Let's see your clever builds

[n9103]

Being clever isn't everything, so don't sweat it.
Ease of setup counts as much as efficiency of operation if you're not in an extended game.

[Leon]

what is the mod for 40 slot belt ?

[Nexarius]

Here my smart iron/copper production without logistic robots

1.JPG (256.11 KiB) Viewed 9171 times

This is 1 segment of it

2.JPG (169.22 KiB) Viewed 9171 times

edit: just noticed a side effect
it can be fed with mixed copper/iron (if you have mixed ore deposits) without getting stuck (but of course then the "smart" function doesnt work)

[Frn]

here are some compact and easy designs:

https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=8&t=5050

Whoa, that's amazing.

[MeduSalem]

Here my smart iron/copper production without logistic robots

Looks quite nice...

I guess you have a storage system located after the smelterbank so that the output belts can't fill up and eventually jam the furnace output? Because I'd be interested in what settings you used for further research on the topic.


It's been a while since I tried doing a smart furnace setup with belts only... but I'd probably make one by inserting from the near side and outputting to the farside of the belt thereby saving on a lot of beltspace. Or doing it crosswise with a belt on each side of the furnace allowing input from 2 sides and outputting to the 2 others.

But with the upcoming circuit logic stuff for 0.12 I'll probably go completely nuts anyways and use one belt to feed iron/copper ore to the furnaces and 1 belt for the iron/copper plates and do the management before/after the furnaces by implementing a distribution logic so that nothing jams.

[Nexarius]

Here my smart iron/copper production without logistic robots

I guess you have a storage system located after the smelterbank so that the output belts can't fill up and eventually jam the furnace output? Because I'd be interested in what settings you used for further research on the topic.

My storage system isnt anything fancy ^^

It can store up to 75k iron but my furnaces already stop at 60k so nothing can get stuck

3.JPG (73.27 KiB) Viewed 9092 times

[bigyihsuan]

A modified Fish Sandwich red circuit build to use belts instead of bots. I had to remove an assembly machine to make room for the belts.

[MeduSalem]

A modified Fish Sandwich red circuit build to use belts instead of bots. I had to remove an assembly machine to make room for the belts.

Here is another one I found recently on Reddit while looking up something with google:



Actually if I was to feed that thing per belt instead of bots I'd do a combination of yours bigyihsuan and Zengief's design. Advanced Circuit Output and Plastic Bar/Electronic Circuit input with a 2 belt ring from outside like yours bigyihsuan, but I'd feed the Copper Plates with 3-4 belts leading inside through the gap in the symmetry axis like in Zengief's design. That way one doesn't need to remove the 8th Advanced Circuit Assembler to get the Copper Plates to the Copper Cable Assembler.

Depending how much Inserters it takes to keep the Copper Cable Assembler fed I'd even consider doing the Copper Plate input in one axis and the Advanced Circuit Output in the other axis with the Chests like in Zengief's design. That would remove the need for a second belt ring on the outside and instead I'd get a belt that is well fed from both sides with Advanced Circuits.

[quinor]

That's mine for red circuit production. Very expandable and quite easy to build. You can see how it overlaps a little with adjacent ones.

Red circuit production

[DerivePi]

This is my schematic for a fully expanded advanced circuit factory. 96 Assembler 3s produce 15 advanced circuits per second. It requires a full belt of plastic, circuits and copper plate (split in half). The assemblers at the top and bottom produce copper cable.

[Nexarius]

My newest smart Furnace design for copper iron AND steel without using any logistics robots

1.JPG (256.9 KiB) Viewed 9947 times

Here the smallest part of it

2.JPG (62.69 KiB) Viewed 9947 times

My storage system that works with iron/copper/steel input

3.JPG (206.95 KiB) Viewed 9947 times

[MeduSalem]

My newest smart Furnace design for copper iron AND steel without using any logistics robots

I'm sorry to tell you that I coincidentally beat you by adding stone too earlier today but didn't get to finish the concept until yet... But I still like your design... Because I had the very same idea with the 2 buffer chests independently from yours. So we both had the same thought there.

Smart Furnace with Belts.jpg (206.95 KiB) Viewed 9941 times

Completely ridiculous... but it works. xD

It just needs an ore/stone buffer before the furnaces that only outputs if the plate/steel/brick buffer after the furnaces is below a threshold... and a circle leading back to the ore/stone buffer so that any excess stone gets sorted out and doesn't circle forever.

