Split and prioritize output belt (and merge multiband right)

canidae · Post by **canidae** » Fri Sep 16, 2016 6:56 pm

rasby came up with a superior solution to the problem, check out viewtopic.php?f=202&t=32817

Previously I've used the design in the image below to prioritize belt flow after a splitter:

: prioritized_track.jpg (160.07 KiB) Viewed 23158 times

Unfortunately this will not work perfectly once you need full throughput on your prioritized belt. As shown in the image above some iron ore still pass through the deprioritized belt even though the prioritized belt isn't fully saturated.
Fixing this is fairly simple, so as I still see many use the design above, I thought I'd throw out my solution to the problem:

: prioritized_track_2.jpg (303.04 KiB) Viewed 23158 times

By splitting the prioritized track again then the two new tracks hold 50% of the items that will later be merged, meaning that while the prioritized track is fully saturated the sum of items on the two belts between the two new splitters will never exceed 8 as long as all the items on the prioritized belt are consumed. If all the items on the prioritized belt aren't consumed then the two belts between the splitters will start filling up and the lock on the deprioritized belt will be released.
Note: It's not necessary to send the top output of the rightmost splitter down to the prioritized track, I just dislike loose ends.

Blueprint

canidae · Post by **canidae** » Fri Sep 16, 2016 6:56 pm

I simplified this design to just two belts, this post is probably easier to grasp.

Now that you got your prioritized track working, you might wish to force items to the right (or left, or up, or down) on a multiband line (i.e. a "bus").
As I'm writing this I realize that going vertical was a bad idea as most people have more width than height to their monitor, sorry about that :\

This setup will merge items towards the right belt to make sure the right belt is always* saturated. One unfortunate drawback is that this design requires a fair amount of space, as in that you can't really split out a track to the side before you've shifted all belts one step to the right.
* There may be some some hickups causing the right belt to temporarily not be fully saturated. Increasing value (value should be from ">8" to ">15") for condition on locked belt may resolve issue, but setting it too high may also reduce total throughput for the 4 belts.

: mutliband_merge_right.jpg (171.85 KiB) Viewed 23153 times

Blueprint

rasby · Post by **rasby** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 1:47 pm

I recently came up with something similar: viewtopic.php?f=202&t=32817

: priority_splitter_2.png (44.77 KiB) Viewed 23132 times

Preferentially outputs on the bottom lane, any overflow going to the top. The circuit conditions are read/hold on the first two, enable/anything > 12 on the low-priotity out.

canidae · Post by **canidae** » Sun Sep 18, 2016 10:11 am

rasby wrote:I recently came up with something similar: viewtopic.php?f=202&t=32817

Your solution for merging to one side on a multiband greatly improves my design. I'm somewhat surprised that in all my testing I didn't come across this solution on my own, it's so simple!
Great work

rasby · Post by **rasby** » Sun Sep 18, 2016 1:13 pm

Thanks

Edit: Here's a blueprint of my design. The other topic is locked, so I guess I'll put it here.

blueprint

doxsroxs · Post by **doxsroxs** » Mon Sep 19, 2016 9:18 am

Really nice solution. This looks way better than a splitter cascade!

Thanks!

brunzenstein · Post by **brunzenstein** » Fri Sep 23, 2016 7:32 pm

canidae wrote:

If you save the blueprint in this format, the blueprint manager won't accept it.
the one from by rasby » Sun Sep 18, 2016 1:13 pm works

canidae · Post by **canidae** » Sun Sep 25, 2016 9:12 pm

brunzenstein wrote:
canidae wrote:
If you save the blueprint in this format, the blueprint manager won't accept it.
the one from by rasby » Sun Sep 18, 2016 1:13 pm works

Thanks for the heads up. I've been using Killkrog's Blueprint Manager (although recently replaced it with Foreman), could've be some issues there.

canidae · Post by **canidae** » Fri Sep 30, 2016 9:33 am

rasby wrote:I recently came up with something similar: viewtopic.php?f=202&t=32817

priority_splitter_2.png (44.77 KiB) Viewed 22431 times

Preferentially outputs on the bottom lane, any overflow going to the top. The circuit conditions are read/hold on the first two, enable/anything > 12 on the low-priotity out.

Quite late to bring this up, but I just noticed something in rasby's design that may not be apparent for all readers:
If you have two inputs to the first splitter and want the prioritized belt to be fully saturated, then rasby's design will not work properly once both inputs are nearly saturated. When that happens the top right circuited belt (with Enable/Disable condition) will be enabled and both outputs will be equally nearly saturated.
If there's only one input to the first splitter then all input will go to the prioritized belt and only overflow to the other belt once the prioritized belt is getting backed up (which was the problem I wanted to solve in this thread).
If you have two input belts and two output belts where you want one to be fully saturated before the other receive any overflow (and you don't want the input belts to be slowed) then read about Overflow splitting.

Post by **ssilk** » Mon Oct 03, 2016 3:15 am

I created a mechnical version of prio-splitting: viewtopic.php?f=202&t=33695

CaptainKonzept · Post by **CaptainKonzept** » Mon Jun 05, 2017 4:50 pm

Hey, I made a video comparing the different priority splitter designs I could find (and come up with myself). Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta6PnPC7MOI
Kudos to your geat design!

canidae · Post by **canidae** » Tue Jun 06, 2017 11:06 am

Saw your post on reddit, great video. I have a ton of comments for you, I'll see if I can give you a proper response there

tamanous · Post by **tamanous** » Wed Jun 07, 2017 3:46 pm

Thank you, CK.
I really liked the idea of the contrastive look at the different desings - though I'd preferred written with images over video.
I rebuilt some of the shown layouts to see how zwaans layout would benchmark when build thoroughly. Quite well, indeed. When I got to the point of comparing the throughputs of the different bus lanes, I ran into the problem of a reliable measurement - just to see that you're already working on that, too. So I guess I'll wait and see and head to other problems

Anyways, I'd like to ask you to share the (a) blueprint of your setup to save the time of the ppl working on the same thing.

CaptainKonzept · Post by **CaptainKonzept** » Sun Mar 04, 2018 3:17 pm

It's been a while, but I always wanted to do an update video where I fixed your splitter according to your feedback, tried to improve on my concepts and have a better testing setup. Now with the new output priority mechanic it was a good motivation to not only do that video, but also compare the new mechanic to the old designs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkR3pDTNUv8

McDuff · Post by **McDuff** » Wed Apr 04, 2018 11:46 am

CaptainKonzept wrote:It's been a while, but I always wanted to do an update video where I fixed your splitter according to your feedback, tried to improve on my concepts and have a better testing setup. Now with the new output priority mechanic it was a good motivation to not only do that video, but also compare the new mechanic to the old designs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkR3pDTNUv8

Here's a question about that - I always put the lane balancers after the lanes that have been split off, so that it's drawing roughly evenly from both lanes from the perspective of the belt even if it's unbalanced at the factory end. That seems like it should even up the throughput with the new mechanics without having to do all that lane balancing on the bus itself.

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Split and prioritize output belt (and merge multiband right)

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