Originally shared on the public FactorioPrints / Factorio School archive (factorioprints.com · factorio.school). Authorship preserved from the public catalog.
What is this?
A modular station for construction trains in which inserters are never left hanging. (<--like in the picture--)
Why?
I think having inserters be stuck like that to be uncivilized. Also i wanted to mess around with combinators.
I guess you could also use this for something else too! like... i don't know, delivering very specific amounts of stuff..?
Let's... let's just get to the setup guide, shall we.
The blueprint book has a couple of station examples that can be set up rather quickly.
Plop down one of the last two blueprints
Make a 2-4-2 train and set the wagons' filters to match the contents of the Constant Combinators.
(I will refer to them as "CC" from now on.)
Set the train to stop to the station automatically
Turn all the constant combinators on
Note: in the normal station, each CC corresponds to a wagon.
In the compact station, each row of items in a CC corresponds to one wagon instead.
And that's it.
It would suck ass if there weren't customization options though, so here is how to make your own station!
Setting up a custom station
Initial setup
Start by placing the "Station & control" blueprint (top left in picture)
if your train has more than 1 locomotive you can place the "Fuel refiller" blueprint
Place as many "Pre-wired poles" as needed and extend the rails
Note: The red wire carries requests for the chests, the green wire carries stack sizes for the inserters
Using a preset loader
The book comes with 5 preset wagon loaders which you might want to use as a base, as a reference or if you are just lazy.
Each preset has a CC that's not connected to anything. It's also OFF by default.
The purpose of this CC is for its settings to be copied to one of the station's CC; it should then be deleted.
(otherwise you won't be able to walk through...)
Note: You can add as many CCs as you need. Just connect them with each other by green wire.
Set up the wagon filters by matching the requests in the CCs and once the train is ready, set it to stop automatically to the station. Finally, turn the CCs on to make the system start requesting the items.
Setting up a custom loader
The book also contains building blocks to make your own custom loaders.
There are normal ones...
...and compact ones. They look a little different but work in the same way.
Soon we'll see how to combine them together and make our own loading block, but first we need to learn how to set them up.
Operation of a single-chest section
The next picture shows the components of a single section of the loader. To set this to load a specific item, replace all the [1] signals to that item.
(the huge red arrows point to the signals you've got to replace. you don't have to change any of the actual numbers, ever)
The arithmetic combinator's function is to isolate the desired signal and pass it to the chest.
The inserter has to be set to the same item as the arithmetic combinator, otherwise the setup won't work correctly.
The chest does not need to be modified, but if willing you can set it to Request from buffer chests.
Note: all the chests in the blueprint book have the same settings, meaning that you can copy/paste settings between them w/o causing damage. The only exception are the fuel chests for locomotives, which are not connected to the circuit network.
The compact version of the single section loader is identical but with the Arithmetic Combinator tucked to one side.
Operation of a split-load section
Sometimes you might want to split an item to be loaded from multiple chests simultaneously, this is done usually for high volumes of an item such as rails or belts.
In the pictured case, you'll need to replace all the [6] variables to the item you desire. (each [6] is marked with a red border around it)
The Arithmetic combinator on the left isolates a request from the red wire and divides it by the number of chests, in this case 6.
The Decider combinator in the middle disables all but one inserters when the request is lower than a threshold.
the threshold is calculated like this: Number of inserters in block * Maximum stack size, in this case it's 6*12 =72
The rightmost Decider combinator outputs a request of 1 item directly to the chests if the request coming from the red wire is equal to 1.
(this is to ensure even the last item gets actually requested. Otherwise 1 divided by 6 would get rounded to 0 and no request would reach the chests)
The leftmost inserter (the one connected to the green line) is set up identically to the one in a single-chest section.
All the other inserters (the ones connected to the yellow line) are the same but with a condition for operation: the red squares must be = to 0. These are the inserters that get disabled when the threshold is reached.
(you can copy/paste these inserters onto each other)
Note: All the other split-load blocks work the same way but have different values. Setting them up works the same way as in the pictured example, but with less machines to set up.
