MC3DPrint

Guide / Basics

Basics

Item Mode & converting materials

A printer has one Smart Print Slot, and what you put in it decides the mode. Load a written Blueprint Disc and you get Blueprint Mode, which builds a structure. Drop in a plain item and you get Item Mode, which makes copies of that item.

Item Mode is what turns MC3DPrint from a build-reprinting mod into a material converter.

Using Item Mode

  1. Dock a filament spool on the printer’s side (Shift+Right Click), and give the machine RF.
  2. Put any valued item in the Smart Print Slot. This is the template.
  3. Press Start, or flip Auto on.

Copies stack up in the output slot below. A manual Start prints exactly one; with Auto on, the printer keeps going until it runs out of filament, power, or output room.

The template is never consumed. It sits in the slot as a pattern and you can pull it back out whenever you like, so one diamond is enough to print diamonds forever, as long as you can pay for them.

Copies come out as clean base items. Enchantments, stored contents, and other value-bearing data are stripped, so printing a copy of an enchanted book or a full shulker box will never clone what’s inside it.

What it costs

A copy costs that item’s own FU value, drawn from a docked spool at that item’s tier or higher (spending is down-only), plus RF per tick while it runs. The GUI shows the per-copy cost before you start.

Because printing carries a markup, a copy costs slightly more filament than the item is worth until you fit four Efficiency modules, which brings it to exact 1:1 break-even. That needs a Tier 4 or higher machine: upgrade slots scale with tier, so a T1-T3 printer physically cannot hold four of them. You can never print an item for less than its value.

Converting one material into another

Here is where it gets interesting. Filament is denominated by tier, not by item. Winding is exact-tier and spending is down-only, which together mean one thing:

Within a tier, matter is interchangeable.

Wind sculk and you get Tier 5 filament. Diamond is also Tier 5. So a Tier 5 spool wound from sculk will happily print diamonds. Nothing special is required; it falls straight out of the two rules.

Some examples, all at exact break-even (so on a Tier 4+ machine; smaller printers pay the markup):

Wind thisTierPrint this
3 copper ingotsT22 gold ingots
4 end stoneT21 iron ingot
5 redstoneT31 glowstone
5 blaze rodsT44 emeralds
10 sculkT53 diamonds
1 spare elytraT64 netherite ingots

Spending is down-only, so a high-tier spool also pays for anything beneath it: a Tier 6 spool can print gold, iron, redstone, and stone all day. What it can’t do is work upward. No amount of Tier 1 filament will ever add up to a diamond, which is what keeps a cobblestone farm from quietly becoming a netherite farm.

That asymmetry is the whole economy. Converting sideways is free of charge (beyond the markup); converting upward is impossible.

What Item Mode refuses

Not everything copies. The status line tells you which rule you hit:

  • Not Printable covers items with no FU value (in strict mode, the default), filament spools (they store filament, so copying one would launder it), restricted trophies like mob heads, and wind-only treasure such as saddles, name tags, wither skulls, and the dragon egg. Wind-only items still recycle into filament at the Winder; they just never come back out of a printer.
  • Requires a Tier N Printer means the item is fine but the machine is too small. Tier 3 string won’t print in a Tier 2 printer. Use a bigger machine.
  • No Filament means you have filament, but not at a tier that can pay. Remember it only spends downward.

A few items go the other way and are print-only, valued and printable but barred from winding, like bones and planks. That stops a trivially automated farm from laundering its output into filament.

Where to go next