Factorio Forums

My experience in the demo as I decide whether to buy the game:

A grabber arm pulls ores off of the conveyor and places them into the furnace in a way that makes me happy, like I have accomplished something complicated and I am on my way to making a great machine.

The grabber only places two ores into instead of 64 and then it stops. The furnace burns the ores and the grabber finds the first available ore which is a different type of ore that I didn't want it to use. Pressing all buttons on my keyboard trying to change the furnace to do what I say fails. There is no possible way to make this furnace do what I want unless I set up some other furnace to remove the other minerals before it gets there, but in that case I will surely have the same problem with that other furnace.

What have I failed to do?
Thank you

That's the way it works I'm afraid. There are two solutions that I can see here.

1. Put the other ore onto a separate belt and send it to another furnace.
2. Use smart inserter to filter only the ore you want.

I bet the timing on a more symmetrical system will work better for this. My first machine was a mess.
Thanks

You can split the resources before they get there. Or have in mind that the inserters prefer to get the item on the near side of the belt, this way if the belt is full or have a lot of items, it will always get the item on that side, you can play with this.
There are a lot of other ways on the wiki if you want to read a little

You're not supposed to have two kinds of ore on the same belt.

And if you do, in the full game you can research smart inserters which can be filtered by item type, and use that.

MtNak wrote:You can split the resources before they get there. Or have in mind that the inserters prefer to get the item on the far side of the belt, this way if the belt is full or have a lot of items, it will always get the item on that side, you can play with this.
There are a lot of other ways on the wiki if you want to read a little

Inserters prefer to get the item on the near side of the belt. They put items on the far side of the belt.

MtNak wrote:You can split the resources before they get there. Or have in mind that the inserters prefer to get the item on the far side of the belt, this way if the belt is full or have a lot of items, it will always get the item on that side, you can play with this.
There are a lot of other ways on the wiki if you want to read a little

The inserters prefer to take from the near side! Ah, was already said.
And yes: wiki.
https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... ion_Limits

And that is the joy of this game! Do you keep the different ores separate and have different furnaces for each type? Do you put all the ores together and use a smart inserter or robot logistics system to separate later (and then deal with overflow of one type of ore later)? Do you deal with overflow issues using a red/green wire system to your outpost/train stop so that ore production is stalled during an overflow? Do you provide furnaces up front or spread them in with all the other operations (next to circuits and engine unit production)? So many possibilities!

The furnaces (and assemblers) can hold full stacks of ingredients in them if you manually place the ores or items in them, but they are sharing machines and would prefer all the furnaces get a share of the ore before taking more.

ssilk wrote:

MtNak wrote:You can split the resources before they get there. Or have in mind that the inserters prefer to get the item on the far side of the belt, this way if the belt is full or have a lot of items, it will always get the item on that side, you can play with this.
There are a lot of other ways on the wiki if you want to read a little

The inserters prefer to take from the near side! Ah, was already said.
And yes: wiki.
https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... ion_Limits

You are right, sorry
Inserters put on the far side and prefer to take from the near side.

I think I forgot to mention, that they prefer to take from the near side and put always on the far side...

Now, where are the gif-pictures for inserter-behaviour?

On a serious note to the OP, in addition to the pointers given by other users before; in Factorio, factories become naturally bigger - the demo can only hint at this. If I recall correctly, the last demo mission included the electric power grid - now, compare the steam engines you build there, with a "proper" freeplay scenario where you have (and need) something to the order of a hundred steam engines and more.

The point here is that Inserters will only put twice of what a structure needs for a recipe into it - that includes your furnaces. The rationale behind that is, if you have enough ore that you could pile a full stack into a furnace, you're probably not smelting your ores fast enough - get more furnaces. Get more coal. Get more everything. Make it big

Eventually, a hundred steam engines seems like nothing