Factorio Forums

I wanted to enable/disable a stack inserter based on circuit conditions and I noticed that while the enabling/disabling does work, the stack inserter is only able to pick up 1 item at a time. I think the problem is intermittent, but right now it seems to be happening pretty consistently with the attached blueprint.

I am using version 0.16.18.
UPDATE: The problem seems to disappear when the incoming U238 signal is higher than the incoming U235 signal + 1. So at the beginning you can "fix" the inserter by bumping the incoming U238 signal to 2, but this "fix" only lasts until the incoming U235 signal goes up to 1.

UPDATE2: Another way to fix the problem is to make the incoming signals different than the item on the belt. In other words, the inserter in the above example is only broken when it tries to pick up U235. If I put anything else on the belt, the inserter picks up stacks just fine. Similarly, if I change the incoming signal (and the enable/disable condition in the inserter) to, for instance, "A" instead of U235, then the inserter picks up U235 stacks just fine. This is an acceptable workaround for me.

UPDATE3: Never mind, it's not a bug.

I'm more inclined to say the problem is in the circuitry itself; because the inserter reads hand contents in pulse mode, it's increasing the count as it picks up, which makes it think it should be disabled for one tick at the moment it picks up U-238 in certain edge cases. Not a bug in Factorio.

i would try gameplay help before reporting a bug, unless you are really sure it is indeed a bug.
if you are trying to recycle 40 U235, you don't need circuits combinators to do that.

it would also help if you explained what you are trying to do, tell us how to reproduce the problem.

chrisgbk wrote:I'm more inclined to say the problem is in the circuitry itself; because the inserter reads hand contents in pulse mode, it's increasing the count as it picks up, which makes it think it should be disabled for one tick at the moment it picks up U-238 in certain edge cases. Not a bug in Factorio.

I think you are right, I didn't consider that the inserter's pulse may go out on the circuit that I thought of as "input circuit."

if i'm using an inserter that is both reading a signal, and outputing one i use red wire for one, and a green for the other.
you can use a arithmetic contaminator set to *each +0 *each to make a signal go in a single direction.