minimize lag sending items from 1 chest, to (ex.) 30 recyclers?

[zedkiller]

Say I have a chest full of junk and I want to send it to 30 recyclers, without creating tons of lag due to items floating around in pneumatic tubes aimlessly for hours and hours. I want the items to go to their destination... then arrive... and stop getting clogged up, stop floating around.

I can fetch the items using 30 retrievers hooked to the recyclers(extremely expensive, but not laggy). Or I can attach a filter to the chest, and have it spit stacks into the 30 recycler tube system and add 30 regulators to be used as buffers.

Is there a more elegant way to solve this problem / a solution that does not involve making 30 of something?

Thanks!

[Omicron]

I thought a Filter was supposed to only send items if there's space in the destination inventory? Please correct me if I am wrong, but I think it should work this way:

Have one Filter on the source chest, and tubes directly to the recyclers. Set the timer on the Filter to be just a tiny bit longer than the time it takes for an item to travel to the farthest away recycler. Set the Filter to dispense stacks of 60 items at a time.

This will ensure that the second time the Filter tries to dispense a stack, the first stack will have already reached its target and filled up its inventory with 60 blocks. Since a recycler can only accept 64, there is no room for an additional stack of 60, and thus it is no longer a valid target. The second stack will thus go to a different recycler. And because you set it to dispense 60, not 64, the first recycler will once again become a valid target when it has 4 items remaining in its inventory, giving the Filter time to dispense a new stack before the recycler runs out completely. If 4 items isn't enough of a buffer, setting the stack size slightly lower (like 56) should help. Of course this only works if you keep sending out the same item; if you have different items, a recycler will have to run empty before it can accept something new.

Mind you, I've never actually built something like that... I tend to be satisfied with much smaller installations. So if it does not work like I described, chalk it up to my inexperience. But I think it's worth a try anyway.

Oh, and: make sure your timer sits right next to the Filter. One block of Red Alloy Wire quickly toggling off-on-off creates more lag than a dozen directly connected timers.

[gavjenks]

Filters already only send items if there is space for them. If your tubes are getting clogged up, then that is user error: your timers are set incorrectly to not line up with your destination. Thus, multiple stacks are being sent out to fill the same vacancy, before it is filled.

Simply slow down your timers so that the time between timer pulses is larger than the amount of time it takes one item to make the journey from the filter to its final destination.

This should guarantee no clogging. However it will, of course, slow down your production.

So that's an option if what you really care about is clogging. But if you want 30 full speed recyclers, running at full efficiency, with no clogging, then you're gonna have to suck it up and make those 30 retrievers. Honestly I find it pretty ridiculous that you expect to have a system that creates dozens of stacks of UU matter or whatever in a minute, but you are acting offended that you might have to do something moderately expensive (gasp!) to make it work smoothly. My heart bleeds. Really, it does.

(By the way, you could compromise with like... 10 retrievers, and hook each one to 3 recyclers with a single block fork. So items would still bounce around, but only in that last 1 or 2 blocks near the recyclers)

[BLAZE MkIV]

You could create a loop so the stuff that doesn't make it into a recycler will loop back into the chest it came from instead of bouncing around. If you combine this will pulling out stacks at a time you can have only 1 or 2 "items" in the pipe at a time and keep the recyclers full.

[gavjenks]

It may be possible to use 4 sorting machines and coloring the tubes to each recycler different colors, so that each bit of cobble has a specific destination. If the sorting machine cycles through colors at a well chosen pace, it might be able to be timed perfectly to not have any clogging or wastefulness. However, this would be rather complex and finicky. And still pretty expensive, after considering making all those paint cans, etc. I'd probably still choose retrievers.