Ugly Sushi Belts

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teenkertoy
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Ugly Sushi Belts

Post by teenkertoy »

I accidentally posted this over in Beautiful Sushi Belts, and I forgot that was the no-combinator forum. Oops.


Here is (yet another) sushi belt by using a fish to count the contents of the entire belt.

Can be expanded to any length. Longer belts will be slow to replenish items because the one fish will be sensed less often. You can compensate by adding more (evenly-spaced) gates that sense the fish more frequently.

Can have any number of sources and sinks. As you add more unique items, the filters in the inserters can become clogged since they can only use the first four items on the signal wires. To compensate, you can set the filters manually. It's a little more work if you want to juggle many different item types, but it scales nicely and they still turn on/off automatically.

Option to clean belt of excess items so it is self-balancing.
(or you can scoop up all of certain items, such as output from a factory).

I recommend using a mod that can place items onto the near and far sides of the belt such as Bob's inserters or Krastorio2.

sushi express.PNG
sushi express.PNG (950.83 KiB) Viewed 3376 times
sushi deluxe.PNG
sushi deluxe.PNG (1.36 MiB) Viewed 3376 times


Blueprint book contains a few examples:




Here is a larger example of my mall on a Krastorio2 + Space Exploration map:
(you might benefit from adding belt balancers to mix up the items a bit, see the lower right corner)
sushi example mall.png
sushi example mall.png (1.27 MiB) Viewed 3376 times
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teenkertoy
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Re: Ugly Sushi Belts

Post by teenkertoy »

mmmPI wrote: ↑Tue Nov 16, 2021 8:45 pm I like the system you explained.

I'm not sure i'll be able to modify it to my need just now, i will need to practice a bit, but the idea of using a sensor for fish and count the item between 2 fish passage to compute the belt content from what i understand is a more elegant way than what i did before which was just wiring many belts like 10% or 5% of the loop to compute the rest of the item.
(and is also the 1rst time i understand it).

I think your method could have its own post you already made nice and clear images for it! I'm saying this because (imo) it's not really a "beautiful" sushi belts like the others. The items on the running belts are not well-ordered like on the other method using splitters contraption for insertion. Instead it look like a trash-sorting conveyer belt. ( i mean no offense the things look all messed up but it's nicely functionning and elegant logic ! :) ).

It is also a bit different than the other method because you could connect consumer and producer of material while the others are mainly showing logistic solution to balance belts for consumers. ( using inserter for insertion vs using belts )

I am playing with a design for a mall that is using 1 belts for raw material and 1 belt for intermediate product. The 1rst one being sideloaded with other raw material belts depending on the read quantity on the 10% wired belt, the 2nd one being loaded by inserter outputing from assembly machine that use either the 1rst or the 2nd as input material.

This configuration makes the sensor fish method desirable, i can't use the splitter method for my intermediate product belt since it's loaded by inserters. I would need to set filters manually and use several fish from what i understand this i think is ok.

I wish to use it to control the items on the 2 loops though, which means i will need to modify it so that instead of the memory of inserter it activate belts for input of material. How would you do it ?

From what i see i just need to have sideloading belts with the last one connected to circuit network and activate if the material it holds is active, like it would have been for the filter of an inserter. No risk that it clogs due to 4+ item, this mean i could use several fish placed at regular interval right ? as long as they keep the same spacing ?
I think you can control two belts at the same time, but only if each belt carries unique contents. If both belts have the same item then this might not work. Because the fish is like a clock, I think you will still want one only fish total, not one fish per belt. Put one gate on each belt (red wire), or put multiple evenly-spaced gates on each belt. Both belts should be the exact same length and the same speeds so that one complete revolution of one belt is the same time as one revolution of the other belt.

To add items using side loading, try having two pieces of belt Tee into the sushi belt. On the piece nearest the sushi belt, add a gate with read contents, pulse, and use a red wire like you would on a filter inserter. This will count how many items are being added to the sushi belt.

