Simple 3 to 2 belt merge

[Koder]

Hi everybody, it's very late here, and I happened to stumble across this while I was messing around with belts. It's a little 3 to 2 belt merge. Note: You will still want to balance your load if needed, this does not handle lane/belt balancing. It's compact enough to mirror and shove into a 4-belt belt (or even a lane) balancer to convert it to a 6-to-4 merge with balancing.



Essentially I'm just taking each half of belt 3 and then merging it equally with belts 1 and 2. I haven't seen this layout anywhere, so I figured I'd post my findings. Let me know if you have feedback.

Edit: I decided to post a topic to the factorio subreddit. There is another design posted, and I decided to run some tests as well. I'm hopelessly addicted to this game, and have been for a long time https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... elt_merge/

Edit 2: Here is my imgur album with a collection of my findings: http://imgur.com/a/1Li6W

Thank you!

Koder

[aober93]

uhhh im sure this is essentially the same:

a7.jpg (37.55 KiB) Viewed 131789 times

ah i see where youre going

[Koder]

I created an album with a collection of my findings and explanation, and updated my post. I've been mainly testing belt priority when merging here.

[mooklepticon]

I'd add one more balancer. See below.

balancer.png (932.35 KiB) Viewed 131580 times

[Deadly-Bagel]

This answer is so obvious now. The third belt is split into two, then merged with each of the two output belts separately, so the first output has 100% of the first belt and the second output has 100% of the second belt, and both have 50% of the third belt. Then the last splitter you've just added evenly distributes that, splitting the first and second input belts each to 50% of both output belts, and because the third input belt is already balanced it's unchanged.

It's much more efficient, both in space and processing time, than the other merger I found and was using (which involved a loop so it took quite some time for all the items to eventually filter through if the input dried up).

[LoggerM]

The problem with this design:
Both inputs of the 2. splitter needs already 2 full lines to create 2 full belts.
The combination of belt 1 and 2 losts his funktion in the bottle-neck to the 2. splitter, because it can only carry 1 full yello Belt with no extra to fill up the gaps at the 3rd belt.

But this setup will work fine with red splitters on yellow Belts btw.

So, Koders Sugestion is realy good.

[LoggerM]

After a moment of thinking I found a nother way to do it.
Its a bit shorter but needs 1 tile to the side.

Aufteilung.png (35.22 KiB) Viewed 131414 times

[Shadewing]

That one doesn't work I'm afraid. If input is A, B, and C and output is 1 and 2. Nothing from A gets to 2 and nothing from C gets to 1.

[Zeblote]

I'd add one more balancer. See below.

balancer.png

Seems like this will favor the 3rd belt?

[PyroFire]

Here you go



i'll add more of these variations to my other thread.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=31498

[Optera]

3-2 merge builds depend on what you want.

count perfect output:

3-2 simple.jpg (74.53 KiB) Viewed 130791 times

count perfect output & equal drain on all 3 inputs:

3-2 feedback.jpg (105.09 KiB) Viewed 130791 times

[zebediah49]

After a moment of thinking I found a nother way to do it.
Its a bit shorter but needs 1 tile to the side.

Aufteilung.png

This shares the issues that the original one had, but for a case without weird loads would work fine.

[ssilk]

Please notice this page: https://wiki.factorio.com/index.php?tit ... _splitters

[theDemolisher13]

3-2 merge builds depend on what you want.

count perfect output:

3-2 simple.jpg

count perfect output & equal drain on all 3 inputs:

3-2 feedback.jpg

Do this work as a 2 to 3 as well? I need something to fit in a 4 wide and no longer than 10 long