What is a Minecraft Crafter? The Minecraft crafter completely changed the landscape of Minecraft Redstone systems and automation when it was announced as part of the 1.21 Tricky Trials update. This fascinating block works just like a crafting table, but it can also craft for you thanks to its toggleable slots and redstone functionality.
As you can imagine, all of this means it's not the simplest Minecraft block to get to grips with at first, but once you know how it works, you'll be incorporating them into your Minecraft farms in no time. Whether you want to know how this block works in the crafting game or simply how to craft one, we've got all the information right here.
How to get a Minecraft Crafter
To craft a Minecraft Crafter, you need the following items:
- Five iron ingots
- Crafting table
- Two Redstone dust
- Dropper
To craft the crafter, place the iron around the top of the crafting grid. Then place the crafting table in the center with the dropper below it, and fill the remaining two slots with the Redstone.
As you can see, the Minecraft Crafter recipe is fairly resource expensive, but you can break it with any tool to move it or take it with you to a new base.
Using a Minecraft Crafter
The main things to know about the crafter are that, while it can be used as a standard crafting table, the toggled slots must be used to accurately determine automated crafting. Also, the crafting process is triggered by any Redstone signal, from a fully automated clock to a simple button.
From here, things get trickier – depending on how complicated you want your setup to be. For example, a simple system that chucks a diamond helmet on your head with a button press can be done with few materials and in a relatively small space.
In this example, a chest holding Minecraft diamonds would lead into a hopper, which itself leads into a crafter with the correct slots disabled. Another hopper would lead to a dropper located at head height. Place (and push) a button on the crafter itself, and you’ll be wearing your shiny new gear in no time.
However, you can make things more complex with furnaces, multiple ingredients, and even complete autonomy if you’re good with Redstone circuits. Making more complex items with multiple ingredients is harder, as resources go into the first available slot, so you might not get what you’re after even with slots disabled.
Play around with your setup until it works just right, but there’s one more important thing to note. The crafter dispenses items from the front, so if a hopper is required, you should place it in the space in front of and one down from the crafter, as per the image above. Placing it directly below the crafter just pulls ingredients straight out. You might also need to place a few blocks behind the hopper as well to block any wayward ejections.
That’s the Minecraft crafter, a game-changing block for Redstone pros and those wanting to learn more. If you’re ready to build the wildest Minecraft machines, they might look nice in a factory, one of our favorite Minecraft build ideas. Or perhaps you just want to put something simple in your modest Minecraft house – either way, enjoy all that time you’re saving.