Factorio Forums

Newbie here. I am trying to set up a network of assembly machines and I'm having trouble getting items automatically from:
Assembly machine to asssembly machine (lvl2)
Assembly machine to lab

Currently I keep having to manually intervene as the inserters don't do anything. Did I miss a trick?

You shouldn't daisy chain the output of one assembler into the other, but output everything on a belt, and then use that belt as input for your science labs' inserters.

Using inserters taht take from one Assembling Machine and insert to another only works when the output produced in the first assembling machine is a component to craft the second assembling machine's recipe.

For example : Iron plate => Gear => Science pack 1.
This can be direct inserted from producing machine to consuming machine.

If I interprete this correctly the left line produces green science and the right line produces red science which are then put on the belts and from there to the lab? I don't really see any reason why it wouldn't work, aside from the possibility that inserters never load science labs with more than 2 packs each and OP was expecting more to be stored in the lab.

Press ALT so you can see what the machines are actually producing

mergele wrote: ↑

Wed Aug 21, 2019 12:58 pm

I don't really see any reason why it wouldn't work

An assembler won't input things it doesn't consume. And won't output things it consumes. But it's hard to tell what the assemblers are actually set to

Daisy chaining works for the labs themselves, but that's different. And for just one science assembler you don't need so many labs. Even if they were set up correctly

This is the setup I tried.

What about the missing ingredients ?

As said, if you press Alt, you see the machine icons, inserter directions and some other things.


Loading things manually works on a very small scale with one or two labs. At the beginning you can just drop things into boxes now and then. But once you use belts you need also need to supply your ingredients with belts.

You should use both sides of a belt, so the two items are separated. Instead of unloading two things to the same side. Here is a larger setup using creative items (and the Bottleneck mod, hence the green dots):
You can do that on a smaller scale too. Also note how the inputs use both sides of a belt with sideloading. A very useful pattern. Later when you some recipes need four ingredients you can use two input belts and long handed inserters.

I'm using three gear assemblers, because that's how much you need at this scale. If you have a smaller number of science assemblers you can share one or more of them.

Synchrose wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 23, 2019 9:39 am

This is the setup I tried.

The problem with this setup is that Automation and Logistic science packs are both on the same side of the belt so the inserter can only ever grab one or the other. The research requires both so the lab will not start consuming science packs until at least one of each is in it's inventory. The lab already has some Automation science packs in it so the inserter will not load another into it, never getting the chance to insert a Logitic science pack.

The obvious thing to do here is to either have two belts feeding two inserters or place the science packs on different sides of the belt or have the belt loop around so the science packs are constantly moving past the inserter.