Okay, first off, I want to say, this mod is awesome. I love the whole physicality/tactile renaissance era machinery and there might be more that can be added just by looking into Da Vinci's journals because this mod reminds me of this.

One thing I'd love to be able to do is have wheels. Not give them power or anything or use a motor. I mean that'd be cool, but my use case would be to mount a bunch of drills in a grid and then unlock wheels that bear this this contraption. This would allow the structure on the wheels to be pushed via collision (at least). Then when locking those wheels up again, they snap to the nearest block (majority rules).

This would allow me to build a tunneling machine. It doesn't need to be fully automated, though that would be cool if the full loop for achieving that was there.

My thought is that even if I have to manually push it, lock it up, run the drills with a lever/switch, power down the drills, then move the contraption again, rinse repeat, this could be a real time saver and rewarding for the player.

One idea is to be able to use these wheels on rails. Like steel wheels on a rail track. That would create a limitation, but given how much track a person can pull up from an abandoned mine, maybe that might create some balance. Or maybe it doesn't need that limitation.

Again, I want to say how impressed I am with how well thought out the features are in this mod (not just sucking up). From using items (and I assume their underlying ids bc I haven't looked at the code) as frequencies, to deciding to use a canon for building schematics, or providing the set material on the hotbar icon for the replacement/placement gun. You have not skimped on the immersion and thoroughness of vision for usability. I love it, and that's not something I say often, so thank you. I come from a professional game dev background, and this mod is fantastic thus far from the demos I've seen. If you're open to pull requests, I'd gladly get involved, pending enough time.

Hi, fuzzyweapon!
You are absolutely right - making the contraptions able to be moved freely will open up plenty of possibilities. So far I think mounting structures on rails is our best bet.
We've been discussing clockwork-powered minecarts on the discord and those would probably work pretty well with this mechanic.
To make it less limited, there could be a block placer/activator that works while moving, much like the drill does. With that you could automate the placement of additional tracks.

Thank you so much for the kind words, it honors me to hear this from a professional.
And of course, I'm grateful for all the help I can get, be it translations, bugfixes, ideas or just joining the conversation!