Soil Centrifuge

The Soil Centrifuge is a base module that converts Soil into other resources through centrifugation. It is one of the earliest large-scale refining tools in Astroneer, letting players turn gathered terrain into useful materials without having to leave the planet immediately. It operates from a power connection and consumes 6 U/s, with a full cycle costing 121.5 Units of energy regardless of how many items are produced.

A full operation uses two full Soil Canisters. If there is no available storage for the produced items and the empty Soil Canisters, the machine stops working until space is created. This makes nearby storage important when running the Soil Centrifuge continuously, especially during long production chains.

The Soil Centrifuge can separate Soil into a limited set of common resources. The exact output depends on the selected recipe, and the machine is generally used to convert abundant Soil into materials that are harder to gather in bulk. It is especially useful when paired with the Trade Platform: players can convert Soil into Scrap, then trade that Scrap for resources such as Quartz, Graphite, or Ammonium. This is often more efficient than spending the same Soil directly on those materials, since the Scrap route can produce better returns for those items.

• It is a strong early-game source of Scrap when processed through the appropriate loop.
• It is useful for bulk resource conversion when Soil is abundant and other materials are scarce.
• Keeping storage attached to the output side prevents the machine from halting mid-run.
• Before the Crafting Update, it could create any resource, but a sample of that resource had to be provided first.
• The Soil tank used to hold more than two Soil Canisters, but it could not be used until the first two full canisters were synthesized.
• It was previously known as the Mineral Extractor.

Because its output is driven by Soil rather than direct harvesting, the Soil Centrifuge is best treated as a conversion station rather than a mining tool. Its value comes from turning the most common terrain resource into a flexible production pipeline, whether the goal is basic supplies, Scrap generation, or feeding a larger trade network.