Smallest possible Kovarex?

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
coffee-factorio
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Re: Smallest possible Kovarex?

Post by coffee-factorio »

Screenshot 2026-03-20 200839.png
Screenshot 2026-03-20 200839.png (307.42 KiB) Viewed 335 times
:lol:

Those are standard bulk inserters. It will short feed.

Ah, Mr. quxykh gave me the criticism I should finish my work.

But you are mistaken about the car making the job more compicated. You do not need complicated logic. You need to use an inserter set to eject from one car. And then use those filtered containers appropriately.

Here Mr. mmmPI, a quality build.
Screenshot 2026-03-20 223617.png
Screenshot 2026-03-20 223617.png (906.68 KiB) Viewed 335 times
mmmPI
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Re: Smallest possible Kovarex?

Post by mmmPI »

coffee-factorio wrote: Sat Mar 21, 2026 4:44 am Those are standard bulk inserters. It will short feed.
No it's perfectly fine, there is no need to use the quality inserter, it's a waste of ressources , you can try the blueprint for yourself instead of making incorrect prediction :lol:
coffee-factorio wrote: Sat Mar 21, 2026 4:44 am Here Mr. mmmPI, a quality build.
It's only a picture you posted, no blueprint but i can still see your version is using circuits, whereas i found it's not necessary and the thread is in circuit-free solution :lol:

So overall i'm not convinced by your picture, it does look like a more expensive / worse version of mine.
quyxkh wrote: Sat Mar 21, 2026 4:40 am
mmmPI wrote: Sat Mar 21, 2026 4:06 am i'm disappointed, it's the same one but more of them ?
Yeah, that's fair, it does at least settle on that nifty rate and consume its input near-as-dammit exactly, I wasn't trying for either of those results and the pair of coincidences still tickles my fancy, that's all there really was to that. I did have to do some minor tweaks to get it all stabilized, it's not an exact twinning.
I wanted to make sure it was what you meant to post; because posting the wrong BP has happened to me :) maybe "disappointed" wasn't the proper word, cuz now i see coffee's picture and i'm "disappointed" at least you provided a blueprint i could study to try and squeeze the beacons a little more :)
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coffee-factorio
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Re: Smallest possible Kovarex?

Post by coffee-factorio »

Sorry, it was late and I was halfway through testing the build.


mmmPI wrote: Sat Mar 21, 2026 9:03 am
coffee-factorio wrote: Sat Mar 21, 2026 4:44 am Those are standard bulk inserters. It will short feed.
No it's perfectly fine, there is no need to use the quality inserter, it's a waste of ressources , you can try the blueprint for yourself instead of making incorrect prediction :lol:
But mmmPI. Science. Data! STATISTICS!
Oh, and it does short feed.
results
You assert that it can be done without circuits. It fail with a stack size > 1 on an inserter.
Or it will short feed if you correctly configure an inserter.
It will run correctly for about 10 minutes, but if you use something fast it pulls too much u235 out and if you use something slow it lets output soft deadlock.
wireless performance
As for the necessity of quality inserters. It's like bacon on a milkshake.

Anyways, I took the liberty of including a save file. So now you know.
Attachments
carsverex.zip
(9.71 MiB) Downloaded 2 times
SaboteurKiev
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Re: Smallest possible Kovarex?

Post by SaboteurKiev »

03-21-2026, 15-26-23.png
03-21-2026, 15-26-23.png (2.5 MiB) Viewed 260 times
Support my 10-reactors setup easily (actually 90%+ of time this setup is sleeping)
Priority Uranium-238 from depleted fuel cells
Have small dashboard with reactor temp, water and steam
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Re: Smallest possible Kovarex?

Post by mmmPI »

coffee-factorio wrote: Sat Mar 21, 2026 1:13 pm Oh, and it does short feed.
Your version where you reverse the feeding belt for some reasons maybe x), not mine :
mmmPI wrote: Sat Mar 21, 2026 12:05 am You can use (filtered) car to make it faster for a centrifuge to loop the ouput back into the input compared to belt.

with car.jpg

The bp comes with 3 tiled , and i think similar to quyxkh for the uranium input.



There's room for another car in case for fancier logic
Not that there is a need to change anything for vanilla it works just fine :)

Whereas in your version your broke this :
do not break and complain.jpg
do not break and complain.jpg (145.26 KiB) Viewed 221 times
Then you ranked a that broken copy of my blueprint, so i would say your data statistics are not relevant, i think i found out why , but maybe there are other things.


SaboteurKiev wrote: Sat Mar 21, 2026 1:27 pm Have small dashboard with reactor temp, water and steam
That's not the smallest possible and it's not circuit free though
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Re: Smallest possible Kovarex?

Post by coffee-factorio »

mmmPI wrote: Sat Mar 21, 2026 2:51 pm
Not that there is a need to change anything for vanilla it works just fine :)

Whereas in your version your broke this :

do not break and complain.jpg

Then you ranked a that broken copy of my blueprint, so i would say your data statistics are not relevant, i think i found out why , but maybe there are other things.
I made sure to light it appropriately. The system is compact, so it may be replicated and optimized.
Slow inserters.
Slow inserters.
Screenshot 2026-03-21 062611.png (1.08 MiB) Viewed 203 times
The above is your build rotated 45 degrees. If rotation by 45 degrees breaks a blueprint... I have questions about the quality of the build :? .

