Factorio Forums

Currently, I have problem to figure out what the use case of a stack inserter.

Firstly it cannot be used to grab items from a mixed belt, since it might got stuck.


Secondly, it cannot be used as the output when quality modules are inserted.

Here comes the problem, what is the real use case of the stack inserter?

Achieving large throughput on an unmixed belt. That means unmixed on both item and quality.

Shopt put the case very well. I wanted to add that I was also able to use it with mixed outputs as long as the batch size of products shared a common factor above 1.

Example being crushers on a platform with quality running advanced metalic crushing. With a forced hand size of 2 the 10 iron ore and 4 copper ore per batch won't clog and still let me double the belt's throughput.

One important thing to realize is that normal inserters can grab stacks of items. So that stack inserter on the screenshot putting things in the assembler is not doing any better then a bulk inserter. So you only need stack inserters to put things on belts, not the other way around.

On Vulcanus they are great, with the full research, your belt has 5x the throughput. Allowing a lot of icon/copper/steel on single belts.

You can use them to unload from machines running quality if you set filters. You'll need one for each quality level but it works.

The main use though is for things you don't care about quality on. I'm not sure why you would even use stack inserters with quality builds, quality means you can't use speed modules and without speed modules your throughput isn't nearly enough to need the 300 items/second that stack inserters bring unless you have some incredibly huge line of crafting machines. Stack Inserters are for your foundries surrounded by beacons putting out 100 copper cables a second.