Inserters

< Transport network

Inserters are the fundamental structures of a factory, and are a vital component in almost all contraptions. They look and work like a robot-arm and take items from behind and place them in front of it, if the object in front of it has enough space to accomodate for it.

Inserters will:

• Pick up Items off the Ground, off a Transport belt, or from any object that has stacks (eg. Storages/Chests, Furnaces, Assembling machines)
• Place the moved item onto the ground, on a transport belt, or into any object that has stacks.

Inserter mechanics

Inserters will act differently depending on what they are moving items to/into so as not to monopolize all of the items being picked up and allow other machines and inserters on the same transport belt to have items.

Insertion Limits

Inserters will not insert into certain buildings if they already have, or are above of, a certain amount of items; it will simply seize to function until space has been made, and it will resume insertion.

For example, if a boiler has 5 or more pieces of fuel in it, then an inserter will not insert additional fuel until it has 4 or less.

Entity	Item type	Inserter-limit	Comment
Boilers, Burner inserters, Furnaces	Fuel	5	Modders should avoid recipes for furnaces with fuel.
Gun turrets	Magazines	10	Since v0.8.4
Assembling machines	Items needed for the recipe	twice the items needed in the recipe
Furnaces	Items needed for the recipe	twice the items needed in the recipe
Labs	Science packs	twice the items needed for one research point

An inserter, which takes items from a chest or another assembly (anything, which has Storage/Stacks), can overfill due to the Inserter item stack size. The same happens, if you load with more than one inserter.

Inserters and transport belts

• Inserters will always place the item on the further lane.

File:Mpstark-5RdLql0.gif

• Inserters prefer taking items on the near lane.

File:Mpstark-8pfqtMV.gif

• for orthogonal belts, inserter place items in the direction of their rotation. This is by default up for horizontal or left for vertical placed inserters.

When taking from a belt, they might change this initial direction!

File:Mpstark-0XL7KBq.gif

• Inserters can place items on
  • All types of conveyor belts
  • Underground-belt (entry and exit)
    File:Mpstark-UayT5wJ.gif
  • Curves, but their behavior is then very "special" and the items have a big chance to block.
  • They cannot place on splitter
• Inserters can pick up from
  • Splitters
  • First half of the conveyor belt
• Inserters have problems to pick up
  • from fast belts, cause the items are moving too fast for them.
  • picking up from curves
  • from the entry/exit of an underground belt

How to change lanes

Conveyor belts have two lanes. Inserters place the items always on the far lane of a belt (see above).

Many beginners and advanced players have problems to change the lane. There are several tricks to do that in more or less elegant ways: See Transport_belts/Belt_lane#Changing_side_of_lane

Power usage

http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5253

Types

Item	Total raw	Max power	Speed (Rot/sec)	Range (tiles)	Special
File:Burner-inserter.png Burner inserter	File:Iron-plate.png 3	180 W (burner)	0.6 (1x)	1	Only inserter using Fuel. Since v0.10.0 it will insert items with fuel value into itself when it has an empty inventory.
Inserter	File:Iron-plate.png 4 File:Copper-plate.png 1.5	12.6 W (electric)	0.8 (1.4x)	1	Standard inserter.
File:Long-handed-inserter.png Long handed inserter	File:Iron-plate.png 7 File:Copper-plate.png 1.5	18 W (electric)	1.1 (2x)	2	Only inserter with higher range.
File:Fast-inserter.png Fast inserter	File:Iron-plate.png 8 File:Copper-plate.png 4.5	31.5 W (electric)	2 (3.5x)	1	Basic faster inserter.
Smart inserter	File:Iron-plate.png 12 File:Copper-plate.png 10.5	44.1 W (electric)	2 (3.5x)	1	Only inserter connectable to Circuit networks and with configurable working condition, such as filtering in only a specific set of items

File:Mpstark-UlSB2pr.gif

Special behavior

• Inserters/Interaction with other Entities
• Inserters/Instead of belt: Use it instead of a belt
• Inserters/Reduce power consumption
• Inserter item stack size: Inserter moves more than an item per turn, works only for transport from stack to stack
• Inserters:Focus/Grep-Points
• Inserters/Priority
• Storages/Sorting (extended filtering)

See also

• Electric network
• Transport network