Do items despawn, or whats the point of the robot arm?

[Kurtino]

I made the robot arm so it can pick up items I'm automating and put them into a chest, but honestly leaving things on the floor or even just floating on a conveyor belt doesn't seem to make an item eventually disappear.

Do items actually despawn and if they don't is there any reason to setup robot arms with chests?

[DY5L3X14]

Things don't despawn... feel free to save an arm and a chest.

[MrIncognito]

The robot arm can put items in things that aren't chests but can hold items anyway, such as furnaces, and also take them out. Also, having a robot arm put items in a chest helps keep the items from being picked up accidentally

[Bobucles]

the big thing is it can fill up furnaces. Place a furnace at every mining node and everything will be cooked.

[Ishimuro]

like the ppl already wrote, you can make a smelting array at your base and just dump the ore into a chest and the robot arms will move it around and also pick the products and place it at a chest at the end (or feed the array with a belt ... but if you want to belt ore from the mining sites you need alot)
at the other side you can make a item sorting array with chests, robot arms, and drills, so you just dump all your stuff in one chest and it get sort in (there is a vid about that)

you can just dump the stuff anywhere, but at least im annoyed if i pick it up by accident from time to time :)