Factorio Forums

For situations where you need to correct both unbalanced production upstream and unbalanced consumption downstream, we have the full lane balancer using 4 splitters and 2 underground belt exits.

For situations where you need to correct unbalanced production upstream only, we also have the reduced lane balancer using only a single splitter.

But what if the belt in need of lane balancing is a loop? For a lane balancer on a loop, every imbalance is upstream if you look far enough - so is the reduced lane balancer always sufficient for loops? Or am I guilty of Troll Physics here?

Not troll physics per se, just a scoping issue.

The purpose of a "simple" balancer is to balance supply "downstream". Looping the belt around won't change that, the production will still be unbalanced. I guess you could swap the lanes around while looping it back so that the less used lane is injected into the more demanded but it's a more complex system than just a full lane balancer, but less efficient and slower to respond to changes in supply or demand.

Also I don't know what you mean by 4 splitters, I use 2 to achieve a true lane balancer. Split the belt, use underground belts to get one lane from each, side load one onto the other lane (so both lanes of the original belt are now on the same lane of two different belts), put it through a second splitter, side load back into one belt.

Please continue detailed discussion here:
viewtopic.php?f=202&t=15366 Demand rebalancer/inverse rebalancer