Splitting Items on Conveyer Belts?

[CobaltLion]

So I've set up an automatic ore processing system similar to the one on TacticalLion's "Duplicate Ores" YouTube video.

I'm having to use an electric furnace so that I can get a manipulator to do the unloading of the final ingots, but I've had to build a few furnaces to handle the load of metal dust.

My question is: Is there a way to get items to split on a conveyer belt? That is, have every other item go a different direction? I want to have it so that the metal dust gets split evenly between 2 furnaces.

Thanks.

[Lethosos]

Do manipulators have a delay command? If so, you can use one to pull every other item on a main belt and drop it on another one.

[FaultierGibbon]

Lethosos' suggestion is probably the best way to do it. Set up a couple manipulators on the same machine/crate/chest and have each pull onto a different conveyor belt. A simple timer can be made with a small circuit of redstone repeaters that signal the manipulator at the interval you need (a repeater at the highest setting will have a delay of ~.5 seconds). Or if you need a much longer delay, look into making a piston clock, once you understand the basics, they are pretty quick to set up.

[Lethosos]

Another would be looking into an item detector and use a toggle latch to flip an on/off state on a manipulator.

[Soulz]

I haven't played around with voltzs in a while so I don't know if the armbot works properly yet but you might be able to do that with the armbot. http://voltzwiki.com/wiki/Encoder maybe with the use of 'idle' command?

[CobaltLion]

Okay, did a lot of "re-engineering" of my automatic ore refinery, but I think I have been able to create a setup like Lethosos suggested. All the metal dust is dumped into a single chest, with two manipulators on opposite sides. A redstone clock with an inverter on one line provides alternating signals to one manipulator then the other. each manipulator leads to it's own dedicated electric furnace, which then combine and go to a final output chest.

The split isn't perfect, (I got 30/34, then 31/33 on two separate runs of 64 items) but it is close enough to stop any one furnace from being overloaded and rejecting input which is what I wanted.

Thanks again for all the ideas. I'll be happy to post pictures, videos or the world if anyone wants.

[Lethosos]

Hehe, no prob. It reminded me of a Diamond Pipe.