Fabricators, Manufacturers, and Lathes

A fabricator (often shortened to just “fab”) or manufacturer is a machine that can automatically create items from a variety of processed materials. The Cargo Bay features many different ones right next to each other. These can usually have raw materials left, since the standard miner procedure is to teleport everything they don't need for their own laser drills and industrial space armor into the QM's lap.

“Manufacturer”, “fabricator”, and “lathe” all describe the same type of machine, so the terms are mostly interchangeable. If you're curious, the game's code uses “manufacturer”.

To make something with a fabricator/manufacturer, simply click on the fabricator/manufacturer to bring up its interface and click on the icon/name for the item you want to make. You may have to scroll down a bit to see the item.

The item currently being created and amount of time left until it's finished is displayed on the right, in the Queue. There you can also pause or cancel it.

You can select multiple icons/items for the machine to print. It'll do subsequently rather all at the same time though, e.g. asking for an extinguisher, then sheets gives you extinguisher once it's done, then sheets when it's done, rather than both at the same time.

The Repeat Option: If you want to a fabricator/manufacturer to repeatedly make something until it runs out of material, click on the No link on the right under Repeat to do just that. It should change to Yes, and you can click on it again to turn it off.

Searching & Filtering: All fabricators/manufacturers have a basic search function and filters in the top right. To get rid of a filter, click on the Filter link and select REMOVE FILTER.

Speed: You can also control how much time it takes for each item to be created, with the Speed buttons on the right, with higher settings consuming more power.

Each fabricator/manufacturer usually comes with its own supply of mauxite, pharosium, molitz, and occasionally cotton, but they can accept refined ores that have been dug up by mining, organic materials grown by botany, custom alloys made from Ore Processing, raw materials recycled through the reclaimer, and many, many other sources.

If a fabricator/manufacturer does not have enough material for an item or lacks the required type of material, the name of the item and the unmet material requirement will be in red font when you hover your mouse over it.

Loading Materials: To load materials into the fabricator/manufacturer, simply click on it with the materials in-hand. As previously mentioned, make sure they're processed first.

Removing Materials: To remove materials, go to the list of materials on the right, click on the upward facing arrow button, and enter the number of units of materials to be withdrawn. 10 units = 1 bar/block.

Buying Materials: If the miners have filled some ore into their RockBox and marked it for sale, you can buy it at these machines. Simply swipe your card on the fabricator/manufacturer, enter your PIN, and at the manufacturer/fabricator interface, choose the ore you what to buy and the amount you want. It comes as raw ore, so you need a reclaimer or processor.

Hidden Items: Some items are “hidden”, meaning you can only make them when the manufacturer/fabricator is hacked to allow them.

Downloading Items: You can also insert blueprints from a ruckingenur kit into any manufacturer/fabricator to make it able to produce things it usually can't produce. Items inserted this way are categorized as “Downloaded” items.

Many materials, such as metal sheets and raw ore, cannot be directly be used in the fabricators/manufacturers. Instead, they must be refined by some sort of processor into bars and blocks, which can then be inserted into a fabricator/manufacturer and then used to make items.

Processors come to two forms: the stationary material processor, often found in Ore Processing and Mining Department, and the portable reclaimer, which can be ordered from the QM and is often found in Robotics, Cargo Bay, Mining Department, and a few other areas that use fabricators/manufacturers. Both can take ore and process it into material blocks/bars, but only the reclaimer can accept sheets, rods, floor tiles, and other refined goods. This makes the reclaimer handy for tasks such as:

• Turning metal sheets into steel bars and glass sheets into glass blocks, which can substitute for mauxite and molitz, respectively.
• Extracting copper, a conductor that can fills the same role as pharosium, and synthrubber from cable coils.
• Turning steel scrap and glass shards from wreckage back into steel bars and glass blocks.
• Making glass sheets (or sheets of similar crystalline material) into glass blocks to be used in the glass recycler for more glassware.

For both types, to load materials for processing, you can either put the materials on the floor and drag and drop their sprite onto the processor's or simply click on the processor with the materials in your active hand. Also, you can use drag and drop on the processor to set its output to a fabricator, floor tile or crate.

Be aware that turning on a reclaimer when it doesn't have enough material to make a bar/block will cause it to incinerate whatever was put in, so only insert enough material to make its processed version.

Also known as the autolathe. Several of them are available on the station, for example in tool storage, the warehouse and research sector, among other places. In theory, it creates many cheap and useful general-purpose items such as tools and basic construction materials for when you need to plug a hull breach in a hurry. In reality, someone will mail vuvuzelas to every corner of the station before the five minute mark.

Used to create surgery tools and certain implants, prostheses, parts and upgrades for cyborgs and robots. At least one can be found in Robotics, conventionally enough.

Found in medbay. Can be used to make surgery tools and other basic medical equipment.

Standard mining machinery. In theory, it turns the ore spoils of miners into more effective equipment and blasting charges. In practice, these are used exclusively to create mishandled mining explosives and blastproof robot armor for Syndicate operatives and other sympathizers.

Found in Customs, the Locker Room on some maps, and on the Syndicate Battlecruiser, of all places. Mainly intended to help mugged crewmen regain their dignity, it creates a limited selection of clothing. You can rip apart bedsheets and towels from the nearby linen bin to get more cotton for the manufacturer.

Found in the Head of Personnel's Office and sometimes Customs as well, depending on the map. It's like the Uniform Manufacturer, but instead of just making clothes, it can also manufacture spare ID cards and access implants. As with the uniform manufacturer, you can rip apart the nearby linens to get more cotton for it.

PersonnelEquipmentManufacturer.png

Essentially a Personnel Equipment Manufacturer and Uniform Manufacturer combined together, though unlike the latter, it can't make satchels, backpacks, or formalwear.

Located in the central pod hangar. In exchange for devouring tons of minerals, they dispense almost everything you could want or need for the labor-intensive pod construction and upgrade work.

Located in the dropship hangar. In exchange for devouring tons of minerals, they dispense almost everything you could want or need for dropship repair and upgrades. The dropship fabricator has its own point system, which gradually fills as its synthesizer receives power, or can be boosted with Dropship Supply Packs that add 150 points per pack. By itself, 1 point generates per tick (2 seconds) the unit is powered. Once supplied, the unit manufactures components relatively quickly.

Located in Munitions, this transforms available materials into components for Munitions to build their cases for munitions for both ground and space troops.

The ammolathe is given basic ammo types to produce at the start of the round, and is located in Requisitions. Ideally, reverse-engineering scans of ammunition are only loaded in this fabricator, to prevent unfortunate security incidents.

Found in Engineering, often in the Cold Loop, and the Cargo Bay on some maps. Converts certain ores and metal into canisters and tanks of gases. Super useful for refilling the thermo-electric engine gas loops, creating plasma canisters for anti-Blob attacks, and creating oxygen canisters for repressurizing repaired hull breaches.

Creates empty crates of various designs, for all your shipping needs.

Found in the Research Wing. It makes various tools and instruments used for conducting experiments and performing SCIENCE!, such as reagent scanners, bins of artifact analysis forms, and audio tapes.

Creates mirrors and splitters for manipulating the beam produced by the power transmission laser, as well as parts for spatial interdictor and its mainboard variants. Speaking of, the Spatial Interdictor Assembly and Use book always spawns on top of this machine (or at least on the same tile as it).

Found in the mechanic's workshop, you can't fabricate anything from it round start. Instead, you must scan objects around the station with a Device Analyzer, enter the data into a Ruckingenur Kit, print a blueprint out, enter it into the machine, and then fabricate it. Those with a Head of Staff ID can delete recipes.