Mastering Belt Balancing Techniques in Factorio

In Factorio, belts are essential for transporting materials from one location to another. As your factory grows, you’ll need to enhance your belt system by adding more lines, dividing them, and boosting overall efficiency.

Splitters play a key role in this process, as they allow you to evenly distribute materials between two outputs. However, complications may arise if you decide to include a second or third splitter further down the line. To tackle this, you can apply the concept of belt balancing, which we’ll explore below.

How to Balance Belts

Placing a splitter at the end of a belt will evenly divide the materials, so the left side of the splitter will receive 50% of the materials, with the other 50% going to the right. If you add another splitter to the left side, it will split its side into two sections, each receiving 25% of the original materials, and the process continues.

While this division isn’t inherently problematic, managing the correct amounts for your machines can become tricky. This is where belt balancers come into play, designed specifically to distribute materials evenly across multiple belts.

There are several methods to set up a belt balancer, but one standard approach works well for most situations.

This setup uses four belt lines split into two pairs, combining the contents of the first two and the last two pairs. An additional splitter then evenly merges everything, ensuring a balanced distribution from all four lines.

This method generally requires at least two inputs to distribute the four belts correctly, but alternative designs allow for a single-input setup as well.

This design effectively stacks three splitters so that all four belts can receive materials. While it doesn’t evenly balance the materials initially, the main balancer will handle that task effectively.

Getting Materials on Both Sides of a Belt

Belts have two sides from which materials can be accessed. It makes sense to utilize both sides for efficiency. Since inserters only place materials on the nearest side, you can either use inserters on both sides or apply a design like the one shown above.

This straightforward design splits the belt and loops it back onto itself, ensuring that both the left and right sides receive materials. You can integrate this mechanism anywhere along your belt lines for optimal efficiency.