Confused over ore-to-plates ratio (2024)

I am uterly confused about the input-to-output ration for producing (copper or iron) plates. I'm using the "Factorio Caclulator" by Kirk McDonald which tells me that 2700 ore will result in 2700 plates per minute using 72 electric furnaces. However, when setting this up using expressbelts, which have the exact capacity needed, I barely can fedd 50 furnaces, the other ones will run out of ore.

I checked the Wiki for the details of the electric furnace, learning that one electric furnace will produce 0,625 copper plates per second, thus producing 37,5 plates per minute. So an express belt will be able to feed (2700 / 37,5) 72 furnaces. Which is exactlx my setup.

So what am I doing wrong? Has this something to do with belt compression? And if so, how can I verify whether / achieve that my belts are fully compressed?

Thanks

15/30/45 items/sec, or 900/1800/2700 items/min. Most people use items/sec, by the way, unless talking science, which is talked about per minute.

For Steel Furnaces (craft speed 2) you need 24/48/72 furnaces to turn a full belt of ore into a full belt of plate.

Electric Furnaces are really there for when you are going to start using modules and beacons. You CAN use them as a replacement for Steel Furnaces but the numbers change big time when you start using beacons and modules, so it would be best to plan for that now if you are using the Electric instead of Steel.

Your belt IS full, right? 50ish furnaces makes it sound as though you are using the red belts (48 furnaces) instead of blue belts (72 furnaces) OR your belt is not full.

As stated by a previous poster, it takes 90 miners at base to full a blue belt with ore. That number decreases with Mining Productivity tech and if you are using Speed Beacons in the miners. The furnace count depends on fully compressed belts.

If you

can't keep 72 unboosted electric furnaces fed with iron ore you're not supplying a full blue belt of iron ore. That's pretty much all there is to it.

I'm using the electric furnace in order to avoid the coal supply. And I'm using express belts, so tht is not the problem. I already activated the "show-transport-lines" in the debug settings. When activated, there are white and blue lines shown atop the belts, but I haven't found a information regarding the meaning of the colours.

Furthermore, I'm feeding the belts via train, and I'm using six stack inserters to fill one express belt. Hoewever, I suppose I don't have fully cpmpressed belts. This is my layout. As you can see, I already tried to change the layout in order to have filly compressed belts, but to no success so far, I suppose.

Unloading station:

"show-transport-lines":
(the lines are flickering between white and blue in-game, they are not solid white / blue as shown in the picture)

The stack inserters leave little gaps in the belt when they fetch the next hand. If all inserters do that at the same time I think you get a gap. So what I did is unload unto 6 blue belts (single side only). Then merge them pairwise to get items on both sides. And then merge the three nearly full belts into 2 compressed belts. Just tried something for 30 seconds and this is what I came up with.

Apart from the belt merging at the top you see another thing I recommend: unload from parallel stations. You can see that I use no buffer chests because there is a little combinator magic for the bottom station. The inserters only work when the top train is on it's last swing. It will actually become completely empty before items from the bottom train arrive and block the top inserters. That means the bottom stop only unloads while the top stop changes trains. Except when the top train has less than 1k iron ore left it finishes unloading. So together the 2 decider combinator ensure that the stations always change trains at different times. Without that little trick there would be gaps with no train present.

The other thing I see as "wrong" in your setup is the balancer. What for? Just send each blue belt into 72 electric furnaces. Each belt will be consumed at the same rate giving you a perfectly balanced consumption. It will also produce a perfectly balance production of plates on the other end. So you can just load them right back onto trains without balancing. In a perfect world.

Now sometimes sh*t happens. E.g. some player comes by and picks up a few stacks of iron plates causing an imbalance. The way I handle that is maybe suboptimal but so much simpler. Look at the blue belts AFTER they have fed all 72 furnaces. They should be empty by then except when there is an imbalance. On some output belts the iron plates will back up, furnaces will block and some ore will be left over. So merge the belts into one belt (even a yellow belt will do), loop it around the smelter back to the unloading station and then side feed it into all the belts:

I've simulated an imbalance there and you can see that the remaining ore is used to fill in the gaps in the other belts. This brings the whole thing back into balance. But that's really just for when someone interferes with the setup so it gets back to working. It's not instant but fixes the problem over time. The beauty of this is that it works with an unlimited number of blue belts. No need for a 32 lane balancer when you go bigger.

Note: instead of side feeding you can also use priority splitter but then you need blue ones.

Quax wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 12, 2021 2:10 pm

I am uterly confused about the input-to-output ration for producing (copper or iron) plates. I'm using the "Factorio Caclulator" by Kirk McDonald which tells me that 2700 ore will result in 2700 plates per minute using 72 electric furnaces. However, when setting this up using expressbelts, which have the exact capacity needed, I barely can fedd 50 furnaces, the other ones will run out of ore.

I checked the Wiki for the details of the electric furnace, learning that one electric furnace will produce 0,625 copper plates per second, thus producing 37,5 plates per minute. So an express belt will be able to feed (2700 / 37,5) 72 furnaces. Which is exactlx my setup.

So what am I doing wrong? Has this something to do with belt compression? And if so, how can I verify whether / achieve that my belts are fully compressed?

Thanks

Are you getting a full 2700/m out? I ask because if, for example, you stuck a pair of rank 1 speed modules in each of those furnaces, you'd consume all the ore with ~52 furnaces.