Transport belts

Basics

Transport belts are a core element in Factorio. They are used for transporting items in your factory. You put items at one place and take them down at another. In the simple setup below the transport belt is used to transport the iron ore from mining drills to the right where inserter picks it up and puts it into the furnace.

File:Transport-belt-intro-1.jpg

In most of the cases inserters must be used to put / pick things from the transport belts. However some entities (electric mining drill, burner mining drill) place items they produce (mine) directly on the transport belt - as you can see above.

Using two sides

Items can fit in onto the transport belt in two separate lines. This is particularly useful when feeding two different items for further processing to avoid overcrowding. Let's have a look at the example. In here we have both coal and iron ore on the same transport belt in two separate lines. The advantage of this setup is that it cannot happen to us that we will have too much of one resource and thus no space on the belt for the other. The inserter can take items from both lines and insert them into the furnace behind it.

Turns

It is guaranteed, that that turns keep the alignment of items. Inner side of the turn moves items at half the speed, meaning turns are likely to be bottlenecks. Using faster belts at the turns is recommended.

Crossings

When belts are crossing, items stay on the side of the belt it came from.

Inserters

It is assured that inserters always put the items on the more distant part of the transport belt. Inserters also prefer taking items from the closer part of the belt.

Speed

Basic transport belt

Basic transport is belt available from the start, it moves items approximately 1.8 tiles per second.

Fast transport belt

Avaiable when the logistics-2 technology is researched, it moves items twice the fast as basic transport belt.

Express transport belt

Avaiable when the logistics-3 technology is researched, it moves items three times faster than as basic transport belt.

Underground belt

Underground belt can be used to cross different flows of items without interfering. Its maximum reach distance is 5 tiles. An underground belt pair with a blocked output stores up to 20 items.