Better grinder is a fork of the Plain Grinder mod by Lothrazar. While I can respect the original vision of the mod, it had a few major issues and missing features that I was really frustrated by, so with the help of Ferri_annus (AKA I paid them to do all the code stuff while I made the textures) I'm happy to release Better grinder!
So what is Better grinder outside of that context? It is a simple mod that adds the most basic ore grinder possible, heavily inspired by the original AE2 quartz grindstone. You place the grinder block down, attach a handle, and every full rotation. of the handle completes one recipe. By default it adds a few simple recipes that let you grind vanilla ores into 2 dust each, which can be smelted into ingots, allowing you to produce more metal per ore!
However this mod is rather barebones by default, and the intention is mostly for it to be used by modpack developers, who can add custom recipes for it using datapacks or crafttweaker.
The main issues that better grinder fixes and/or adds to the original mod is as follows:
-Uses the default recipe registry, allowing people to remove the default recipes via datapack or Crafttweaker.
-Adds the capability for chance based outputs, which isn't used by default, but can be used by packdevs to Include recipes that have a certain percentage chance to give either a primary or secondary output.
-Adds a secondary output slot, that isn't used by default, but can be used by packdevs to add a potential second output to a grinding recipe.
-Built in Crafttweaker support! to make adding your own recipes even more of a breeze.
-Hopper compat, allowing you to insert items via the side, and extract them from below.
-Upgraded textures, by yours truly!
Example recipe:
//this recipe will consume a wooden axe, with a primary output of 2 clocks, and a 50% chance of giving you a powered rail as a secondary output.
<recipetype:plaingrinder:grinder>.addRecipe("recipe_name_as_string", [<item:minecraft:wooden_axe>], <item:minecraft:clock> * 2, 1.0, <item:minecraft:powered_rail>, 0.5);
Original mod: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/plain-grinder
Crafttweaker (Optional dependency): https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/crafttweaker