3 belt smelting array between beacons

Circuit-free solutions of basic factory-design to achieve optimal item-throughput.
Involving: Belts (balancers, crossings), Inserters, Chests, Furnaces, Assembling Devices ...
Optimized production chains. Compact design.
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Circuit-free solutions of basic factory-design to achieve optimal item-throughput
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Encrypted
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3 belt smelting array between beacons

Post by Encrypted »

When you are making a big base the smelt arrays are huge. Once you have all your furnaces beacond and moduled up it is a lot smaller but then you need more and more blue belts worth and the smelt array expands in width. I wondered if you can stack smelters to make them longer so you can stay within a reasonable squared of area when you need alot of blue belts of plates.

First i created a double smelting array (before the inserter compression update) and that worked really well for me. With this new update where inserters will compress the belt for you i though i would try upgrading it to 3 blue belts of plates between 1 row of beacons. And it works!

First i made a smelt array of 12 smelters, 6 for each side of the blue belt. This will not fully compress the belt but i added 2 extra smelters at the end of the whole column to fill those gaps. Then i added the seccond and third 12 smelters. I had to fiddle around with the belts to make it go where i want it to go but i managed to only skip 3 places in my smelt array to accomplish this.

The build uses 100MW of power. And i added some lamps to help in the night time.

I have cut the image into 3:
- Top (12 smelters, output of plates, 2 extra furnaces for filling gaps)
- Middle (12 smelters)
- Bottom (input of 3 (or 2.5) blue belt of ore, 12 smelters)

Top
Top part of the 3 blue belt smelter array with modules and beacons
Top part of the 3 blue belt smelter array with modules and beacons
3-blue-belt-smelter-top.png (943.42 KiB) Viewed 6937 times
Middle
Middle part of the 3 blue belt smelter array with modules and beacons
Middle part of the 3 blue belt smelter array with modules and beacons
3-blue-belt-smelter-middle.png (825.78 KiB) Viewed 6937 times
Bottom
Bottom part of the 3 blue belt smelter array with modules and beacons
Bottom part of the 3 blue belt smelter array with modules and beacons
3-blue-belt-smelter-bottom.png (957.32 KiB) Viewed 6937 times
Tell me what you guys think of it. Right now i am extending this to the sides for more output. I am also thinking of shutting down whole columns if there is not enough ore with a power switch, but for that i have to manualy fix all the powerlines which im not looking forward to.
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socket
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Re: 3 belt smelting array between beacons

Post by socket »

Nice! It appears that the final splitters somehow break compression though. In my tests the leftmost output belt has holes quite often. I've rearranged the splitters to start merging from the extra 4th belt and it seems to compress the belts perfectly:
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MisterSpock
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Re: 3 belt smelting array between beacons

Post by MisterSpock »

I tried this sometime ago. But you cant see it very well in the pic:
My try

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