The Shaker is where most players see their first Gold pixel. Feed it Wet Sand and two streams come out: Gold falls straight through the machine, while Residue stacks on top and creeps toward the edge. Getting those two streams separated cleanly is the whole early game in miniature.
The machine itself is simple. Each step has a checkpoint so you can confirm the line works before adding the next stage.
Dry Sand does nothing in a Shaker. Mix it with Water first — one Sand pixel plus one Water pixel becomes two Wet Sand — so Water also doubles your material before it ever reaches the machine.
Checkpoint: your pile darkens into Wet Sand where the water touches it.
One Shaker clears its own Residue painfully slowly. Run several as steps going down from the input: Wet Sand is the heavier pixel, so it sinks through the Residue layer and keeps the whole staircase self-clearing.
Checkpoint: each Shaker sits one level lower than the one feeding it.
Drop Wet Sand onto the highest Shaker. Every pixel always becomes 1 Residue, with a 1-in-4 chance of also dropping 1 Gold straight through. Expect roughly one Gold per four Sand.
Checkpoint: Gold falls out underneath while Residue creeps off the top edge.
The Residue spilling off the top is fuel, not trash. Burn it into Burnt Residue and drop it on a Kinetic Press; that turns waste into Gold and Seeds instead of a growing backlog.
Checkpoint: Residue keeps moving and never blocks the staircase.
These are the three ways a Shaker line most often stops producing, and what to undo for each.
Only Gold passes through the Shaker body. If something else got dropped in, dig it out by hand and seal that entry — the machine keeps trapping material until you do.
A single Shaker cannot push Residue fast enough on its own. Add more staircase steps so density and gravity carry the layer downward instead of relying on the machine to move it.
Gold is one-in-four, so short stretches with no payout are expected. If the supply is still flowing, the machine is fine — keep feeding and the odds even out over a few hundred pixels.