. The Crafter holds a small internal stock; a Conveyor keeps topping it up.
5. Collect the output. Finished items appear in the right-side slots. A second Conveyor pulls them onward.

Craft frequency & speed. The Crafter completes items at the same rate a player would at a bench — it is not a speed boost, only a labour replacement. Times are recipe-specific and confirmed against RustLabs and the Facepunch wiki:

Because the Crafter draws a constant 1 rWatt rather than pulsing, a wall of ten Crafters is a flat, predictable 10 rWatt load — easy to budget for. The frequency at which Conveyors feed the Crafter is the real throttle, governed by the server convar server.industrialCrafterFrequency (default ~5 seconds per move tick). If your supply lines tick slower than the Crafter consumes, the Crafter sits idle waiting for materials — it is never the bottleneck itself.

Recipe selection and the one-recipe-per-crafter rule

New players expect the Crafter to behave like a personal crafting queue. It does not. There is no priority list, no “craft these five things in order.” Plan around these hard facts:

• One BP, period. To produce three different items, you need three Crafters. This is by design and is why real factories are walls of Crafters, not one super-machine.
• Swapping a BP mid-run is safe but resets nothing — already-crafted output stays in the output slots; the Crafter simply starts producing the new item once it has matching ingredients.
• The Crafter only crafts when it has every ingredient for its single recipe. Missing one component (e.g., no tech trash for explosives) means the Crafter stalls silently — no error, just no output. This is why buffer filters matter so much downstream.
• Output never blocks input. If the output slots fill because nothing is pulling them, the Crafter stops crafting until space frees up. Always pipe the output away.

Industrial Combiner

Three pipes in, one pipe out. No power required.

Use cases:

• Pulling sulfur from multiple quarries / boxes into a single Crafter input.
• Merging charcoal, sulfur, and metal frags lines into one Crafter feeding gunpowder/explosives.
• Consolidating loot from multiple base entrances into one stockpile.

Industrial Splitter

One pipe in, three pipes out. No power required.

• Splits a 60-item tick into 20-20-20 when all 3 outputs connect to identical-need containers.
• Prioritises the lowest-numbered output when one destination is full or filtered out.

Use cases:

• Feeding three Crafters in parallel from one sulfur pool (triple GP throughput).
• Distributing harvested food from a fridge to multiple team lockers.
• Splitter-chains: 3 splitters in series = 8 parallel production lines off one source.

Industrial Pipes

Pipes are placed with the Pipe Tool (craftable, cheap).

• Maximum length: 30 meters per segment.
• Anchor points: up to 16 bends/anchors in a single 30m run — enough to snake around any base.
• No power cost on pipes themselves — only the Conveyors, Crafters, and Adapters consume rWatts.
• Pipes cannot pass through walls, floors, ceilings, or vending machines.
• Pipes can pass through doors, hatches, ladders, and most deployables.

Power requirements

Industrial power adds up faster than people expect.

Sulfur-to-rockets full chain budget

A three-stage auto-rocket line (sulfur+charcoal → GP, GP+frags → explosives, explosives+cloth+tech trash → rockets) typically uses:

• 4-6 Conveyors (input pulls, inter-stage, final output) = 4-6 rWatts
• 3 Crafters running near-continuously = 15 rWatts peak
• Buffer for lights, smart switches, door controllers = 5-10 rWatts

Total: roughly 25-30 rWatts sustained. Size with 6-8 solar panels + 2 large batteries (each panel gives ~20 rW peak daylight; batteries store overnight). Add a small generator backup for cloudy maps.

