8 line input balancing problem

[Hannu]

I have a standard 8 line balancer between copper unload station and consumers. Most output lines are backlogged most of the time, but 2 lines to green circuit production are not if circuit consumption is very high. All input lines are backlogged or saturated. There are no breaks in copper deliveries. Every incoming train is full and the train leaves when all cars are empty. Maximum total throughput is about 12k/min, or 5 saturated belts.

The problem is that the balancer does not load inputs equally. First car is always emptied first and fourth car last. There are difference of 1k plates after couple of hours. Is there any better balancer or is there exact description how the splitter works when one or both outputs are backlogged so that I can plan a better one.



I made a 12 belt balancer by balancing first 4 groups of 3 lines and then 3 groups of 4 lines. It works much better under varying load conditions. I will try similar method if there is not good known solution.

[Frightning]

This problem was talked about at length in another thread a while ago. Still seems to be an unsolved problem in general.

Thread: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=25008

[Deadly-Bagel]

I always thought that 3 > 2 belt merger was a bit dodgy, it's clunky and you always have to wait for items to filter through it, and who knows what happens when the belts are saturated and moving slowly. This guy came up with an ingenious (and in hindsight, really obvious) solution that is just so much more efficient in every way, that might help.

Alternatively, you could set up a sort of chest buffer to ensure items are being loaded evenly. Have a row of chests in between your train and unloading chests with circuit conditions that activate every inserter from the train all at once only when every single "buffer" chest is empty. You could combine this with additional circuit logic to the inserters loading to the belts so that they only unload when their chest contains equal to or greater than the average (I usually say within 5-10 of average so they're not all waiting on each other).

Granted it doesn't fix the underlying problem but it may never be fixed, so I look at most of these things as a challenge ^^