Controlled Unbalanced Sushi Belts

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.
Please provide blueprints!
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Circuit-free solutions of basic factory-design to achieve optimal item-throughput
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Puppet
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Controlled Unbalanced Sushi Belts

Post by Puppet »

Hi engineers, that's my first post so maybe it's not well written and too long.

So the other day I was making some factories for my coop world, using what I call a "line design" :
"line design" making rocket fuel
"line design" making rocket fuel
Capture d'écran 2025-01-06 172206.png (510.01 KiB) Viewed 122 times
That I like because : of how compact it is, the fact that we don't need to add and absurd amount of beacons to get a good speed, and finally the one input, one output of it.
It works pretty well for one item products (forget about liquids) but when working for two items products, it become complicated. Obviously the first reaction is just to get on another design and continue our day, but ! I wanted to try and find a solution to still use the same line design.

Let's take processors, very expensive but only two items (sulfuric acid screw you, your a liquid), green and red circuits. I've made a line design :
processors factory with CUSB maker
processors factory with CUSB maker
image_2025-01-06_175400569.png (789.15 KiB) Viewed 122 times
And worked out something to do a weird belt I like to call a controlled unbalanced sushi belt, of CUSB for short. We got a main bus and extract half a belt of the most present items of the recipe (green circuits here), then add a bulk inserter to dig a hole in that flow of circuits, and fill the hole with red circuits, I got also a constant combinator to turn on and off, but also control the stack size of the inserters. All this kinda manage to pull out a belt with a almost right amount of green and red belt to turn on all the assembling machines (of course there's an overflow output belt to prevent catastrophic accidents)
The result, I have a little module that, once connected to a bus, can create a CUSB :
CUSB maker module
CUSB maker module
image_2025-01-06_175547838.png (212.24 KiB) Viewed 122 times
So it kinda work for two items recipes, but who said it is limited to only two items ?

Here is something I've tried for a LDS factory, just adding another CUSB module, connecting the belts, changing stack sizes and it kinda works fine to turn on the entire factory :
LDS factory with two CUSB maker
LDS factory with two CUSB maker
image_2025-01-06_175623080.png (863.12 KiB) Viewed 122 times
And finally tried with a four item recipe, flying robot frames, but encountered a problem when combining the belts :
failed attempt for 4 items recipe
failed attempt for 4 items recipe
image_2025-01-06_175806631.png (715.8 KiB) Viewed 122 times
Anyways, all of this to ask more intelligent engineers if first of all, that design is already made. If it's not, well does it have some interesting applications ? But also do you have any ideas of first, make it cleaner using logic, because even if that sort of works, I'm sure there are flaws, and that the final output belt is still a bit uncontrolled. And second, how could we extend it to more than 3 items recipes ? (note : you need editor extensions mod to paste the blueprint)

Thank you for reading this not well written and utterly long post for something as tiny as my little "CUSB" contraption !
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R060
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Re: Controlled Unbalanced Sushi Belts

Post by R060 »

I think just counted sushi either with "hold all" on the belt or with counting from inserters would be much easier and simpler design. You're wasting so much space for a thing that either way must route everything back with priority, and stop adding more if not consumed.

Maybe if you could come up with something that does not use combinators at all, just wires, because they are available from start with Ctrl-R and Ctrl-G (btw why hide them in shortcuts panel then?), then sushi would be more pleasable before even green science. Like sushi furnaces: 113662
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Puppet
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Re: Controlled Unbalanced Sushi Belts

Post by Puppet »

thanks for replying, at the start I've thought about using "hold all" on the belt, but my first impression was that it'll be problematic since the amount of items would constantly change when the assembling machine take some, or I'm just not experimented enough for now to do it like that. I'll maybe try this technique someday.
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R060
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Re: Controlled Unbalanced Sushi Belts

Post by R060 »

You can connect assemblers as well and enable "read contents". It then will send everything inserted inside assembler, including ingredients that are already "consumed" to fill the green bar. With belt, inserters on hold and assemblers connected together you will have all the information of how much ingredients are in the system.

I've only used all of this for easy-self-bootstrapping kovarex enrichment setup that was stopping u-235 from going futher until the one centrifuge in front of the belts will produce enough shiny rocks to infinitly supply itself and it was not using any combinators (only wires) and turned out the most compact tilable sollution I've ever seen.
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