How to balance uneven belt drain?

[Gazer75]

Basically I have a bunch of furnaces droping copper plates to both sides of a belt. Problem is that only one side produces as the factories making copper wire only drains one side of the belt.

Is there some kind of belt and splitter design that will help drain both sides?

[icanfly342]

You can do this:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=637386513

[Teh Freek]

This bizarre construct will drain from all input lines evenly regardless of which output is pulled from:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=656648860

Note that it generates one-sided outputs, so you can separate them if you intend to mix them with another item on the other side of the belt. Also note that if you have two fully compressed inputs then you probably want to use the next fastest pieces for it (normal → fast → express).

To place the inside corner piece, put it down in the wrong direction, then hover over it with your hand clear and press R to rotate it to the correct direction.

[blueimpb]

FWIW -- does it matter? the implication is you don't (yet) need all the furnaces, so they'll sit there waiting to be used. Typically you want to see resource belts backed up because it means you've got plenty of capacity

[Teh Freek]

Originally posted by blueimpb:

FWIW -- does it matter? the implication is you don't (yet) need all the furnaces, so they'll sit there waiting to be used. Typically you want to see resource belts backed up because it means you've got plenty of capacity

When the unbalance goes all the way back to your drills meaning that half your drills will remain blocked indefinitely, yes, it matters.

[Nellvan]

Again, how does that matter in any way? You're not processing any more ore than before. If the ore piles up you need more furnaces.

*edit for more clarity*
Inserters will take from the far side of the belt if they need to(draining the whole belt), they just prefer the near side. A pileup indicates some bottleneck somewhere, that's what you need to identify if you want to ramp up the system.

If the plates pile up you can supply more plate-consuming things. If the plates are consumed without any pileup and the ore still piles up, you can supply more furnaces.