Auto sweeper not supplying filtration medium to water sieve

[Jarcionek]

I have two water sieves and 10kg/s water supply:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1834324763

Water consumption is however much lower than 10kg/s.

The regolith is running low so the sweeper starts to grab the regolith:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1834324491

But by the time it does so, sieve receives "pipe blocked" status, so the auto sweeper gives up:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1834324468

So I have a working sieve that is only wasting my auto-sweeper's energy by making it work for a second, every other second...

Any workarounds?

[Angpaur]

Why you are sieving water instead of polluted water?
As for that pipe blocked you can try to force packets to merge by using a bridge.

[Jarcionek]

Originally posted by Angpaur:

Why you are sieving water?

I have a single pipe for both polluted water and water. Sieve just lets normal water pass through, without using energy or filtration medium.

Originally posted by Angpaur:

As for that pipe blocked you can try to force packets to merge by using a bridge.

I don't see how this is going to change anything. Consumption will still be lower than supply and the sieves will be still blinking with "pipe blocked".

[Angpaur]

I had a similar problem with sieves, some time ago, and it helped to force packet merging. You can see in that screenshot that one pipe is full while other has 5kg packets.

[Jarcionek]

Like this?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1834340054

It changes nothing. As you can see the top one has no filtration medium, "pipe blocked" blinking and auto-sweeper doing nothing. The bottom one has constantly "pipe blocked".

[Angpaur]

It is not merging any packets.
Output pipes from both sieves needs to go into input of a single bridge. Make sure there is at least one pipe segment for each pipe before the bridge. So just placing it in the middle should be fine, in same place where that T junction is right now.

[Jarcionek]

Originally posted by Angpaur:

It is not merging any packets.
Output pipes from both sieves needs to go into input of a single bridge. Make sure there is at least one pipe segment for each pipe before the bridge. So just placing it in the middle should be fine, in same place where that T junction is right now.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1834352333

Maybe you will just show me what you mean, because with this the sieve is still blinking with "pipe blocked"...?

[Angpaur]

Exactly like this.
I never have sieved clean water so I dont know how sieve behaves in that case. Judging from your last screenshot a whole 10kg packet is just bypassing the sieve, isn't it? If so that this can be cause of the problem. When running pwater it is output as 5kg packets so bridge can merge it. Try disabling both sieves for a moment and restart when output pipes are empty.

[Jarcionek]

Originally posted by Angpaur:

I never have sieved clean water so I dont know how sieve behaves in that case. Judging from your last screenshot a whole 10kg packet is just bypassing the sieve, isn't it?

Yes, I think so.

Originally posted by Angpaur:

If so that this can be cause of the problem. When running pwater it is output as 5kg packets so bridge can merge it.

I still cannot see how it changes anything. If consumption is low - say 4 kg/s - eventually the pipes between sieves and the T-junction are going to fill with water, at which point sieve will be getting "pipe blocked" status.

[Angpaur]

I didn't first understand what you mean by low consumption. So you mean the consumption of water after it is sieved?
In that case make overflow pipe and just dump the excess somewhere.
If you dont want to do this then maybe attach a clock sensor to autosweeper and set it to enable just briefly once per cycle - hopefully it will be able to deliver regolith and wont be flickering all the time.

[Jarcionek]

Originally posted by Angpaur:

I didn't first understand what you mean by low consumption. So you mean the consumption of water after it is sieved?

Yes.

Originally posted by Angpaur:

maybe attach a clock sensor to autosweeper and set it to enable just briefly once per cycle

The problem is not with auto sweeper, it's enabled all the time. The problem is really with the sieve - that "pipe blocked" status takes a precedence over materials request.

Originally posted by Angpaur:

In that case make overflow pipe and just dump the excess somewhere.

I didn't want to do that, but now that you mentioned, I think I could just loop it back. This should solve the problem, thanks!

[Just a dog]

You could also use automation to shut down one of the sieves or both on a timer so the pipes drain a bit and they can load filtration afterwards.

[Jarcionek]

Originally posted by KucheKlizma:

You could also use automation to shut down one of the sieves or both on a timer so the pipes drain a bit and they can load filtration afterwards.

It crossed my mind, but that would reduce throughput.

[Just a dog]

Well you said consumption is lower. An even better way that should perfectly match the consumption would be to create an overflow pipe that just loops back in, but has an element sensor that triggers the halt (instead of a timer) and resumes the sieves when it doesn't detect water in the overflow loop.