My take on Kovarex enrichment
I think I finally reached the Valhalla with Kovarex enrichment after some experimentations.
How it works:
- inner side of the belt is for u235, outer side is for u238
- each inbound inserter is connected to a constant combinator saying how many ingredients are needed for each cycle (40 u235, 5 u238)
- each inbound inserter is also connected to an arithmetic combinator saying how many items are currently in the centrifuge * -1. This means that it will output the negative quantity. If there are 40 elements, it will output -40.
- each inbound inserter is configured with "set filters"
- each outbound inserter is just extracting the desired item (red one for u238, on the outer belt; green one for u235 that will land on the inner belt.
- I have one more inbound inserter at the top to fetch u238 to ensure there are enough on the belt (with a limit <= #centrifuges * 7)
- I have one more outbound inserter that remove the exceeding u235 (with an enable limit > #centrifuges * 11)
Logic explained:
- Each inbound inserter fetches only the missing requirement. When the sum of the two values is >0, such filter is activate. This way I ensure that I only load them as little as possible..
- ..but it can happen that the inserter is greedy and fetches an exceeding quantity of items from the belt, hence the two constants (#centrifuges * {7,11}).
Why 7 and 11?
Well my bulk inserters have max stack size of 12 and they might be greedy on either ingredient. Since I need 5 u238, I might end up with having 4 in there and then a stack of 12 is poured in the machine. This creates an excess of (12-5=7) "hogged" by the centrifuge. Similarly, the same can happen for u235. If every machine happens to have 39 "loaded" and then each of them goes greedy, I will have an excess of 11 u235 in each machine. Chances that this happens is very little, but still I don't mind some extra radioactive rocks floating around.
Is this over-engineered? Of course.
Is this necessary? No.
Why did I do it? Because :p