Stone very much depends on there only being 4 stone in the chest because of the damn inserter stack size bonus inserting uneven amounts otherwise... so eventually if all the chests are filled with 4 stone the excess stone on the belts would end up at the end of the line, blocking the last furnaces, so the only way to prevent that is a circle back to the ore/stone buffer or to let it circle until it finds a chest that is not completely full, but that will consume precious belt space for quite some time.

Steel wouldn't need that much care but I also input only 10 Iron Plates into the chests... But it could be pretty much anything above 10, as long as the pair of inserters inserting to the furnace are able to grab 5 plates at once.

There's even space for some beacons if one would want to use them. Rearrange the inserters a bit and squeeze them in and use underground belts.

So much for "It's impossible to do it with belts." - The last step has been taken. There is nothing more to do with Smart Furnaces now. xD

[RoddyVR]

Nexarius and MeduSalem, could you describe your smelters in more detail, the conditions on the smart inserters specifically, does your design actualy solve the problem of 1 stone sitting in a smelter waiting for the second stone that never comes (same with 4 iron plates that never smelt into steel).
I don't quite see how your setups can solve that problem (might make it less likely, but not solved).
Ignoring the stone for a minute, nexarius how will your setup handle this situation(lets assume that I have your set up in minimal size, just 2 smelters and the chests,insters and belts that go with tehm)):
Factory needs more of iron and steel (if you have robonetwork conditions)
all chests and smelters are empty
4 iron ore is put onto the ore line

what will happen?
the ore will be smelted into iron plates (lets say by one smelter), put into the first chest, then because there are less then 5 it wont get put into the furnace to be made into steel. will it be released as iron to the factory?

What if 104 ore comes in, how will the process go, will it make 20 steel and 4 iron bars, or will I get a mix of steel and iron, and will the last 4 get stuck in the smelting setup or make it to the factory
and if the yget stuck in the setup, will they atleast get stuck in a chest, or in one of the smelters? that last situation is ofcourse the worst cause then copper can no longer be smelted.

Edit: ok so 4 iron gets solved by simple condition of "there's more then 5 plates in the chest" on the inserter that puts it iron into the smelter, but what if there's 6 there? enough to start putting in, but after that insterter puts 2 in to the smelter, tehre's less then 5 and it'll stop putting more in, and the smelter is stuck wit hjust 2 iron plates in its input slot. I just cant come up with a set of conditions that say "start putting in iron if there's enough in the chest, but keep putting in till there's a whole 5 in the smelter".

[Nexarius]

what will happen?
the ore will be smelted into iron plates (lets say by one smelter), put into the first chest, then because there are less then 5 it wont get put into the furnace to be made into steel. will it be released as iron to the factory?

The iron will only be released if there is more than 100 iron in the chest (waiting for steel production).

What if 104 ore comes in, how will the process go, will it make 20 steel and 4 iron bars, or will I get a mix of steel and iron, and will the last 4 get stuck in the smelting setup or make it to the factory
and if the yget stuck in the setup, will they atleast get stuck in a chest, or in one of the smelters? that last situation is ofcourse the worst cause then copper can no longer be smelted.

How much iron / steel is made depends on how much is already in the system.

The inserters will never put less than 5 iron into the furnace and also check how much steel is in total in my system

My system is split horizontally and vertically.
From left to right iron production if below 70k then 60k ..50k ....
From right to left copper production if below 70k then 60k ..50k ...
From top to bottom steel production if below 70k then 60k ..50k ...

Edit: ok so 4 iron gets solved by simple condition of "there's more then 5 plates in the chest" on the inserter that puts it iron into the smelter, but what if there's 6 there? enough to start putting in, but after that insterter puts 2 in to the smelter, tehre's less then 5 and it'll stop putting more in, and the smelter is stuck wit hjust 2 iron plates in its input slot. I just cant come up with a set of conditions that say "start putting in iron if there's enough in the chest, but keep putting in till there's a whole 5 in the smelter".

Sadly you cannot check how much iron is inside the furnace
But with the 4 Upgrades the inserters can move 5 items at once so it will never put 2 into it if its set to only work when there is more than 5.

