Grabber arm things

[Balloon Dog]

So i had a line with iron coming down one side of the belt and copper comming down the other. My question is how do i make the grabbers target a specific side of the belt when taking item off of them. I tried puttign grabber on the other side but they were both grabbing iron when i wanted one to grab the copper.

[IsopropylPod]

Originally posted by BalloonDogFTW:

So i had a line with iron coming down one side of the belt and copper comming down the other. My question is how do i make the grabbers target a specific side of the belt when taking item off of them. I tried puttign grabber on the other side but they were both grabbing iron when i wanted one to grab the copper.

eiter use a smart inserter, or use a 3 lane system with coal in the middle and coper and iron on each side, and use the long inserters to grab coal.

[IsopropylPod]

Originally posted by NO! *BANG*:

Originally posted by BalloonDogFTW:

So i had a line with iron coming down one side of the belt and copper comming down the other. My question is how do i make the grabbers target a specific side of the belt when taking item off of them. I tried puttign grabber on the other side but they were both grabbing iron when i wanted one to grab the copper.

eiter use a smart inserter, or use a 3 lane system with coal in the middle and coper and iron on each side, and use the long inserters to grab coal.

*or a filter inserter if you are in .13

[AlexMBrennan]

So i had a line with iron coming down one side of the belt and copper comming down the other. My question is how do i make the grabbers target a specific side of the belt when taking item off of them. I tried puttign grabber on the other side but they were both grabbing iron when i wanted one to grab the copper.

This sounds like the X/Y problem ( http://xyproblem.info/ ). Please tell us what you actually want to do.

[Mazian]

If the OP will provide more details about the objective, I'm sure a more meaningful answer will be presented by someone-- this is one of the more helpful communities I've seen.

Originally posted by BalloonDogFTW:

My question is how do i make the grabbers target a specific side of the belt when taking item off of them.

This is not possible. Unfiltered inserters always prefer the nearest side of the belt, when it can pick from either side-- and there are other rules that affect whether or not the inserter can grab the item on the nearest side.

E.g., if you put coal on the nearest side, and copper plates on the far side, and then run them past an inserter that is feeding an Assembler that does not use coal but does use the copper plate-- the inserter will only grab the copper plate on the far side. The coal will be ignored because it cannot be delivered to the Assembler.

E.g., if you have smelter that is smelting iron, and you have a belt with copper on the near side and iron on the far side, the inserter will only grab the iron on the far side to load into the smelter. Your well designed 50-50 iron-copper unmanaged smelter design can get massively out of whack if you run out of copper-- because then the unfiltered inserters will grab iron and start processing iron-- and your evenly distributed copper-iron smelter factory will suddenly start processing only iron ore. (This is one of those scenarios where you might consider using filtered inserters to ensure that a smelter remains idle instead of loading iron-- but for the sake of efficiency, it's better to simply create a new smelter lane for copper rather than mixing it with the iron smelting. Belts have a maximum-items-per-second throughput speed-- and by mixing iron and copper, you limit the total processing capacity of each on that lane-- by isolating iron and copper into separate lanes, you can process X/s units of iron ore peak-- limited by the speed of the belt.)

Originally posted by BalloonDogFTW:

I tried puttign grabber on the other side but they were both grabbing iron when i wanted one to grab the copper.

If you want them to grab something specific, you can use filtered inserters to grab only that item. This is usually not the best way to approach a problem though and suggests a larger review of your design may be warranted.

I've played around with filter inserters, and while they have their place, I find they're most useful in handling items that you (load into)/(unload from) trains. Using filtered inserters with smelters, assemblers, etc. is an overcomplication and usually unnecessary.

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

This sounds like the X/Y problem ( http://xyproblem.info/ ). Please tell us what you actually want to do.

Nice reference. I haven't seen that before.

The theoretical discussion is still perhaps useful for others who are further along than BalloonDog-- and I find the exercise of my brain to be helpful in maintaining it's long term health--

But yea, if we knew more about his objective, we could provide a better and more targeted response.

[Balloon Dog]

Thanx everyone its sorted now :)