I wanted a super smelter that could connect to my existing storage system. Thus, it needed to have hopper-speed input and output. The maximum number of furnaces that you can run at hopper speed is 25 so that was my original goal.
I wanted to make sure that the material was loaded evenly into the furnaces for maximum efficiency but I also wanted to avoid complicated cart timing so I used a hopper chain to distribute the material. The material passes through the horizontal chain of hoppers. When an item enters the last hopper in the chain, all of the hoppers underneath are released at the same time, pulling all of the items down and adding 1 item to each furnace simultaneously.
I initially tried to make this with 25 furnaces but weird hopper mechanics caused every 8th furnace to not get filled. This reduced the total number of furnaces from 25 to 21. This is why there are gaps in the line of furnaces.
From what I can tell, the position of the gaps is related to the delay between the time that the last hopper gets filled and the time that all of the hoppers are released. Changing the delay on the repeater changes where the gaps appear.
Anyway, for the fuel distribution I was less picky so I used a cart. I used a pulse extender to make sure that the cart gets at least 21 items. If it gets more I don’t care because eventually the furnaces will get completely full of fuel anyway. At that point, the cart is just needed to occasionally top them off.
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I wanted a super smelter that could connect to my existing storage system. Thus, it needed to have hopper-speed input and output. The maximum number of furnaces that you can run at hopper speed is 25 so that was my original goal.
I wanted to make sure that the material was loaded evenly into the furnaces for maximum efficiency but I also wanted to avoid complicated cart timing so I used a hopper chain to distribute the material. The material passes through the horizontal chain of hoppers. When an item enters the last hopper in the chain, all of the hoppers underneath are released at the same time, pulling all of the items down and adding 1 item to each furnace simultaneously.
I initially tried to make this with 25 furnaces but weird hopper mechanics caused every 8th furnace to not get filled. This reduced the total number of furnaces from 25 to 21. This is why there are gaps in the line of furnaces.
From what I can tell, the position of the gaps is related to the delay between the time that the last hopper gets filled and the time that all of the hoppers are released. Changing the delay on the repeater changes where the gaps appear.
Anyway, for the fuel distribution I was less picky so I used a cart. I used a pulse extender to make sure that the cart gets at least 21 items. If it gets more I don’t care because eventually the furnaces will get completely full of fuel anyway. At that point, the cart is just needed to occasionally top them off.