AE2 Processors: The Inscriber and Printed Circuits
Processors are the components behind every advanced Applied Energistics 2 device, and they are made in the Inscriber. This guide covers the presses, prints and processors.
The Inscriber
The 
Inscriber stamps materials into printed circuits using presses. The four presses — 
Inscriber Silicon Press, 
Inscriber Logic Press, 
Inscriber Calculation Press and 
Inscriber Engineering Press — are found in meteorite structures and are reusable, so recovering them is an early goal.
Prints and processors
Each press stamps a material into a printed part:
Printed Silicon from Silicon.
Printed Logic Circuit, 
Printed Calculation Circuit and 
Printed Engineering Circuit from redstone, certus and pure crystals.
Combining a printed circuit with Printed Silicon and redstone in the Inscriber yields the finished processors — the 
Logic Processor, 
Calculation Processor and 
Engineering Processor — which drive storage components, crafting and higher-tier machines.
Why they matter
Processors gate AE2 progression: storage components need Calculation Processors, spatial and high-end devices need Engineering Processors. Automating the Inscriber early — feeding it silicon and materials — is what lets the rest of your network scale.
Fifteen recipes carry the whole mod
The inscriber holds 15 recipes, and that small number is deceptive — every processor, and therefore nearly every component above the basic tier, passes through it. Against the mod's 332 crafting recipes, the inscriber is where the real gating happens.
The other machine categories are smaller and narrower: Transform at 8, 
Charger at 3, Entropy at 2, and Quartz Cutting at 1 recipe on 1.21.1 only.
Why players build banks of them
Because each processor needs several inscriber passes and the machine handles one at a time, a single inscriber becomes the bottleneck for an entire base almost immediately. Building three or more, with the presses distributed between them, is the standard answer.
Where the material comes from
The mod's only structure is the Meteorite, at spacing 32 with a separation of 8, placed as a top-layer modification. Presses come from meteorites, and at that spacing they are common enough to find while travelling.
Charging
The Charger has only 3 recipes but is a prerequisite for the quartz line, so it belongs beside the inscribers rather than elsewhere in the base.
Version note
The builds are near-identical: one crafting recipe differs, and quartz cutting exists on 1.21.1 alone.