Factorio Forums

Inserting into a belt corner will always place the item on the outside of the turn. You can use this to make a simple near-side inserter.

cool, I didn't realize this.

Neat, I usually do it on a single belt into another one with an opposite belt to force it to one side, this saves quite some space and material

Hm. I think this depends on the rotation direction of the inserter: The item "slides" to that side, in which the inserter rotated... But, yeah, this is a cool trick, article will be added to the wiki.

I would mean you can remove the first straight belt?!

no he needs that first straight belt for this to work, without it, it'll put it on the opposite side.

the reason this works is because in the corner, its moving towards the arm, instead of away from it, so it works opposite to how its shown in most tutorials, so instead of going upper left, it goes lower right.

without that straight piece, it wouldnt be a corner anymore and thus place it on the lower end.

though the practical use of this is very limited, there is very little reason to want to build the Factory this way and you'd only get 1 output going this way.

but yea, its a thing

I personally found it very useful for example in this situation:

Note there is a caveat to this.
This has to be put at the beginning of the belt only.
Inserting onto corners of non-empty belt may AFAIK lead to clogging.