Factorio Forums

Hi!

I would like to make a buffer of two ingredients with one chest and one inserter.

Question: is it possible?
Goal: how to do it and keep them at a limit of 100

Let's suppose I have iron and copper plates on same belt in separate lanes (see screenshot). As it is currently, once there's no more supply of copper plates, the storage chest fills up with iron plates.
Link to image "i.imgur.com/fsaEAMi.png"

I can't make heads or tails from the combinators post
forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=14556

Thanks for help!

Impossible, you need 2 inserters. Move your chest one tile to the right to make for a second inserter.

What you want to achieve is unfortunately not possible in Factorio, the current game doesnt allow the smart inserter item filter to be changed with the use of circuit network. Its either use a separate inserter for each item or use logistic bots and a requester chest.

Don't give up!

Think of this problem in reverse.

How about making the inserter (that takes stuff out) work only when there's more than 1 iron plate AND 1 copper plate (or the stack size bonus from research, thanks DaveMcW). This would function the same way as reserving space in the toolbar.

I simply don't know how to set up the proper signals or what each type of circuit signal does.

AND can be made by checking input of larger than 0 according to http://wiki.factorio.com/index.php?titl ... r_Tutorial

Binary AND
Arithmetic Combinator set to "A * B"

Update
it seems to work. Two decider combinators taking in storage container as input. Set iron plates more than 1 double the inserter stack size to output signal A of value 1 instead of the default counter. Set the other decider to check for copper plates > 1 10 and output signal B valued 1, then the "binary AND" as from wiki, that is, feed deciders as inputs into arithmetic combinator, and set it to output signal C with inputs as A multiplied by B. Finally link arithmetic combinator output to smart inserter that takes stuff out of the box and have it check for C = 1.
Limit the box with the red cross to limit buffer size.
Voila. Thanks!

Update 2
Amount of the stack size depends on the amount of inserters working on the chest.

The approach described by DaveMcW requires one less combinator than I describe.

Ok, so you put the fast inserter next to the belt and the smart inserter next to the chemical plant. I assume you will eventually have a 5-item inserter stack size, so you need to make sure there are 6 items in the chest.

Combinator 1: Iron plate > 5 => 1 green signal
Combinator 2: Copper plate > 5 => 1 green signal
Inserter: green signal = 2

I know you can set item filters for train cars so 1 inserter will only fill certain slots with certain items, unfortunately this is very counter productive to what you want, like everyone else said just use 2 inserters. (although I would just use a fast inserter putting the items directly into the chem plant, but I'm assuming you want to take advantage of the stack size bonus?)