It isn't simply that there's a build with two cars, it's that there's multiple builds already up that run to a 62 item a minute standard with the module choice I'm using. Even the one without the wire which is soft deadlocking runs at 55 items a minute. P3L's are about 83 items a minute.

If you wanted to argue that a bulk inserter less than legendary could do it, you can find the cheapest one. When tested normal produces 35 items a minute. There may be one more difference I'll grant you that I'm using S3L's to establish worst case conditions. But it takes about two minutes for me to throw P3L's in. I'm fine with statistics as published, short feeding is still happening.

If you want your kovarex to run at 35-50 items a minute instead of 62-83 items a minute, it isn't my issue. You're griefing yourself with your own build at that point and, yeah.
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Re: Smallest possible Kovarex?

Post by coffee-factorio »

SaboteurKiev wrote: Sat Mar 21, 2026 1:27 pm Support my 10-reactors setup easily (actually 90%+ of time this setup is sleeping)
Priority Uranium-238 from depleted fuel cells
Have small dashboard with reactor temp, water and steam
So I'm in a tough spot. Because it is a mechanical optimization board. So that means to me, no combinators and wires with conditions set are a gray area.

If you attach a combinator output read to the build, I feel like you put your feelings into the build. How should I support you?

I can give criticism elsewhere if you want that. I'm not going to be positive if I see something, but there's a point to the feedback.
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Re: Smallest possible Kovarex?

Post by mmmPI »

coffee-factorio wrote: Sat Mar 21, 2026 4:49 pm The above is your build rotated 45 degrees. If rotation by 45 degrees breaks a blueprint... I have questions about the quality of the build :? .
No it is not , can't you see it despite the arrows ? :
do not break and complain.jpg
do not break and complain.jpg (145.26 KiB) Viewed 192 times
you can see on the blueprint , if you don't break it , it works fine :


Your version is broken because the underground belt was first made to go up instead of down, this broke the cycle shown with the arrow, preventing the unfiltered inserter to act as a balancing piece.
your version is bad.png
your version is bad.png (1.1 MiB) Viewed 189 times

There may be other thing that you modified without noticing you were breaking the blueprint, this is only what i can see from the picture, i can already see you tested a bad version x)
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Re: Smallest possible Kovarex?

Post by coffee-factorio »

mmmPI wrote: Sat Mar 21, 2026 5:00 pm There may be other thing that you modified without noticing you were breaking the blueprint, this is only what i can see from the picture, i can already see you tested a bad version x)
As you can see, the spike from throwing 100 u235 in does not statistically change the output capability of your build. Reversing the belt direction increases items per minute by 2.
average performance
average performance
Screenshot 2026-03-21 114620.png (1.42 MiB) Viewed 160 times
Your build goes 35-37 items per minute because the belt is rotated right or left in this rotation.

Sorry man. At a certain point it isn't feelings, it's just what your equipment is capable of. 37 isn't 62.

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with spike due to u235
with spike due to u235
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quyxkh
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Re: Smallest possible Kovarex?

Post by quyxkh »

Pretty happy with this POC, anybody needs more '235 fr can extend it easily.
screenshot-tick-85442133.png
screenshot-tick-85442133.png (4.94 MiB) Viewed 156 times
hunh. I'd swear there used to be a description available on profiles. "quyxkh" is a made-up word for fun, pronounced a lot like "cook".
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Re: Smallest possible Kovarex?

Post by mmmPI »

coffee-factorio wrote: Sat Mar 21, 2026 6:03 pm
I can't tell what else you have modified on the blueprint to break it , it could be you messed with the stacksize, or misplaced the car so the hitbox doesn't connect, using an inserter to feed the input belt instead the way it was done on the blueprint, who knows ^^ but i'm confident it's on your end as in case you didn't notice someone else confirmed it was working fine and i tested on multiplayer , the centrifuge are functionning 100% of time with no downtime.

quyxkh wrote: Sat Mar 21, 2026 6:05 pm Pretty happy with this POC, anybody needs more '235 fr can extend it easily.
nice ! it is more compact :)
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Re: Smallest possible Kovarex?

Post by mmmPI »

Same more compact layout as the one shown by quyxkh , but with the car trick, and still no need for legendary inserter.
( does use a legendary power pole though )


Video demo for in case you have the same result as coffee and you see the centrifuge stall, you have done something wrong


if it does somethiing different you messed up.mp4
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Last edited by mmmPI on Sat Mar 21, 2026 7:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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coffee-factorio
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Re: Smallest possible Kovarex?

Post by coffee-factorio »

quyxkh wrote: Sat Mar 21, 2026 6:05 pm Pretty happy with this POC, anybody needs more '235 fr can extend it easily.
screenshot-tick-85442133.png
You've got the winning tile. There's 4 input scenarios I can put in it that are only equivalent to what you have. Setting a filter makes maybe a 1-2 ipm difference?
Damn that's nice. The ones I stress tested are down rank 4. Where pride is involved, may as well as call it yours, because you found the winning set of solutions.



If you knocked off the beacons most of these will work in the early game as single stations.
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