The Crafter is a type of block in Minecraft that lets you automatically craft items. With some power and hoppers, you can create items in the blink of an eye! This block became available with the 1.21 update of Minecraft, providing a new way to automate your base.
In this guide, we are going to take a look at how you can make and use the Crafter. This will cover the basics of using it, as well as how to set up a simple automated Crafter with just a bit of redstone. Overall, the Crafter is great for mass crafting items that don't stack, such as boats, weapons, and armor.
How To Make A Crafter
To make a Crafter, you will need the following materials.
- 1x Dropper
- This is made from 1x Redstone Dust and 7x Cobblestone.
- 2x Redstone Dust
- 5x Iron Ingot
- 1x Crafting Table
These materials are fairly simple to make, allowing you to gain access to the Crafter relatively early. Like the Crafting Table, you will be able to place the Crafter on the ground and interact with it.
How To Use A Crafter
The basics of the Crafter are quite simple; place the items that you want in the correct positioning and provide one tick of power to the Crafter, which can be done with just one lever. After pulling the lever, the Crafter will shoot out the crafted item. In the images above, we provided two diamonds and one stick to make a diamond sword.
By clicking on the boxes where items go, you can disable slots. If you are just wanting to craft one item, this may not be helpful, but the Crafter shines when hooked up to hoppers. By disabling slots, you are directing hopper flow into the spaces that the crafting recipe is in.
So, how do you actually use hoppers with a Crafter? By placing hoppers on the Crafter, you can then place a check on them, which can be filled with the desired item. For example, in the image above, we have two hoppers (one on either side of the Crafter), with a chest on each. One holds sticks while the other holds diamonds in order to make a diamond sword.
When power is provided to the Crafter, it will make the item placed in the inventory spots; as new materials are added to the chests, they will funnel into the enabled Crafter slots. As long as the Crafter is powered, new items will be made.
To catch the items that are made from the Crafter, you don't need a hopper. Instead, you will just need to attach a chest to the front. Any crafted items will automatically be placed in the chest.
How To Automate Crafter Production
By flipping a lever or pressing a button, your Crafter will make one item. This can be expanded upon if you are looking for constant power to make multiple items without needing to press anything. To do so, you'll need to make a repeating signal.
This 'loop' has been perfected by Minecrafters all across the internet, but let's look at a very simple way to repeat a redstone signal. Firstly, place a lever down. Coming from the lever, add one pile of redstone dust with a sticky piston attached to the side.
From here, flipping the lever should cause the sticky piston to push outward. With the lever off, place an Observer directly in front of the sticky piston. Now, leave a space, and then add another Observer that is facing the first one. It's important that you leave a space between the two Observers!
At this point, you can test the loop. Flipping the lever should cause the redstone to repeatedly send a signal. Turn the lever off, and then place down the Crafter next to the second Observer that you placed down. You can add hoppers to the Crafter as mentioned above, or just leave it as is for some testing.
Without a chest attached to the Crafter, the items will quickly shoot out of the side and onto the ground.
Why Use A Crafter?
With a repeating signal that powers a Crafter, you can quickly craft pretty much anything. This ranges from simple tasks such as crafting a lot of bows (which don't stack) to make Dispensers, or adding one to an iron farm in order to make iron blocks to save on space.
Of course, you could also use the Crafter to simply make any item that you don't want to. A simple, manual Crafter can be set up with a button; by pressing it, you will get a weapon to replace the one you recently lost or broke. Whatever the case, the Crafter is quite handy.