My newest smart Furnace design for copper iron AND steel without using any logistics robots

I'm sorry to tell you that I coincidentally beat you by adding stone too earlier today but didn't get to finish the concept until yet... But I still like your design... Because I had the very same idea with the 2 buffer chests independently from yours. So we both had the same thought there.

Nice design you have there
I wanted to add stone too but i couldnt find a way to convert the 5 stone input somehow into 2 stones

It just needs an ore/stone buffer before the furnaces that only outputs if the plate/steel/brick buffer after the furnaces is below a threshold... and a circle leading back to the ore/stone buffer so that any excess stone gets sorted out and doesn't circle forever.

Actually you could just do this

1.JPG (116.55 KiB) Viewed 9897 times

[MeduSalem]

Nexarius and MeduSalem, could you describe your smelters in more detail, the conditions on the smart inserters specifically, does your design actualy solve the problem of 1 stone sitting in a smelter waiting for the second stone that never comes (same with 4 iron plates that never smelt into steel).
I don't quite see how your setups can solve that problem (might make it less likely, but not solved).

Inserter Settings:

For Steel Bars the inserter taking from the belt as highlighted in the first picture is set to put at least 10 (<10) Iron Plates into the Smart Chest behind it. But you could pretty much set it to any value above 5 (<5). I basically set it to 10 (<10) so that both furnaces could work simultaneously. You could set it to 100 (<100) as well and have a nice buffer, but it would take a quite a long time to fill the chests up and also for the increased iron ore/plates demand to be propagated.

Smart Furnace with Belts - Iron Plate Inserter 1.jpg (179.76 KiB) Viewed 9893 times

The inserters taking from the Smart Chest as highlighted in the second picture are set to work only if there are 10 (>9) or more items in the Chest. But since the Inserter taking from the belt stops working if there are 10 (<10) items in the Chest there are NEVER more than 10 items in the Chest. Again that setting could be set to pretty much any value above 5 (>4) and it would work. It works due to the fact that an upgraded inserter with maximum Inserter Stack Size bonus takes exactly 5 Iron Plates when there are at least 5 in the chest.
Also you can set the Steel Amount from the Logistic network to whatever suits you. I set it to work if there are less than 50 (<50) Steel Bars in the Logistic Storage for testing purposes. Didn't want to overproduce since it's a test setup... But you can set this to whatever Storage Buffer you want to have... like 10000 or whatever.

Smart Furnace with Belts - Iron Plate Inserter 2.jpg (228.27 KiB) Viewed 9893 times

For Stone Bricks the inserter taking from the belt as highlighted in the third picture is set to put at least 4 (<4) Iron Plates into the Smart Chest behind it. But you could set it to 2 (<2) or 4 (<4). It has to be one of the two because everything else would lead to the "1 Stone in the Furnace"-problem. The reason for why I set it to 4 (<4) is described below.

Smart Furnace with Belts - Stone Inserter 1.jpg (184.39 KiB) Viewed 9893 times

The inserters taking from the Smart Chest as highlighted in the fourth picture are set to work only if there are 4 (>3 or =4) items in the Chest. But since the Inserter taking from the belt stops working if there are 4 (<4) items in the Chest there are NEVER more than 4 items in the Chest. I basically set it to 4 (<4) because with 2 (<2) in the Chest the Stone will always get inserted into the same Furnace because one of the 2 Inserters will take priority over the other (probably depending either on location relative to the Smart Chest or if it has been placed first - don't know exactly... that's something to discuss by our Inserter Experts) and the other Furnace will never get to smelt Stone because the first Furnace is just too fast. With the setting 4 (<4) eventually the first furnace will be stocked up with Stone fast enough and the second inserter will also get to insert something in the second furnace eventually using both nearly equally.

Smart Furnace with Belts - Stone Inserter 2.jpg (187.85 KiB) Viewed 9893 times

Of course you need a storage system for Ore/Stone before the furnaces as well as a storage system for the Plates/Steel/Bricks after the furnaces to prevent the belts from getting jammed with useless crap.

The rest has been covered by Nexarius pretty well.

Nice design you have there
I wanted to add stone too but i couldnt find a way to convert the 5 stone input somehow into 2 stones

Thanks. The trick is to take only either 2 or 4 stone from the belt into the Smart Chest as shown in the picture above.

