Need your help to optimize a buffer zone

Don't know how to use a machine? Looking for efficient setups? Stuck in a mission?
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Shirasik
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Re: Need your help to optimize a buffer zone

Post by Shirasik »

Binoculars wrote: Sun Aug 10, 2025 11:06 am After several unsuccessful attempts, I was unable to achieve the desired result... It's much more difficult than I thought. I tried incorporating a saturation detector, so the arms don't activate if the belt is full, but this doesn't seem to be a fast enough detection method.
Whatever you automate in Factorio you need to account a sequence of 1-tick delays. E.g. you hooked belt to detect saturation. Let's say now going tick № x. During that tick belt counted that it has 9 iron plates and 2 copper plates. So on tick x belt pushes 9 iron plate and 2 copper plate signals into connected circuit networks. That signals, mixed with all other signals, being pushed to the same circuit networks and are available to be read during tick № x+1. So if you need to implement schematics intolerant to desynchronization then you need to implement FSA with factory's machinery strictly following states of FSA.

edit
I highly recommend to use editor extensions mod, its testing scenario in particular.
(main menu) -> Map editor -> New scenario -> Editor Extensions/Testing
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Binoculars
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Re: Need your help to optimize a buffer zone

Post by Binoculars »

I sometimes use the board editor to complete my projects.

I admit that I sometimes have difficulty understanding how logic circuits work, especially when it comes to inserters.

I will persevere to achieve the desired result. I will update this post if I manage to find a solution.
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Tertius
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Re: Need your help to optimize a buffer zone

Post by Tertius »

I understand you want to implement some constant and equal ingredient flow to achieve manufacturing machines running in perfect sync. If you could describe that production line with more detail and post a screenshot and a blueprint of the whole production line you want to run in sync, we might be able to help you further. Currently, I'm not sure how equal material input can help to achieve the goal as you described it.

If someone bumps a wall with his approach, I usually question the approach and seek a completely different approach with the intended result. But since you just vaguely described your setup but want extremely exact results, nobody is able to give advice except guesswork and just the general kind.

As I understand your goal, you cannot have sync with just equal input. You need to actively sync your machines. Every single machine. It will always happen some input is a tick late or two, and this will accumulate, so any sync will get lost in the long run. So you need your machines wait until every machine is ready, then send some signal and every machine starts to perform its task. Or you need to make every machine wait until every machine has produced its intended output, then allow to continue.
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Binoculars
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Re: Need your help to optimize a buffer zone

Post by Binoculars »

You're right.

Here's my creation.


It's a steel production system with a perfect ratio. As it stands, it works perfectly, at least at the output. My goal would be to make the design configurable according to the recipe and, above all, for all the arms supplying the metal plates to activate simultaneously. The ideal would be a system that activates, also simultaneously, the arms at the output of production as soon as the maximum number, namely 12, has been produced so that the conveyor is full. At the same time, the arms at the output could only activate if the output is not saturated. My design only partially meets this wish. What I like most is when everything seems coordinated. I sometimes find myself simply watching, rather than participating in, this wonderful game.
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coffee-factorio
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Re: Need your help to optimize a buffer zone

Post by coffee-factorio »

Binoculars wrote: Thu Jun 05, 2025 5:59 pm
I had a look at this.
oops.png
oops.png (424.33 KiB) Viewed 45 times
There's individual pieces that you translate well and implemented perfectly. In this case, the original author made a mistake. The average actually will stack the chests to a "good enough" standard. But not "perfect".

The first chest seems to have about 12 over, the last 36 over, but the center ones even out. When I tested on your 12 chests, I have an iteration which is more or less what you see, with a belt carved out and all other decoration detached. And I see enough of a skew that one light will set to blue, and the rest to black, due to how the average loads the chest. If you have chests with enough materials to fill a train car and a train shows up though, this would be well suited for that use case even if this detail is not correct. The other alternative is a 12 balancer, which is... not cheap and only perfect if you load a train car. As in one.

The exact issue is that the inserters trigger on x > ( chest - "average of material" ). Well, lets say x = stack size. And Stack size = 12. As is suggested here. Then on the first chest; when the first inserter does its work the load the condition is 12 > [12 + 12/-6]=10. Which permits the arm to swing again.



You may amuse yourself with a demonstration with x=1, and judge whether or not x=stack size or something else entirely.



The fully functioning blueprint above demonstrates my personal favorite setting for x. You will note I have a sense of humor. I made a picture of a situation so you might be able to tell the adjustment I made to the constant combinators feeding in x, which I had coded to an S signal.
ooops2.png
ooops2.png (976.27 KiB) Viewed 45 times
Unfortunately, while this amusing. From my point of view, something has gone quite wrong in this process because a "perfect" balancer is being followed by a "good enough" combinator mechanism. If they where both "perfect" it would be redundant. And when I loaded the input belt on one side, that jammed the bank. From my point of view, Tertius is trying to steer you in a good direction, towards understanding what your goal is then breaking the design process into fewer elements that play better together than the current ones.

I have selfish motives (I want to be able to offload a train 64 long better). What it appears you want is something that works like this:
1) A work crew operates in parallel to load a buffer when there is an excess of raw material. 2) When material runs short, another work crew is to unload in parallel.

This movement is for power management or beauty. Ideally both work crews would load the chests evenly, but I am not a picky man and in reality some things are not so even. So I see that as a weak requirement. The bank however, should be filled to max. If I were to take a crack at this, I would want to understand what you want from it. Have I read this situation correctly?
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