The rWatt budget for a Crafter farm

Because each Crafter draws a flat 1 rWatt the moment it has power, a Crafter farm's load is easy to calculate exactly — unlike pulsing devices, there are no spikes to over-engineer for. Budget the whole network in three layers:

• Crafters are the cheap part. Ten Crafters is a flat 10 rWatts. It is the Conveyors (1 rW each) and any lights, switches, and door controllers that quietly inflate the total — count every Conveyor in the network, not just the obvious ones.
• Size for the night. Solar panels produce nothing after dusk; the farm must coast on stored battery charge until dawn. A Large Rechargeable Battery should comfortably carry the night load — multiply your sustained rWatts by the in-game night length to check.
• Isolate the Industrial circuit. Keep the factory on its own solar/battery loop, completely separate from turrets, external lights, and base electricity. A defending turret should never be able to brown out your rocket line, and vice versa.
• Generator backup (small electrical generator on Low Grade Fuel) covers cloudy maps and long nights for large farms — wire it through a Root Combiner so it only contributes when battery charge drops.

Common build: auto-explosives factory

The classic Industrial money-printer.

Tune filters so each Crafter's input box holds a buffer (e.g., keep 100 GP minimum in the explosives feeder). Without buffers, the chain stalls every time a stage finishes faster than its supply.

Building a multi-stage auto-craft chain: sulfur → GP → explosives → C4

A true production line is several single-recipe Crafters wired in series, where each Crafter's output box becomes the next Crafter's input box. The canonical four-stage explosives line works like this:

1. Stage 1 — Gunpowder. A Combiner merges a sulfur line and a charcoal line into one feed pipe. That pipe runs to Crafter 1 (BP: Gunpowder). GP drops into a GP buffer box.
2. Stage 2 — Explosives. A second Combiner merges the GP buffer, a metal fragments line, a sulfur line, and (via a relay) a tech trash line. Because a Combiner only takes 3 inputs, chain two Combiners when a recipe needs 4 ingredients — Combiner A merges two lines, its output plus two more lines feed Combiner B. Crafter 2 (BP: Explosives) produces Explosives into an explosives buffer.
3. Stage 3 — Timed Explosive Charge (C4). A third Combiner merges the explosives buffer, a cloth line, and a tech trash line. Crafter 3 (BP: C4) must sit on a Tier 3 bench. Finished C4 drops to final storage.

The golden rule of chains: every stage needs a buffer box with min/max filter values. Set the Conveyor feeding each Crafter to keep, say, a 100-unit minimum of the upstream product. Buffers absorb the timing mismatch between a fast stage (GP, ~2s) and a slow stage (C4, ~10s+). Without buffers the chain pulses and stalls; with them it runs glass-smooth.

• Match throughput to demand. One GP Crafter feeds roughly one explosives Crafter; one explosives Crafter feeds roughly one C4 Crafter. If you want double C4 output, you typically need 2× every upstream stage — use a Splitter to fan one sulfur pool into parallel GP Crafters rather than over-building a single line.
• Keep raw-material reserves generous. The chain is only as fast as its slowest fed ingredient. A line that runs dry of charcoal stalls at stage 1 and starves everything downstream.
• One Crafter per recipe, always. Do not attempt to “reuse” a Crafter for two stages — the one-recipe rule makes that impossible. Budget physical wall space for the full row of Crafters before you start placing pipes.

Routing with Combiners and Splitters

Combiners and Splitters are the plumbing logic of the whole system, and crucially both cost zero rWatts — only Conveyors and Crafters draw power. Use them liberally.

• Combiner (3-in → 1-out): consolidates ingredient lines into a single Crafter feed. For 4+ ingredient recipes, chain Combiners in series. Combiners do not filter — they merge whatever arrives, so put the filtering on the Conveyors upstream.
• Splitter (1-in → 3-out): fans one source into parallel destinations. A 60-item tick divides 20/20/20 across three equal-need outputs. It honours downstream filters first, then splits the remainder, and prioritises the lowest-numbered output when a destination is full.
• Splitter chains for parallel factories: three Splitters in series give eight parallel production lines off a single sulfur pool — the standard way to scale a GP farm without rebuilding the supply side.
• Combiner + Splitter together: merge several quarries into one pipe with a Combiner, then Splitter that pipe out to sulfur-chain / smelter / dump-box destinations. This merge-then-sort pattern is the backbone of an auto-quarry room.