Add one more gate on the sideloading belt, directly behind the first one. The second gate should be enable/disable if (xxx item > 0), and use a green wire. This will control when to add items.

Kinda like this poor ascii art:

Code: Select all

------------------

sushi belt >>>

------------------
| red   |
| wire  |
---------
| green |
| wire  |
---------
|       |
|       |
|       |
|       |

 /\  /\

source 
of items
To remove items from the belts, you can also use splitters with a filter, but it will remove all of a certain item instead of xxx many of the items like my cleaner thingie does.
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mmmPI
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Re: Ugly Sushi Belts

Post by mmmPI »

Hey those are not ugly they just have a complicated external look :)

I did this map some time ago viewtopic.php?f=8&t=89548 which was my most developed attempt at a sushi belt at the time.

The newer project's logic was roughly the same with some addition to control item backlog as such :
mockup sushi.jpg
mockup sushi.jpg (485.54 KiB) Viewed 3364 times


The easiest part are that i don't need to remove any item. The intermediate like the gears are meant to stay on the red inner belt that's the one i think it will be easier to implement the fish sensor. (given the blue sushi belt has a weird shape with splitters i'm not sure what would happen to the fish worse with several fish).

I already have belts configured to "read hold" spaced every 6 belts, but the real mall has 600 red belts in the loop, counting those and those on the blue belt loop for raw material that's a lot of belt being read at the same time and needlessly tanking ups.

I thought if i was to use several fish instead of several gate, then the "required/desired number" of material that i have to setup would be the amount of material sitting in a belt between 2 fish. Which would then allow me to only have 1 connected belt.

Now when i tested with your blueprint and with your explanation i realised that it could work only if the machine that refills the belts is located at a special position compared to 2 successive fish.

Because otherwise if you have fish A and B then you can consider you have 2 portion of belt, one AFTER A ( up to B )and one BEFORE A (up to B). Let's call them part 1 and 2 but it doesn't matter which one is which for the example:
When fish A is read, it can trigger a refill if the portion's count that just got updated requires it, portion 1. but the machines can refill the other portion of belt, portion 2 due to their location around the loop when being activated. Then the part 1 of the belt that follows fish A will still require the material that triggered the refill which happened on part 2. And this over and over.

With only 1 fish there is only 1 part of the belt, everything that's before fish is also after fish so it doesn't matter.

I'm not quite sure why several gates work differently than several fish, i still need to think about it :)
sushitop.png
sushitop.png (1.02 MiB) Viewed 3363 times
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teenkertoy
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Re: Ugly Sushi Belts

Post by teenkertoy »

mmmPI wrote: ↑Wed Nov 17, 2021 4:10 am I thought if i was to use several fish instead of several gate, then the "required/desired number" of material that i have to setup would be the amount of material sitting in a belt between 2 fish. Which would then allow me to only have 1 connected belt.

Now when i tested with your blueprint and with your explanation i realised that it could work only if the machine that refills the belts is located at a special position compared to 2 successive fish.

Because otherwise if you have fish A and B then you can consider you have 2 portion of belt, one AFTER A ( up to B )and one BEFORE A (up to B). Let's call them part 1 and 2 but it doesn't matter which one is which for the example:
When fish A is read, it can trigger a refill if the portion's count that just got updated requires it, portion 1. but the machines can refill the other portion of belt, portion 2 due to their location around the loop when being activated. Then the part 1 of the belt that follows fish A will still require the material that triggered the refill which happened on part 2. And this over and over.

With only 1 fish there is only 1 part of the belt, everything that's before fish is also after fish so it doesn't matter.

I'm not quite sure why several gates work differently than several fish, i still need to think about it :)
Exactly! Yep, that is the challenge of multiple fish. Also it might be harder to control the spacing of multiple fish, especially over time.

Having multiple gates and one fish does work differently. Remember each gate is looking for the fish but also counting the contents of the belt too. You will totally figure it out :)
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