Factorio Forums

Following roy777's Reddit post on passive logistical loops, I made this factory for producing the four useful types of inserter.

(For those unfamiliar with the design, all the intermediate materials and final products go on the single main loop, and are pulled off as needed. Looking at the fast inserter factory on the right (for example), you can see how the belt is kept balanced--a regular inserter is putting the fast inserters onto the loop as they're produced, while a smart inserter is taking them back off. Since the smart inserter is faster than the regular inserter, any fast inserters that didn't get used will get pulled back off the main loop when they come back around, and so the main loop never gets saturated with any one item.)

At the top, the main loop is split off temporarily to the output area, where the products are pulled out into provider chests if there are fewer than X of that type in logistic storage. The purpose of splitting it is so that, for example, even if we're pulling off fast inserters, there will still be some available for the smart inserter assembler to use.

The blue belts are probably not strictly necessary for the main loop--I bet red would be fine.

I have a similar (though larger, and uglier) facility producing all three colors of belt, splitter, and underground belt. That one definitely needs blue belts for its main loop.

I like this set up. Scratches just the right itch I guess. No wiring required, just uses belt and inserter mechanics to limit output.

This is pretty cool actually. Never really considered doing it this way, but it seems to work surprisingly well.

This is kinda neat. I like the idea of only useing one belt.

Here's what I use in one of my games. You can make it slimmer by eliminating the belts to the right. This is a more efficient layout due to stack-size bonuses, but it also makes use of my modded filterable chest. I use it to feed blue-science productions.

Hello, I'm looking for this particular layout, but the images are gone now. I remember I liked this style very much and I wanted to reproduce this, but save game files are gone now. Does anybody have this mixed-belt thing anywhere?