Factorio Forums

Most people know that it is possible to separate items on to separate sides of a belt. However, there is a way to evenly distribute multiple items onto one side of the belt. I don't think I am the first person to discover this, but I have not seen any posts on the forum about it so I thought I could contribute.

When a fully compressed yellow belt is side loaded on to a red belt it alternates the lanes the items from which the items are pulled allowing for 2 items to share one side. In this first design the items are first side loaded to compress the yellow belt. That yellow belt is then dumped on to the second red belt which will distribute the items for the 1 side of the belt. Putting different items on wither side allows up to 4 items evenly distributed on 1 belt. It is important to note that the output loops back and feeds the buffer for the input. If the output belt gets backed up it will tend to jump out of sync for one tile. This includes reducing the red output to a yellow belt. Looping designs and buffers can prevent this.

Here is the design empty to show the belts. And here it is with science packs as an example. The same concept can be applied when going from yellow belts to blue belts, but instead of it only being 2 items per side, it becomes 3. The red belts are side loaded to compress the yellow belt. Two yellow belts are then put on to a blue belt which picks the items up in the order they are loaded. The resulting output is a fully compressed blue belt with 3 items per side. Putting different items on wither side allows up to 6 items evenly distributed on 1 belt! This could be most useful in putting all the pre-space science onto 1 belt.

Empty belt design. Six science pack example. All of these designs are not the most compact but rather serve as a proof of concept. I hope this has shown a mechanic that can be used in your own factory

As a very new Factorio player I have been reading lots of topics, looked up info on the wiki, watched videos (tutorials) and Twitch streams.

The factorio players amaze me again and again with there creative solutions. This mixing solution is one of the many I have been reading up on. I hope I can get it to good use in my own feeble attempts. Thank you for sharing.

Some smart beltwork but I think this will break if you switch from say a 4 science pack research to a 3 because it stops loading the 4th leaving it to fill up belt space so you need some kind of loop.

The other issue will be of pack creation. If you run into a deficit of one pack it will mess up your throughput. Some circuits at the junctions could help with that.

Still very creative. I like that you've used belt speed to do your mixing for you.

Shokubai wrote:The other issue will be of pack creation. If you run into a deficit of one pack it will mess up your throughput.

Not necessarily. The way I discovered that blue belts allow 3 per side is when I upgraded the initial red belt output to a blue belt. I was trying to see if the alternating pattern would hold up at higher speeds.When loading a red belt on to the output, instead of an even spit it would put 2 green for every 1 red. Also, when It was a single yellow belt going to the output it would leave a gap after 2 items .Adding the one yellow belt on top is what fills this gap for the other items leave. The gap will only be there if both belts feeding the blue belt are yellow.

Very nice idea. As pointed by others, some stability issues in case of backlogging d/shortage/inequal use of ressources, but looping back the not used ingredient should be just fine, and I don't know many stable mixed belt that don't loop.