Factorio Forums

I find this thread fascinating.

I hope these pictures will help everyone to understand this amazing feature

You will need this explanation to understand the following gif (watch for control signal) P.S.
And yes, from this moment you can control your item-flow without any inserters.

One single item can change everything...

So you could repeat this multiple times in a row (same setup, inputting from the prior section's output) but drop in a different control item to toggle each section for the item you want to spit out. And thus, say, sort every type of ore in Bob's mods from a single input belt. Horribly inefficient, but amazingly cool?

roy7 wrote:So you could repeat this multiple times in a row (same setup, inputting from the prior section's output) but drop in a different control item to toggle each section for the item you want to spit out. And thus, say, sort every type of ore in Bob's mods from a single input belt. Horribly inefficient, but amazingly cool?

No, I will be very upset if you use this setup for such purpose.

For your task it will be better to use static build, it means you don't need to use control signal at all.
Just add 2 splitters per each item type which you want to filter (if you are using blue belt you will need 8 smart inserters per item type to do the same job, so this setup is very efficient for fast belts).

I suggest to use control signal for dynamic manipulating with parts of your factory... For example: you decided to switch off some production and you don't want to leave there any item inside. You can send signal using combinators from command center and the entire part of your factory will be switched off. And this is the simplest application of this setup.

I forgot to mention:

Appropriate filter will be applied If you send one item in the control signal, but second item (of the same type) will turn this filter off.
Example:
input: copper, iron, gear; output: copper, iron, gear; filtered: -;
Send one gear in the control signal...
input: copper, iron, gear; output: copper, iron; filtered: gear;
Send one iron in the control signal...
input: copper, iron, gear; output: copper; filtered: iron, gear;
Send one gear in the control signal...
input: copper, iron, gear; output: copper, gear; filtered: iron;

Ah, this was nice info. Thanks to Daniel for explanations that made sense after a while! If anyone still don't get it, I will link to this stream of mine where I figured most of it out.

http://www.twitch.tv/danielv1234/v/36275843

I didn't realize that splitters were that dumb.
I think the best part of this concept is how it overflows: When one item backs up, it will flow out everywhere including the filtered output, and I guess this can be used in some way smart inserters cannot.

XKnight thanks so much for sharing these designs. They've been so much fun looking at and multiple people on reddit have been experimenting with them. Using the 2nd static design of yours, exactly as shown, will fail if the loop-back line backs up all the way (into the interior loops). If you side load the main input, so the loop-back never stops, it's rock solid.
Forgive the power poles, lights, and long Dytech underground belt. Was my only map I had handy to test this on.

This stuff is totally sick XD I love it

XKnight wrote:

ssilk wrote:It surprises me all the time, how the belts can be "missused" to make something cool. Good find.

Could you share links to other interesting belt usages?

Uh, just read that now.

The wiki is a good source:
https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... port_belts

(and all the linked pages in the bottom, especially https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... =Splitters or https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... _splitters
but that is a bit outdated)

I made a video explaining the magic of XKnight's static sorter design.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQGFhebyrSI

Excellent video for an amazing trick

I don't like the original design by XKnight, it has to many flaws.
But I really like the 2nd design and in fact DOSorDIE and I are using it in our factory.
We use it to filter items from a fully compressed belt without losing compression (truely amazing )

I have a little gif for you as an example In case you were wondering what we've build, we are testing a new design for our fully automated production line.

We had many talks in the office about these sorters

Initially none of us understood how exactly they work. So this was not an intended feature.

Twinsen wrote:We had many talks in the office about these sorters

Initially none of us understood how exactly they work. So this was not an intended feature.

likely to change?

I've read discussion about item sorting on the reddit thread, and it seems people don't see clearly advantages and disadvantages between first (lets call it "infinite loop") and second design (maybe "magic splitter?" ). So I want to summarize them...

Infinite-loop:
+ it is simple (personally I prefer simple and smart design, so I think this is an advantage).
+ it is very convenient if input belt has only 2 different items,
- otherwise you will need to built a chain of nested filters.
- it has throughput limitation, because inner infinite cycle always should be faster than outer belt. As a result it is impossible to use this design for blue belts.
- it has only 50% efficiency, because half of all items are sent back in the input.
- you need to put several items inside loop. Not so big disadvantage, but for an expensive items this may be a problem.
* some problems when belt is jammed which can be easily fixed (example)

Magic splitter:
- it is odd (very odd ).
+ it is more efficient for belts with 3+ different items, because you don't need to build a chain of nested filters. You may use this design for filtering different kind of items simultaneously.
+ it doesn't have throughput limitation, so you can use it with blue belts.
+ it has 100% efficiency.
+ you don't need to waste your resources for items inside loop.
- it is big, and you need more splitters to build it.
* this design has problems with jammed belts, but this can be fixed (look for the gif below), although fixed version has reduced efficiency
+ using this design you can change filter in runtime

Comparison with smart inserters (by throughput):
"Infinite-loop" (2 items on RED belt): you will need to build 3 smart inserters to achieve the same performance (6 inserters per RED line * 0.5 efficiency)
"Magic splitter" (4 items on BLUE belt): you will need to build 9 smart inserters to achieve the same performance (9 inserters per BLUE line * 1 efficiency)
"Magic splitter" (4 items on BLUE belt) + changing filter in runtime (4 smart inserters): you will need to build additional 32 smart inserters to achieve the same performance (4 items * 9 inserters per BLUE line * 1 efficiency - 4 smart inserters)
P. S. All measurements I made by myself so some errors are possible, feel free to correct them

That's a clever fix.

I originally found little use in sorting this way, but the design allows for more than sorting:
I'll be able to write about it more later, but for now; enjoy the picture.

edit:
setup: the spinning items in the small loops must be fully compressed (1 short of stopping, or 20 items)

A little bit more: I see this as a way to give boilers priority access to coal.

Tris trick won't work with iron and copper ore because they're treated as one type.

Neotix wrote:Tris trick won't work with iron and copper ore because they're treated as one type.

Ores actually work just as well as any other type, you just didn't prime your setup correctly.

Ok, my bad. Don't know why it worked strange before, but when i built it second time on new map it worked correctly.