Sandustry Vacuum Guide: Cleanup, Tanks, and Material Handling
Quick answer
Current conservative Vacuum guide focused on cleanup and material handling.
Quick Answer
The Vacuum is a Tier 3 tool used for controlled cleanup and material handling. The current official Research and tool references describe it as a 2,000 Gold unlock with two tanks that can hold up to two material types. Use it to clean loose material, recover mixed piles, and move small amounts of material during maintenance.
Do not design a permanent production chain around old demo discussions about Spores, planned storage bags, or future tool splits. Verify the exact control behavior in your current build before depending on it.
What the Vacuum Is Good At
| Job | Why it helps |
|---|---|
| Clearing Shaker overflow | Pull loose Sand, Wet Sand, Gold, or Residue away from machines |
| Maintenance after jams | Remove the one wrong particle that blocks a Kinetic Press or Filter |
| Moving small batches | Relocate test material without rebuilding conveyors |
| Cleaning construction zones | Clear debris before queued buildings can finish |
| Separating mistakes | Recover from a mixed pile before it spreads into the whole factory |
For large routine movement, prefer Conveyors, Launchers, Pipes, Pumps, or Drones. The Vacuum is best as a service tool, not the backbone of automation.
Current Tank Behavior
The important planning detail is the two-tank limit. If you pull more than two material types into one cleanup job, the tool can become awkward quickly. Before using it near a mixed output, decide which two materials you actually want to collect.
Good cleanup habits:
- Empty or route one material before vacuuming a new material type.
- Avoid using it where Water, Steam, and solids are all mixed together.
- Keep Gold and Seeds away from general debris cleanup.
- Use Filters after dumping material back into a factory lane.
Where It Fits in a Factory
| Factory area | Vacuum role | Better permanent tool |
|---|---|---|
| Shaker line | Clear Residue that piles on a machine | Filtered side lane |
| Burn zone | Remove unconverted Residue after a test | Return loop |
| Kinetic Press tower | Clear blocked material on top of the press | Proper 25+ block drop and angled cleanup Launcher |
| Planter module | Separate Gold, Amethelis, Seed, or Wet Seed after mistakes | Dedicated output filters |
| Exploration shaft | Clear small piles before building | Hauler or Sweeper Drone later |
Common Mistakes
| Problem | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Vacuum grabs the wrong material | Too many materials in one pile | Thin the pile or isolate the target first |
| Cleaned material gets mixed again | Dumped into an unsorted lane | Dump into a staging bin, then filter |
| Press jams return | Vacuum cleared the symptom, not the layout | Fix drop height, input purity, or output space |
| Water cleanup is messy | Liquids need containment | Use basins, Pumps, and Pipes for planned fluid movement |
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