Factorio Forums

Most of the balancer discussion and designs available are about balancing the *output* of a set of multiple belts, and some about balancing the right and left lane of a belt.
But there is very little know-how available on balancing the consumption of items across multiple belts on the *input* side, no matter what happens on the output side and that is what this thread is about.

For example, imagine a situation where you have 6 belts coming out of unloading a wagon, but your consumption (for whatever reason) only pulls items from the 1st belt. And yet, to ensure smooth unloading, we want to pull exactly the same number of items from each of the belts coming from the train. So, we need an "input-balanced" balancer.

At this point I have 2 questions, one simple and one not so simple:

(1) The trivial balancer/compressor below takes from the 6 unloaded belts and outputs to one or two belts. Did I design it right to ensure that it will draw equally from the 6 belts? My instints say no.. that I am probably drawing twice as fast from the center two belts than I am from the others, and if that is so... how would I fix it? (2) Is there a thread or article that I can read in order to learn the theory needed to design input-balanced balancers/compressors?

Thanks in advance for the replies.

If you are concerned about balancing the input side and you have a belt balancer that can provide a balanced output for the inverse inputs and outputs, then just reverse the balancer. A 2 to 6 output balanced splitter can be turned into a 6 to 2 input balanced splitter in reverse (you may have to use slightly different spacing if the output balanced balancer has a splitter input adjacent to a belt it does not input from, as in reverse it will output onto that belt). Any techniques or guides you find for output balance are therefore directly applicable to input balance, just used in reverse.

Consider the following balancers, where the one on the right is the 2 to 6 balancer from the wiki list of belt balancers, and the one on the left is the same balancer in reverse.

you need to take a 3 to 2 balancer which is done by making a 4to4 and rerouting 1 line of the output back to the input - or however xdd

Although this is a late reply, the following belt balancing design allows for perfect INPUT and OUTPUT balancing.

2-belt true balancers

4-belt true balancer

Isn't this an issue ? Shouldn't all the right part of the balancer be shifted 1 tile to the right to get the full belt in that underground belt instead of just one lane ?
Also I don't understand this :

I guess the belt above the underground belt you highlighted should point to the left.

Edited because I mixed up left and right

I agree, but I'd rather let the creator tell us if we missed something