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9-belt balancer

Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2016 6:30 pm
by Avezo
Does anyone have somewhat compact design for 9-belt balancer? Most of bigger balancers I've found were for even numbers and only small ones for odd, but putting them together for 9 belts would make it way bigger than I'd like. To make it small, the best I've come so far was using 8-belt with somewhat randomly connecting 9th, but doubt that would balance properly.

Re: 9-belt balancer

Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2016 12:26 pm
by Frightning
Avezo wrote:Does anyone have somewhat compact design for 9-belt balancer? Most of bigger balancers I've found were for even numbers and only small ones for odd, but putting them together for 9 belts would make it way bigger than I'd like. To make it small, the best I've come so far was using 8-belt with somewhat randomly connecting 9th, but doubt that would balance properly.
This is a very nontrivial problem, see the accepted answer here and link contained therein: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions ... m-factorio

Re: 9-belt balancer

Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2016 1:47 pm
by Xeanoa
Frightning wrote:
Avezo wrote:Does anyone have somewhat compact design for 9-belt balancer? Most of bigger balancers I've found were for even numbers and only small ones for odd, but putting them together for 9 belts would make it way bigger than I'd like. To make it small, the best I've come so far was using 8-belt with somewhat randomly connecting 9th, but doubt that would balance properly.
This is a very nontrivial problem, see the accepted answer here and link contained therein: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions ... m-factorio
Correct me if I'm wrong, but from reading the thread it seems that a 3 times 3 cluster of the simple 3-belt balancer would make a working 9 belt balancer that isn't even that large.

Re: 9-belt balancer

Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2016 4:59 pm
by Frightning
Xeanoa wrote:
Frightning wrote:
Avezo wrote:Does anyone have somewhat compact design for 9-belt balancer? Most of bigger balancers I've found were for even numbers and only small ones for odd, but putting them together for 9 belts would make it way bigger than I'd like. To make it small, the best I've come so far was using 8-belt with somewhat randomly connecting 9th, but doubt that would balance properly.
This is a very nontrivial problem, see the accepted answer here and link contained therein: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions ... m-factorio
Correct me if I'm wrong, but from reading the thread it seems that a 3 times 3 cluster of the simple 3-belt balancer would make a working 9 belt balancer that isn't even that large.
It's probably not that simple. What would happen if only belts 7-9 were accepting output, and only belts 1-3 had input? Look at the link therein to the Jupyter notebook and the 5x5 balancer therein, it's pretty non-trivial.

Re: 9-belt balancer

Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2016 5:04 pm
by Xeanoa
In that case you should be getting full output.

9000h_in_MsPaint.jpg

Re: 9-belt balancer

Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2016 11:44 pm
by Mehve
Xeanoa wrote:
Frightning wrote:
Avezo wrote:Does anyone have somewhat compact design for 9-belt balancer? Most of bigger balancers I've found were for even numbers and only small ones for odd, but putting them together for 9 belts would make it way bigger than I'd like. To make it small, the best I've come so far was using 8-belt with somewhat randomly connecting 9th, but doubt that would balance properly.
This is a very nontrivial problem, see the accepted answer here and link contained therein: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions ... m-factorio
Correct me if I'm wrong, but from reading the thread it seems that a 3 times 3 cluster of the simple 3-belt balancer would make a working 9 belt balancer that isn't even that large.
I'm pretty sure you're right, although I remain a little skeptical on the last qualifier, because of the logistics of routing the belts between each set. Compared to just using a 16 belt splitter and routing 7 belts back to the start again.

@OP: Are you absolutely sure you need an actual balancer to handle all 9 lanes? Because an 8-lane balancer + a single lane is going to be a hell of a lot simpler.