Factorio Forums

Hi Guys...Just got this awesome game last week and I am starting out on my first build. Is it possible to have two resources fed into the same furnace? One belt with iron ore and the other with coal into the same burner via two inserters to produce iron plates. Is this even possible? If so how do I position the belts and inserters? Sorry for the newbie questions

Easily done with splitters and side loading

One yellow belt of iron or copper ore can feed 48 stone furnaces (2 rows of 24 on each side). One red belt can feed 48 steel furnaces, since they smelt twice as fast. Stone bricks need two stone per craft, so it gets two stone belts instead of one

The coal belts runs on the inside. According to the cheat sheet one yellow belt of coal can feed 666 furnaces and a red belt 1333. In practice you'll see when the coal runs low

Edit:
Another option is to use two actual full belts next to each other and use long handed inserters to reach the outer belt. That's common in many other assembly lines, but for smelting it's only attractive for some steel smelting setups.
Otherwise if a half belt is all the materials you need only use half a belt. Saves you inserters. It's already tedious enough to build smelting columns by hand without doubling the inserters

For the start, it's cheaper to use inserters to feed coal _to_ the belts.

Thanks for the replies.
Will give it a go later today!!

Bauer wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 14, 2019 7:07 am

For the start, it's cheaper to use inserters to feed coal _to_ the belts.

To start with you can simply use side loading directly from belts instead of splitters. You don't need a whole 48 furnaces anyways. So what I like to do is put 12-16 furnaces making iron on one side. And 6-8 copper on the other. That gives you two lanes of iron and copper on one belt. That's enough to get some starter science and production going. You don't need a whole lot of copper until you produce a lot of circuits and science

But it's a good idea to plan out the space in a way so you can expand the furnace columns a lot later on

And after a while you can research long handed inserters so you can take items from a second belt.

mrvn wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 14, 2019 10:33 am

And after a while you can research long handed inserters so you can take items from a second belt.

But why do that for regular smelting? Sure, there are plenty of instances where you need that, but with smelting only for some steel smelting setups. For iron, copper and stone you can save tons of inserters by putting coal and ore on the same belt

Serenity wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 14, 2019 10:40 am

mrvn wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 14, 2019 10:33 am

And after a while you can research long handed inserters so you can take items from a second belt.

But why do that for regular smelting? Sure, there are plenty of instances where you need that, but with smelting only for some steel smelting setups. For iron, copper and stone you can save tons of inserters by putting coal and ore on the same belt

As you mention: Steel.

mrvn wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 14, 2019 12:35 pm

Serenity wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 14, 2019 10:40 am

mrvn wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 14, 2019 10:33 am

And after a while you can research long handed inserters so you can take items from a second belt.

But why do that for regular smelting? Sure, there are plenty of instances where you need that, but with smelting only for some steel smelting setups. For iron, copper and stone you can save tons of inserters by putting coal and ore on the same belt

As you mention: Steel.

I do it even for steel. All my smelting setups have ore+coal on the input side (and steel+coal on the output for steel).
Reason: Ease of setup. It's so much faster to setup with 1 belt and many inserters less.
Until I use electric furnaces...

Serenity wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 13, 2019 6:56 pm

Smelting.jpg
... Stone bricks need two stone per craft, so it gets two stone belts instead of one

I can assure you that you are not getting any performance gain with that setup.

ColonelSandersLite wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 16, 2019 5:26 pm

I can assure you that you are not getting any performance gain with that setup.

It's not about performance gain. It's simply how much input material you need to fill an output belt. Or how many furnaces can be supplied by one belt. However, the shared stone/coal belt needs to be red in that case (so that each side get a whole yellow belt of stone). In the picture it's still yellow. That's a mistake

This is also a case where it may be better to to use two belts and use long handed inserters. I've done that previously. What also works is doing the half belt thing and then sideload another belt of stone halfway down

Serenity wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 16, 2019 5:42 pm

However, the shared stone/coal belt needs to be red in that case (so that each side get a whole yellow belt of stone). In the picture it's still yellow. That's a mistake

Yes, that was my point! The layout, as shown in the picture, was getting a single yellow belt of stone input so the second belt was just redundant.