Factory-to-Factory Direct Insertion

[Chibiabos]

As much as possible, I'm trying to use conveyors for iron and metal plate inputs only; that is, the only thing carried on conveyors for producing the inserters and conveyors used for producing green science beakers are iron and copper plates. All the intervening items, such as copper wires to build circuits, and circuits to build inserters, and gears to build inserters and conveyors, are carried directly factory to factory using inserters.

I heard this can really make production robust, since eventually you get inserter stack bonuses that get lost if you move one factory's output to another factory's input via conveyor instead of inserter, and thinking on it, I can cut the number of inserters I need in half (and actually enjoy a MORE THAN 50% savings on power to power inserters, since not only am I only using half (okay, slightly less than half, as I haven't been able to figure out going all the way to green beakers without having to use conveyors for the inserter and conveyor next-to-last ingredients) as many inserters, but since factory-to-factory insertion enjoys the inserter stack benefit (while inserter-to-conveyor and, when one factory's output is picked up off the conveyor by an inserter inputting the next stage toward beakers, can only do one item at a time, so they'll have to gobble power more times to both load and unload each stage).

It did take a bit of fenagling, this is the start of my expandable line for producing the inserters and conveyors to produce green beakers:

Plates Only Input Conveyor.png (908.71 KiB) Viewed 3430 times

X represents where an inserter is grabbing from, O represents the target; copper grabbed from the top feeds the wire factory, which feeds directly into the circuit factories (which also need an iron plate conveyor input); the circuit factories feed direct via long-handled inserter to the inserter factories; these inserter factories output onto a conveyor just above the gear factory which double-serves the inserter and conveyor factories (not sure if the timing will work on this, trying to feed two, but I think inserters at least take awhile to produce compared with gears, so hopefully the gear factories will be able to keep up with both; I may end up giving them Speed module and prioritize them for fast input inserters), and in the space between the Inserter and Gear factories I use a Plate conveyor to feed the Gear factory, and finally the Conveyor factory row on the very bottom fed by the gear factory and a third Iron plate factory.

It is very crammed together. Including the copper input at the far north (ignore the topmost iron conveyor, that's feeding gear factories for my red beakers) and the southern output conveyor for the Conveyor factories, its 27 tiles tall. I do like that, if I need to, I could use underground conveyors in several rows between factories without having to disrupt things, if I need to move other things through the area.

For others trying to cut conveyor usage to the bare minimum, what are your setups? Has anyone figured out a way to go all the way to beakers without having to use intervening conveyors, or a setup more efficient than this?

As can be seen, I awkwardly have dual long-handed inserters between the inserter factory and the gear factory below; the LH inserters adjacent to the inserter factory are the output inserters, placing the inserters (boy that's cumbersome to say, inserters moving inserters!) on an output conveyor adjacent to the gear factory. I am just starting out, so am still stuck with wood poles and yellow conveyors, plus there's an iron deposit in the direction I want to expand, so as I get Medium poles, the design may change as I expand the line after getting the tech (should be a bit less messy in terms of so very little visible conveyors due to having to frequently use underground to duck under stuff, not having to place poles as frequently should ease that a bit so I can more easily monitor how the iron conveyors are).

I don't consider it too terrible that I haven't quite made it all the way to beakers ... conveyors and inserters are something I like to be able to stockpile anyway (always needing more!), but would be nice to figure out a way to go all the way.

I have thought about miner -> smelter -> direct to start, but because I am constantly having to move miners when I've exhausted a field, plus they are shaped irregularly so trying to get parallel patterns would be futile I think. I think I will do miner -> smelter for some miscellaneous things, though, such as ammo production (miner -> smelter -> smelter for steel, of course ... will be interesting to see how many steel smelters one iron smelter can feed), set that up in smaller mineral fields.

[aXa]

It is a good thing to use factory to factory insertion, but right now your design is not very efficient.
To produce electronic circuit efficiently, you need approximately a ratio of 2 copper cable factory for 1 electronic circuit.

copper cable factories need 2 fast insert for copper input; and one for output