Mashing it all together
Let's now take a look at the "Loader (blank)" blueprint. It's basically just 12 single sections daisy-chained together. With the help of compooter grafyx i have overlayed some colored rectangles to separate each section in a more visual fashion.
It seems the jpg compression isn't doing the picture any good but let's not worry about that.
Let's say you want to have a couple of split-load sections in your custom block. What you can do is delete some of the existing single-sections starting from the side with the [A]'s or the side with the [L]'s, and when you've made enough space, paste a split-load blueprint on it.
Make sure to overlay the new power pole with the old.
The newly placed blocks should automatically be connected to the circuit network. Here is another picture with the colored overlays again, showing how the blocks are currently disposed.
Let's say you want an additional split-load section, and you want it in the middle of the thing.
This can be achieved easily by deleting the unwanted sections and then pasting a blueprint over the empty space, making sure that the power pole doesn't get placed...
...but wait! Now the new section isn't connected! (its crappy overlay is red, even!)
To connect the new section just:
Connect the inserters with each other by green wire
Connect the combinator inputs with each other by red wire
And that's it!
Note: You can connect the inserters and combinator inputs from either or both sides. It doesn't matter, as long as all inserters are connected to the main green wire and all the combinator inputs are connected to the main red wire.
All that's left to do now is setting up the variables in each inserter and combinator... (yaaaay)
Here is an example of how a completed setup might look.
Let's now get into the end of this guide and activate the station.
Activating the station safely
You should always follow this order to activate a station to prevent messes. (like your wagons getting filled before filters have been set...)
0. Set up filters in the wagon(s)
ideally this is the first thing you would do. Once you know how many stacks of things you need, you can get to the next step.
Set up requests in the Constant Combinators (while they are OFF)
be cognizant of the different stack sizes and set each item to what you set your wagons to hold.
Set the train to automatically go to the station.
if the train is in manual mode, even if in the correct spot, the station won't be able to read it and the system won't work correctly.
Lastly, when you are sure everything else is good, turn on the CCs.
the CCs will send the requests you set to the chests, so it is advisable to double or triple check your settings before activation.
And that's it!!!! We are done with the setup guide.
Some final notes about the design:
Note: An intelligent design would be to set the first requester chest of a split-load section to request from buffer chests, then replacing all the other requester chests to buffer chests. (in that section)
Note: When the train is fully loaded in-station, the chests will stop requesting stuff until the train leaves or someone grabs stuff from its inventory.
Note: This design does not allow for the same item to be requested in multiple wagons. For that, you'll have to do some relatively funky shit, i guess! I would've designed it myself but i should really get back to my life. : (
And lastly... an explanation of how the station controls work, for those who might be interested.
How does this work?
These five combinators are the brain of the station. Hopefully this graph is not too confusing...
As we know, the Constant Combinators have all the information about what should be in the train.
So, combinator A is connected to the station and reads what's inside the train, then sends a negation of its readings to decider B, which in turn sums those values with those stored in the CC's. (B is set to output only positive values to prevent some funky shit in case of human errors)
In other words they subtract "what's inside the train" from "what should be in the train", and get "what's missing from the train" as a result.
This result (or actually, these results) are outputted on the red wire, which goes towards the chests and deciders C, and E.
Decider E checks each value on the red wire and for each of them, if the value is greater than 12, it tells arithmetic combinator D to output the number "12" on the green wire. In case the values on the red wire are lower than or equal to 12, then decider C outputs those values directly to the green wire. (decider E does not activate at all for those values, and vice versa)
So that's basically how it works.
Inserters get stuck on the rails when the wagon can't hold no more of the item being moved.
So by knowing the amounts needed and regulating stack sizes... you can do shit like this! woohoo! hooray etc
I guess I should've added another combinator to define the stack size instead of using human-fed constants like i did... maybe someday i'll revise these prints. For now, have fun and good luck!! <3
0. Set up filters in the wagon(s)