Actually you could just do this

Yeah would work, but I hate belt knots and the corners reduce belt compression by a lot. Therefore I'm more for a straight forward and cleaner design and do the excess management before/after the furnaces altogether where it is much simpler to do.

Another solution would be the Underground Belt Cheat with Fast and Express Underground Belts. But as I said it's a cheat in my opinion and I hate that as well:

[ssilk]

We already had this discussion, we had proved for Robot-filling, that you can fall into states, which leave the function broken.

This thread: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=8&t=6139

I think the same rules match also here (why should there be a big difference in filling by bot and by belt? Ok, the only difference is, that bots can fill up to 5 items at once, filling from belt fills only one item at once.

[MeduSalem]

We already had this discussion, we had proved for Robot-filling, that you can fall into states, which leave the function broken.

This thread: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=8&t=6139

I think the same rules match also here (why should there be a big difference in filling by bot and by belt? Ok, the only difference is, that bots can fill up to 5 items at once, filling from belt fills only one item at once.

I know that we already had this discussion, but back then we actually have proven that it is possible to do Iron, Copper AND Steel with Robot-filling except for Stone. Steel is possible thanks to the Inserter Stack Bonus resulting in 5 items being grabbed at once and setting the Smart Inserter to only work if there are at least 5 Iron Plates in the Requester Chest.

But we also have proven that Stone isn't possible with Robot-filling due to the fact that Bots may deliver anything between 1-4 Stone (not 5) and the inserter grabing anything between 1-5 Stone... which may result in an uneven amount of Stone ending up in the furnace with no way of gaining better control over it for now. This may change with 0.12... when there's a way to do some basic math like if the amount of Stone in the Chest is divisible by 2 and stuff like that. I think that it may result in extraorinary large contraptions just to gain safety for one ridiculous Chest and Furnace so it may still not be worth it.

The only way I see that Robot-filling for Stone may become viable is if someone manages to ensure that robots ALWAYS deliver exactly 2 or 4 Stone and nothing else due to shortage or other problems. I'd think it may be doable by inserting Stone from a belt into a Smart Chest with an Inserter that counts exactly to 2 or 4. And then have a Second Smart Inserter that moves these 2 or 4 Stone from The Smart Chest to the Provider Chest for pickup in one go when exactly 2 or 4 Stone are in the Smart Chest. That way there would always be packages of 2 or 4 Stone ready for pickup by the Bots ensuring that there's never an uneven amount being delivered to the furnaces ever. That of course is one hell of a contraption and you have to make sure that any Stone Provider chest would work the same with Smart Inserters and an additional Smart Chest.



BUT to get back to the Belts... They do NOT succumb to the same rules at all. The one and only difference of Inserters only being able to grab 1 item at a time from the belt is actually a MAJOR difference and advantage in this case because it allows one to count items exactly. It allows you to set the Smart Inserter to input items to the Chest until there are exactly 2 or 4 items in the Chest and not more and not less. And therefore it is ensured that there IS always exactly 2 or 4 items in Chest when inserting from the Chest to the Furnace.

The same applies for Steel. It allows to count exactly to 5 items and only insert from Chest into the Furnace if there are exactly this 5 items.

If it ever goes wrong when this setup is applied correctly then it's because the game mechanics introduce a major bug in the Logic Circuit or Inserter Mechanics or if they are bugged already. The layouts shown above should be death proof if the game is somewhat bugfree and whoever implements it is chosing the right settings as specified for the logic circuitry.


But if you want ssilk you could move the posts over to the other thread with the main discussion about Smart Furnaces if possible or continue the discussion there.

[ssilk]

Thank you for clarifying this. Make a lot of sense. Moving it is also a good idea, but I think I won't move it yet, because that furnace setup is also a very clever buid.

[psyestorm]

I had a separate thread, but I figured I'd post it here as well. Here is an easy, expandable, early-game setup to produce almost anything and keep a certain number of them in stock. While later in the game, robots may be better, this only requires advanced electronics which you get very early in the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYpE8P4GFbA

Thoughts?

[Alukat]

main part of science production.

http://fs1.directupload.net/images/150519/8b6m9vpj.jpg