Chapter 11 ‐ Assembling machines and automated production

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Assembling machine

The assembling machines is the key component for automating production in your factory. It is a 3 by 3 square machine with turning cogs and other parts sticking out of it. Inserters can access the machine from any of the tiles around its perimeter, and long handed inserters can access it from one tile further away. It uses electrical power and its main purpose is to automate crafting for you.

An assembling machine can be configured manually to set one crafting recipe at a time. When set, the machine will keep trying to craft the recipe as long as it has power, ingredients, and output space. It accepts one batch of items at a time and has no crafting queue. Unlike crafting by hand, assembling machines cannot start with basic materials and do intermediate crafting steps themselves, so they must be given the exact ingredients for their recipes. The inventory slots inside a configured assembling machine are all reserved for the particular ingredients and products of the machine's recipe. Each slot can hold up to one stack of its item. However, during automation, inserters keep all the slots nearly empty so that ingredients and products can go elesewhere. Typically, they accept enough ingredients to craft two more batches in addition to the batch in progress.

Basic assembling machines craft at half the speed of handcrafting. However, you can build as many as you want, meaning that a group of assembling machines will be faster than the engineer. Meanwhile, higher level assembling machines can craft faster while consuming more power. They also have the extra features of supporting fluids as inputs and having slots for modules.

Automation logic in Factorio

The main reason to automate production in Factorio is because of how long it takes to craft complex items by hand. Building a larger factory and conducting research requires producing thousands of items, and getting machines to do at least some of that for you makes it possible to accomplish a lot more in less time. Furthermore, some recipes such as the engine unit or chemical recipes, can only be crafted in machines.

There are different parts of the factory that could be automated: The mining and smelting of ores, the supply of coal to boilers for power, the production of commonly used intermediate items like electronic circuits, the entire production chains for science packs, and the production of factory machines themselves so that building the factory can be done faster.

Setting up automated production

The three key machines needed to start automated production are inserters, transport belts, and assembling machines. Inserters facilitate the input and output of ingredients and products, belts handle the automatic transport, and assembling machines do the crafting. While a level one assembling machine crafts only half as fast as the engineer, multiple machines can be run in parallel as long as they are sufficiently supplied. The easiest way to set up multiple assemblers with the same recipe is to arrange them in rows. The number of machines to have per row depends on the overall production rate that you are aiming for and also the production ratios of different crafting recipes.

The machines also need to be powered, and so several electric poles are also needed. Other things that help with automation include chests, which can serve as item buffers; automated trains, which provide an alternative to transport belts; and logistic robots, which again provide an alternative to transport belts, in the late game.

Concept: Rows of assembling machines

An assembling machine can be accessed from all four sides, but when arranged in rows, they are accessible mainly from two opposite sides, where transport belts run in parallel to the machine rows. A regular inserter can be used to access a belt that is one tile apart from the assembler, and a long handed inserter can be placed next to the regular inserter and reach over the first belt to access a second belt next to it. By applying this design on both sides, a row of assembling machines has easy access to four different transport belts. If each belt is reserved for a different item, this means a row of assembling machines can easily be set up to craft a recipe with up to three input ingredients and one output product.

However, transport belts can be set up with sideloading junctions such that they have different items on their left and right lanes, which means that the four accessible belts can actually reliably carry up to eight different items, which is enough for nearly every recipe in the game.

The assembling machines on the rows could be placed tightly in order to fit the most assembling machines in an area, or the machines can be spaced apart so that you can walk or apply direct insertion in between them.

The next chapter features more concepts and techniques and tips about factory design.

Next page: "Chapter 12 - Factory building guidance"