Factorio Forums

Sometimes you've got two resource fields overlapping. If you slap a mining drill on the edge of a field, it will catch two or more resource types and start to randomly mine both. That can be problematic - you can end up with coal on your ore input, or Copper in your Steel smelter. Please allow a configuration option for Mining Drills to be limited to mining a specific resource type, ignoring all other resources that might be available to it.

IE if I want that damn Electric Drill to only mine Iron Ore, I should be able to tell it to not feed Stones in my smelter!

I think that the mixed output is by design.
You have to plan and build facilities that filter the ores, which is very "factorio way".

this would be nice, but a way to fix this is put a filter inserter on the belt line to grab the bad resource off the belt

BLuehasia wrote:this would be nice, but a way to fix this is put a filter inserter on the belt line to grab the bad resource off the belt

At early game you don't have that (yet), and the starting area is usually where this problem occurs. Besides, then you have to run a second belt or empty the bad resource chest every so often, which is annoying. I agree that there are workarounds for dealing with mixed output, but I think a better fix is to be able to prevent mixed output in the first place.

This has already been discussed previously, and the answer was inevitably "The solution to this need is filter inserter". And the filter inserter is a very early tech, requiring only red science. I don't think you need filtering THAT badly THAT early because all your ressource fields are totally mixed-up.

I llike the way it is currently implemented. If the suggestion of the original poster were implemented, it would make filter inserters less useful. Therefore, I do not support the original poster's suggestion.

BLuehasia wrote:this would be nice, but a way to fix this is put a filter inserter on the belt line to grab the bad resource off the belt

I do not recommend this. This solution will only work reliably if you always have sufficient power and if you have not more than one miner.

If you have more than one miner, then it is likely that the inserter will miss a few items to be filtered, thereby clogging the belt with unwanted items (which can be nasty).

Even if you only have a single miner, there still is the danger of the filter inserter missing the item, when it is low on power.

For this reason, in my experience, it is best to have three belts connected by two filter inserters. One belt is the mixed belt and one belt contains only the "good" items and one only the "bad" items.

An alternative would be to stop the mixed belt using the circuit network to prevent an unwanted item to pass through. However, this circuit network design would have to be designed to be fail-safe, i.e. if the combinators lose power for some reason and are therefore unable to output a signal, then the belt should stop.

Well, my solution to this is to simply not place drills on overlapping ressources early in the game. it may be a bit ugly and inconvenient to not use your favourite mining-grid, but it works 100% and is very low-tech.

later in the game you can then mine the remaining edges and apply some sorting with belts and inserters or have the drills output to logistic chests an let the bots do the sorting.

It's not a big deal. I dont see the need to add the function you requested.

Avoid placing miners on mixed resources early on- they show you what their yield will be so this is totally attainable.

My preferred method of separating material is to direct the mixed belt into a loop, which then has 3 filter inserters for each material type standing by to remove that material onto a belt of pure materials.

The reason you use 3 of them right together is because on anything less than a bluebelt, fast inserters or better will reliable grab most if not all of a particular material on said belt.

Like so the inserters won't miss at all unless the factory is experiencing a brownout, and even if they do any material that is not removed will simply circulate around the ring until it can be.

Buffering the outputs becomes important to make sure that the filter ring doesn't get clogged with a type of material that is not being collected, but it is possible to do so.

There's two solutions to this problem already in the game:

1. Filter inserters. There's a few ways to sort mixed resources with them. The devs have even provided one in the Factorio trailer.

2. Logistic robots. If your drills output to an Active Provider chest and the robots empty it, they'll do the sorting as part of their transport work. I don't recommend using Passive Providers on mixed resources as they'll just fill up with the one you need the least of and stall progress on that patch.

Personally, I prefer the latter, but that's probably just because I find the little robots adorable.

When I have a start with 2 orepatches touching each other at the beginning of a game, I start to seperate them with the bürnerminer since they only mine 2x2
When i grow big and start building several electic mining drills, most orepatches are allready separated. Else I go over to filterinserters or I keep the burners running only for separating those orepatches.

Using logistics is an option if you're using the resources and aren't too far from your main base - for mining outposts it wouldn't be a good solution. But I prefer to save the bots for higher value goods - they tend to draw a lot of power which can be an issue early to mid game. Not to mention the logistics system being locked behind a ton of research now...
I do sometimes use the burner inserters as well to define a more narrow mining area, but when an ore patch is donutted into another bigger ore patch, even that sometimes doesnt work.

Moved to won't implement. The solutions for this case is discussed in this thread.

Coolies. Filter inserters and droid duty it is!

Tekky wrote:
An alternative would be to stop the mixed belt using the circuit network to prevent an unwanted item to pass through. However, this circuit network design would have to be designed to be fail-safe, i.e. if the combinators lose power for some reason and are therefore unable to output a signal, then the belt should stop.

It's actually a very simple solution. No combinators required.

> Belt
F Filter inserter
= Belt, connected with wire
_ (nothing here)

___>>>>>>>> (unwanted resource)
___FFF
>>>>>==>> (desired resource)

Connect the two belts shown with a wire. Set them both to read (hold) and Enable (unwanted_resource == 0)
Technically the second connected belt doesn't do anything - you just need to run a wire from the first belt to _somewhere_ so that you can enable circuit conditions on it.


Obviously, if your unwanted resource backs up, it will prevent the desired resource from passing through, but it will not allow the unwanted resource to "leak" through under any circumstance.

Would it be something like this mod? Hope it works!
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Specialli ... iningDrill

You're two years late, mate