Feeding Crafters from Conveyors

The Crafter has no pull of its own — it is a passive box. Every ingredient that reaches it is pushed there by a Conveyor, so Conveyor configuration is what actually drives the factory:

• Always set a filter on the Conveyor feeding a Crafter. An unfiltered Conveyor will shove any item from the source — including junk — into the Crafter's input slots, clogging space the real ingredients need.
• Use min/max/buffer values so the Conveyor keeps the Crafter's small internal stock topped up without draining the source dry. A typical setting: “keep max 200 sulfur in the Crafter, never pull the source below 1000.”
• Two Conveyors cannot connect directly. Insert a Storage Adapter or another industrial entity between them — a buffer box is the usual choice.
• One adapter per container. Putting two Storage Adapters on the same box makes Conveyors see it twice and breaks split/merge math.
• Wire Conveyors to a Smart Switch so the entire feed network can be toggled off in one click before you log out.

Common build: auto-stockpile (food + farm)

For clans sharing resources without arguments.

• Fridge + harvested planter boxes → Storage Adapters on each.
• One Conveyor with filter set to Food category pulls everything edible.
• A Splitter distributes to 3 team lockers equally — each member gets a fair cut automatically.
• Add a second Conveyor pulling berries → Mixing Table for tea automation.

Common build: auto-quarry-emptying

Quarries fill fast and get raided when their hopper is exposed.

• Storage Adapter on the quarry output.
• Conveyor routes through a pipe through the door into your base.
• Inside, a Splitter sends sulfur to the explosives chain, HQM to a smelter, and stone to a dump box.
• Result: zero exposure, quarry runs 24/7, materials sort themselves.

Quarry and Pump Jack auto-emptying via pipes

Mining Quarries and Pump Jacks fill their output hoppers steadily while powered, and an exposed, full hopper is a raid magnet. Industrial pipes let you drain them hands-free into a hardened interior room. Done properly, you never touch the machine again until you refuel it.

1. Attach a Storage Adapter to the output hopper of the Quarry or Pump Jack. This is the dock point the pipe network connects to.
2. Run a Conveyor from the hopper through a pipe that passes through a doorway (pipes route through doors and hatches, but never through solid walls) into your base interior.
3. For a Quarry, drop the incoming pipe onto a Splitter and filter the three outputs: sulfur ore → the explosives chain or a furnace, high-quality metal ore → a dedicated smelter, stone → a bulk dump box. Materials self-sort the instant they arrive.
4. For a Pump Jack, the single product is Crude Oil — route it straight to a Small Oil Refinery for automatic conversion into Low Grade Fuel, then pipe the fuel onward to generators or vehicle storage. No Splitter is needed for a single-product machine.
5. Multiple machines: use a Combiner to merge several quarry outputs into one trunk pipe before the sort Splitter — the merge-then-sort pattern keeps a whole mining yard tidy on one pipe run.

• Mind the 30 m segment cap. Quarries are often placed at a distance; if the run exceeds 30 metres, insert a relay box (large box + Storage Adapter) and continue with a fresh segment.
• The machines still need their own fuel. Pipes empty the output hopper; they do not refuel the Quarry. You can, however, pipe Diesel/Low Grade Fuel into the fuel slot with a separate Conveyor for a fully hands-free loop.
• Note on vanilla: connecting pipes to Quarry/Pump Jack storage works on standard servers via the Storage Adapter on the hopper — confirm your server has not disabled it before committing to the layout.

Common mistakes

• Filters not set right — leaving a Conveyor on "any item" means your sulfur box also receives rotten meat. Always filter.
• Crafter input/output reversed — items pile up on the wrong side and nothing crafts. Left = in, right = out.
• Two Conveyors back-to-back — illegal. Insert a Storage Adapter or any other industrial entity between them.
• Pipe path too long — 30m hard cap. Use a relay box (large box + adapter) to extend.
• Underpowered circuit — Crafters pulse 5 rWatts each. Three Crafters + Conveyors = 20+ rW. Solar alone won't hold this overnight without batteries.
• No buffer quantities — the chain stalls when one stage outpaces another. Set min/max per filter.
• Multiple adapters on one container — Conveyors see it twice, distribution math breaks.
• Pipes through walls — they won't connect. Route through doors or use a wall-frame with an opening.
• Expecting one Crafter to make several items — the one-recipe-per-crafter rule is absolute. Build a wall of Crafters, one BP each.
• No buffer box between chain stages — wiring one Crafter's output straight into the next with no buffer makes the chain stall on every timing mismatch. Always insert a filtered buffer box.
• Forgetting the workbench tier — a Crafter on a T1 bench will silently refuse to run a rocket or C4 blueprint. Match the bench tier to the recipe.
• Missing one ingredient — a Crafter with no tech trash for explosives just sits idle with no error. Audit every ingredient line when a stage stops producing.

