What modules should you put in a smelting setup w/ beacons?

[vanatteveldt]

Cool, that makes sense. I don't have full inserter stack size so I guess I'll wait a bit. Do you have a solution for stone, or do you keep separate furnaces for stone->brick?

Can you post a screenshot of the smart beacons? I am curious how you put the extra inserters in space-wise.

[MeduSalem]

Cool, that makes sense. I don't have full inserter stack size so I guess I'll wait a bit. Do you have a solution for stone, or do you keep separate furnaces for stone->brick?

I keep stone seperate.

I tried quite a lot of different approaches to include stone, with the conclusion that Robot delivery just doesn't work for stone because of how unpredictable the Robot deliveries are (ranging anywhere between 1-4 items) and because of how the damn inserter stack size bonus can't be configured individually for each inserter to something different than 5 once fully upgraded (meaning they could put anything between 1-5 stone in the furnace, which is the root of all the problems). So no matter what, eventually stone would always render the smart furnaces stuck when combined with robot delivery.

... that said if one uses a belt-based solution for resource delivery instead of robots then one can make it work, but then everything else becomes inefficient by sacrificing compactness, just like so (or something similar if someone finds even a better layout):

Smart Furnace with Belts.jpg (206.95 KiB) Viewed 44876 times

It works because the smart inserter grabing from the belt is inserting items one by one into the buffer chest, so you can count them accurately. Also one would have to think about all the other problems, how to prevent the belt from becoming clogged with one item type or additional sacrifices like not using beacons in the first place, etc... In my opinion it is just not worth it. And yeah, the picture is quite old... back then circuit wiring inserters directly to chests wasn't possible yet... one had to route the circuit network wire over the electric poles.

Can you post a screenshot of the smart beacons? I am curious how you put the extra inserters in space-wise.

Sadly I only have a picture from an experimental test setup for the Smart Beacons around and not one of an actual large scale implementation, but I think it still gives an idea how I did it:

Smart Furance+Smart Beacons.jpg (304.54 KiB) Viewed 44876 times

In optimized setups I have the Iron Ore Input+Copper Ore Input on one side and Iron Plate Input+Furnace Output on the other side of each furnace. Which leaves me exactly 1 space on each side of the furnace, which I use for Input/Output of the modules from the Beacons.

Don't let yourself get irritated by the EM3s... as a generalized prove of concept I originally tried to switch between three modes on-the-go:

• No modules ... no usage scenario, furnaces/assemblers are idle (Storage is full)
• EM3's ... low usage scenario, furnaces/assemblers are only lightly utilized (Storage getting full, >50%)
• SM3's ... high usage scenario, furnaces/assemblers are highly utilized (Storage getting low, <50%)

But in real applications there would not be enough room to support 4 inserters per beacon, so I had to compromise and go for:

• No modules ... no+low usage scenario, furnaces/assemblers are only lightly utilized or idle (Storage is getting full or is full, >50%)
• SM3's ... high usage scenario, furnaces/assemblers are highly utilized (Storage getting low, <50%)

It is a trade-off that gives the most benefit.

The program as to when the "low usage" and "high usage" scenarios are triggered is actually rather complex due to 3 items being involved in the load balancing, and therefore it would take longer to explain.

Building space is quite dense already, which left me no choice other than to use substations or otherwise I wouldn't have been able to power everything. Maybe someday that setup will become easier to implement once the Filters of Smart Inserters can be controlled by Circuit network signal or something like that. Then just changing the filter would do the trick and give back some space from redundant inserters.

But yeah, basically the Smart Beacons can be adapted to any other Assembler/Chemplant Setup as well (which is what I am doing too). Doesn't have to be just Furnaces. Helps a lot to reduce the energy consumption in idle parts of my factories.