Simply Caterpillar is a great way to automate your mining capabilities in Minecraft with a series of machines that all connect together as a sort of train. Each part has their own functionality and will easily cut through a 3×3 tunnel for as long as you need it to or until it runs out of fuel. The first piece you’ll need to craft is the basic drill segment and that will be the key component of the drill head. After you’ve crafted a drill head you will then need to place it on the bottom block of the section you want the caterpillar to start drilling.

From here you can start adding different components to maximize the caterpillar’s abilities. You don’t necessarily need all of the included parts but having all of them connected will give you the best results. There is a drill seat you can connect and this will allow anyone to sit in the caterpillar as it’s drilling. This can be a useful part to allow you to add more fuel as it consumes it or simply to turn it off or on from a convenient location.

The item collector piece is a key component to scoop up all of the items that the drill head cuts through. The drill head has 18 slots of inventory storage and the item collector will automatically drop those items into the drill head inventory.

The decoration placer will automatically place any item you add to its 8 available slots. This can be used to place rails and torches as well as any blocks you’d like it to add as the caterpillar bores through the tunnel. You can scroll through the menu and change what blocks you want to place or remove the ones already there. The standard configuration is that of the mineshaft layout and will place rails down and every 10 blocks it will place torches and powered rails as well as support beams.

The reinforcement builder is a great addition to add a level of security to the entire mechanism. It will automatically replace any unstable blocks like sand and gravel as well as water, lava, and air pockets with cobblestone or any block you add to it. This can be a great way to ensure that nothing will destroy the machine itself or cause the tunnel to collapse on itself. Lava and water pockets can be detrimental to overall mining so the reinforcement builder helps to mitigate those dangers.

The incinerator will destroy any blocks you don’t want collected in the inventory. When you right click this piece it’ll open up a menu with nine slots available to mark as unwanted. These can be gravel and sand blocks or any other block you don’t want collected that can take up an excessive amount of storage space in the drill head inventory.

And if you want to add more storage to the overall machine you can attach the drill storage component. This piece will add 18 more slots to the overall drill head storage.

The final component is the transporter and this will take any items collected by the drill head and put them in a minecart with a chest. You need to first place a minecart with chest into one of the drill head consumption slots and it will place itself on the track after the machine turns on. After the chest is full it will automatically send it back along the railway created by the caterpillar!

So once you have all the components you want attached and ready to go you will need a fuel source loaded up in the drill head. Place any consumable fuel source in the designated slot and there is a power toggle above it. The consumption slots are where you would put all of the blocks needed for the machine to place them. So you’ll need to regularly check on the inventory to make sure it has enough items to continue placing as it drills. Once you toggle the power on, the caterpillar will start drilling forward.

If everything is connected properly then you now have a fully functional mechanism to drill out and collect items automatically. It isn’t particularly fast but you can set it to run on its own and you can either stay to monitor the progress or leave to take care of any other needs you might have. It will automatically stop once the fuel source has run out so you can put a limited amount in the drill head if you’d prefer it not to run indefinitely.