Pro tips

• Mixing Table automation: pipe berries + water jugs into a Mixing Table for endless tea production. Mixing Tables accept industrial input as of post-2024 patches.
• Chain Crafters for multi-step recipes: rockets need GP, explosives, and tech trash — three Crafters in sequence. Don't try to do it in one.
• Segregate power circuits: put Industrial on its own solar/battery loop, separate from turrets and lights. A turret defending the base shouldn't starve your rocket factory.
• Smart Switch + Door Controller integration: wire your Industrial Conveyors to a Smart Switch so you can toggle the whole factory from your phone (RUST+ app) or kill it before going offline to prevent raid-time material exposure.
• HBHF + Pressure Pad triggers: auto-shut the Crafter chain when intruders enter via a HBHF Sensor wired to the master Smart Switch.
• Label everything: put a Sign next to each Conveyor showing its filter. Future-you will thank you.
• Tier 3 Crafter near workbench: Crafter must be snapped to a workbench of the correct tier for high-tier BPs (rockets need T3).
• Industrial Lights: small detail — wire one Industrial Light per stage that toggles on when the Conveyor pulses. Visual debug of the whole chain at a glance.
• Plan the Crafter wall first: count every recipe in your chain, place that many Crafters and benches before routing a single pipe. Retrofitting a missed stage into a finished pipe run is miserable.
• Scale with Splitters, not bigger lines: to double output, fan one raw pool into parallel single-recipe Crafters with a Splitter chain rather than chasing a faster single Crafter — the Crafter speed is fixed, only parallelism scales.
• Refuel quarries via pipe too: a dedicated Conveyor pushing fuel into a Quarry's fuel slot turns the whole mining-and-crafting loop fully autonomous.
• Generous buffers beat clever filters: when a chain stutters, the fix is almost always a larger min/max buffer on the upstream Conveyor, not a more elaborate filter.

Sources

1. Facepunch — Industrial Update patch notes (Jan 2023): https://rust.facepunch.com/news/industrial-update
2. Rustafied — Industrial System Overview: https://www.rustafied.com/updates/2023/1/12/industrial-system-overview
3. Corrosion Hour — RUST Industrial System Guide: https://www.corrosionhour.com/rust-industrial-system-guide/
4. Corrosion Hour — Industrial Crafter item page: https://www.corrosionhour.com/rust-items/industrial-crafter/
5. Corrosion Hour — How to Automate Gun Powder Crafting: https://www.corrosionhour.com/how-to-automate-gun-powder-crafting-in-rust/
6. Rustrician — The RUST Electrical Handbook (Industrial): https://www.rustrician.io/wiki/industrial.html
7. Rust Wiki (Facepunch) — Industrial Crafter: https://wiki.facepunch.com/rust/item/industrial.crafter
8. Rust Wiki (Facepunch) — Industrial Conveyor: https://wiki.facepunch.com/rust/item/industrial.conveyor
9. Rustlabs — Pipe Tool: https://rustlabs.com/item/pipe-tool
10. FalconRust — Industrial System Guide / Automation: https://falconrust.com/guides/general/industrial-system/
11. Rust Conveyor Filters (community filter presets): https://rustconveyorfilters.com/
12. PCGamesN — Rust Industrial Update overview: https://www.pcgamesn.com/rust/industrial-update

Want more detail? Industrial Guide · Visual Industrial Layouts · Automation Circuits