In Factorio, Belts are your best friend. When you need to get materials from one point to another, Belts will always be there for you. However, as you expand your factory, you'll also need to expand the capabilities of your Belts, adding lines, splitting them, and overall making things more efficient.
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PostsSplitters are used to split the contents of a Belt equally into two outputs, allowing you to divide your lines evenly. However, things can get messy when you need to use a second or third Splitter further down the same line. This is where the mechanic of Belt balancing comes in handy, which we'll learn about below.
How To Balance Belts
Placing a Splitter at the end of a line of Belts will divide that line into two halves evenly, meaning the new left side of the Splitter will have 50 percent of the original's materials, and the right side will have the other 50 percent. If you add another Splitter onto the end of the left side, its left and right sides will each have 25 percent of the original line's materials, and so on.
While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it can get complicated to manage the correct amount of resources you need for your machines. This is where you can make use of Belt balancers, which are specifically designed to evenly distribute materials along a set of Belts.
There are multiple ways of setting up a Belt balancer, but here's the standard way that will suit almost all of your needs.
In this setup, you have four Belt lines that are then split into two columns of two, combining the inputs of columns one and two, and the inputs of columns three and four. Then, both of these columns are sent through an additional splitter, evenly combining the contents of all four.
This setup requires at least two inputs to evenly distribute all four Belts, but it can be done with one input using another balancing design.
This design essentially just stacks three Splitters so that all four Belts receive materials. This does not evenly distribute them, but this doesn't matter, as the main balancer will then deal with that.
Getting Materials On Both Sides Of A Belt
Belts have two sides that materials can be taken from, so it's efficient to be able to fill both sides of the Belt rather than just one. Since Inserters will only ever place materials on the nearest side, you'll need to either have Inserters on both sides of the Belt, or you can use a design like in the image above.
This simple design splits the Belt and then loops it back onto itself, so that the left and right sides both receive materials. You can place this device anywhere along your Belt line to ensure maximum efficiency.
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