Some advice plz on sorting from conveyor belts to chests

[azairvine]

I don't have the wording clear in my head, so bear with me please!

Just installed the reverse factory mod and want to set up a series of raw material boxes as seen in the attached screenshot. I want to have one location where I dump EVERYTHING and it then gets sorted to another location. The problem at the moment however is that the recycling machine only accepts objects that are NOT raw materials - so if it gets some stone or ore it doesn't accept it.

This is my first play through, and while I think I'm a long way into the game, I suspect I'm barely scratching the surface. I'm about to start creating Science Pack 3's (laugh at me now!) Anyway, I suspect there's probably a really easy later-game way to do what I'm trying to do, or someone already has created a blueprint. It would feel a lot more rewarding if I could work through it myself though and see if I can come up with something.

So....I'm not sure if I can set a circuit connection to the two fast inserters that will activate the one on the left if there is an item on the corresponding belt and the fast inserter on the right isn't activating? There's also probably 5 easier ways to think about solving this problem, but my brain is weird n stuff

Any help is greatly appreciated!

[5thHorseman]

I would run the source box (upper left) past the filter inserters, then past the recycling box. You could even make a circular path that the source box and recycling machine both feed to, and the recycling machine feeds from. "Sushi belts" (so named because they go around in a circle like some sushi bars do with plates of a la carte sushi, like you've done with the right hand belt) are generally frowned upon but in this case I think it'd be fine. Just watch it to make sure it never, ever gets clogged with either unfiltered items or full chests. You'll need a box for every single item in the game.

[azairvine]

I would run the source box (upper left)...

Thank you for your reply. I was planning on actually running a long belt back up to my raw materials in-feed area and have inserters put the raw materials back onto the line - this would result in an extremely long "sushi belt" and would be a bit messy.

An alternative could be to put several filter inserters with crates around the reverse factory and tag all the non-raw materials, or conversely several filter inserters along the source belt and tag all the raw materials to get transferred over to a secondary belt - but that too seems a bit clunky and messy.

That's why I was hoping I could somehow trigger the fast inserter on the left to move the object to the bottom left crate when the fast inserter on the right wasn't active & there was an object on the belt (denoting that it couldn't be reverse engineered and therefore a raw material).

Is there another way to filter onto separate belts based on object type?

[5thHorseman]

Not sure if it'd work for this case but splitters now have filters in then. They only do 1 item per splitter but (unlike inserters) will never allow an item to pass by.

[azairvine]

Whoa I had no idea! Thanks for that. I've only been playing Factorio since 0.16 and seemingly had never clicked on a splitter!

They seem to have not quite completed the upgrade so to speak. If they'd allowed filters for each lane it would solve the funky belt configurations currently required to get item a on the left and item b on the right of a belt.