Inserters can't remove items from boilers

[immibis]

Place a boiler. Place an inserter next to it with the boiler on the input side. Place some items in the boiler. Notice that the inserter does not remove the items from the boiler.

Both the boiler and the burner inserter have 5 coal in this screenshot.

[kovarex]

I bet my shoes that it has something to do with the puzzle challenge
Anyway, I changed to be possible to do this in 0.9.2

[immibis]

I bet my shoes that it has something to do with the puzzle challenge
Anyway, I changed to be possible to do this in 0.9.2

You win your bet! Here, have another pair of your shoes that I stole from your closet while you were sleeping.

[sparr]

inserters can only remove items from the output slot of a building, never from the fuel or input slots. this applies to boilers, assemblers, chemical plants, etc.

[BurnHard]

inserters can only remove items from the output slot of a building, never from the fuel or input slots. this applies to boilers, assemblers, chemical plants, etc.

Yes otherwise it is quite inconsistent and could open up other problems. Eg inserters taking out the fuel of furnaces etc. But what is made impossible with such a change would be eg a boiler that needs fuel and produces ash. The inserter would now take out ash and fuel.

[sparr]

Right now there is a threshold where inserters stop inserting into a building. For assemblers it seems to be double the requirements for the recipe in the assembler. For a boiler it's some static number of items or amount of fuel?

My first idea would be to allow an inserter to grab ingredients/fuel when the amount is at the threshold. However, this has a serious problem. How would an inserter know NOT to take out ingredients when you only want it to take out results? Requiring a smart inserter for trivial out-serter tasks is not a reasonable thing to do.

How might you address this, while still meeting your desire?

[immibis]

inserters can only remove items from the output slot of a building, never from the fuel or input slots. this applies to boilers, assemblers, chemical plants, etc.

Inserters can remove from the input or fuel slots if there are no output slots. This applies to burner mining drills, for example.

Either inserters can take items from the input slots of boilers, or they can't take items from boilers at all. I don't see why you prefer the latter.

[sparr]

Inserters can remove from the input or fuel slots if there are no output slots. This applies to burner mining drills, for example.

Really? I'll have to test this. So you can use an inserter to remove fuel from a burner mining drill?