Factorio Forums

I've just started a new game, one of the inserters is acting up.

There's definitely enough coal for it to grab, yet it doesn't:


I attached the save, it should move 5 iron ore and die. Removing and re-placing it does not fix it!

A burner inserter only fuels itself if it picks up fuel for what's in front of it. If the furnace has more than 5 coal, or a different fuel source altogether, the inserter won't pick up the coal in the first place.

sillyfly wrote:A burner inserter only fuels itself if it picks up fuel for what's in front of it. If the furnace has more than 5 coal, or a different fuel source altogether, the inserter won't pick up the coal in the first place.

It's supposed to grab coal and fuel itself when it runs low, though. The two inserters above it seem to work correctly.

Zeblote wrote:

sillyfly wrote:A burner inserter only fuels itself if it picks up fuel for what's in front of it. If the furnace has more than 5 coal, or a different fuel source altogether, the inserter won't pick up the coal in the first place.

It's supposed to grab coal and fuel itself when it runs low, though. The two inserters above it seem to work correctly.

That is only what the wiki says. In reality, it only puts burnable fuel into itself if it happens to coincidently pick some up under normal circumstances.

If it is fueling a furnace, then so long as you dont put fuel in the furnace later, it will be fine. if you do, then from the ore it puts in, it will eventually run down.

Hmm. That was indeed the problem, I'll have to remember not to dump coal in furnaces while they still use burner inserters.

I think it should be changed so it will always grab coal if it's low on fuel and coal is on the belt it's grabbing from.

Zeblote wrote:

sillyfly wrote:A burner inserter only fuels itself if it picks up fuel for what's in front of it. If the furnace has more than 5 coal, or a different fuel source altogether, the inserter won't pick up the coal in the first place.

It's supposed to grab coal and fuel itself when it runs low, though. The two inserters above it seem to work correctly.

I made a mod a whiole ago to fix this: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 92&t=14634

Zeblote wrote:Hmm. That was indeed the problem, I'll have to remember not to dump coal in furnaces while they still use burner inserters.

I think it should be changed so it will always grab coal if it's low on fuel and coal is on the belt it's grabbing from.

Hmmm seems like this has changed with the belt optimisations. It should work as expected starting with the next release. That means that burner inserter when low on energy will always try to fuel itself first (when taking stuff from the belt or entity).

I actually reported a similar issue a while ago. Lets hope this fix helps my issue too.