Merging 1 into n belts?

[JackGruff]

I'm looking for a pattern to reliably merge the contents of one belt to many others. The order and balance of items doesn't need to be preserved, it's just that if there is space anywhere in the n destination belts, then the in-belt can be merged.

Example of what I mean:

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Edit: I wonder if a way would be to use priority splitters to keep any free space on the incoming side, like this:

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In theory, it should only have to be done once before every merge, and loading kept to one side unless I use n - 1 splitters to shift the free space to the other side.

[jodokus31]

Maybe this also helps:
viewtopic.php?p=545420#p545420
Is a bit over the top, maybe

[Zanthra]

Lane balance the belt coming in, then use a splitter tree to produce at least N belts from your new input, and send each one to each of the belts you want to merge into. Use a splitter to merge each new belt into the corresponding old belt, and prioritize the old belt as input over the new input.

[JackGruff]

Well, using priority splitters to make sure there's free space seems to be working great. You want to put them in before every merge.

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[Durr]

I always pull products from the right side of the bus and add new items to the left side, and use priority splitters to slide everything to the farthest right lane before I add or pull items. This makes it so that the lane being pulled from is always full and there is always room to add new items unless the belt is fully backed up.
I'm sure all those splitters are bad for UPS, but I'll worry about that when/if I ever build a base big enough for UPS to be an issue.

[Zanthra]

Well, using priority splitters to make sure there's free space seems to be working great. You want to put them in before every merge.

Capture.PNG

Try this with the right two belts of the copper ore fully compressed and the left two empty.

[JackGruff]

Try this with the right two belts of the copper ore fully compressed and the left two empty.

Yes, I realise that my arrangement of splitters did not make sense, the ore just competes with ore from the other splitters. I decided to invert the pattern and it's working really well. For example, to merge one belt from the left in to 3 belts:

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