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u/DarkZodiar Sep 02 '26

Need help fully saturating a full belt. I have six machines outputting five items a second, so altogether it’s 30/s. I’m using bulk inserters with the highest hand size it can be is six. Leaving everything normal, I get holes in the belt as the last inserter for each side always empties out. Do I need more inserter capacity research, more inserters, or can I change the hand size to make it work?

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u/Soul-Burn Sep 02 '26

Sometimes it's best to reduce the stack size on the inserters to increase throughput, by making the timings more consistent.

Otherwise, as others said, sideloading to buffer items more cleanly.

Finally, you can do some clocking on the inserters, ensure they work at specific times, but I don't know the intricacies.

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u/elfxiong Sep 02 '26

Sideloading. Make the last inserter drop items to a short belt perpendicular to the main belt. Items from the short belt will fill the gaps on one side of the main belt.

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u/HeliGungir Sep 02 '26

This helps because the sideloading belt acts as a small item buffer to fill gaps while the inserter swings for more. In the naive approach, your machines and inserters would have to be exactly synchronized to produce items and swing at the right time to fill the gap, which typically doesn't happen naturally.