Conveyor Belt

**Conveyor Belts** transport items between Hoppers, Extractors and Generators.

## Behavior

Conveyor Belts transport one item to the end of the belt (the side that the arrows point toward). Each belt can only transport one item at a time, and will not accept a new incoming item until any existing item has been taken by the block at the end of the belt. If there is nothing at the end of the belt to take the item, then the belt will become "blocked" and turn red in the Holobase View view. The belt can also become blocked if the next machine will not accept the item because it is full or the wrong type.

While the graphics look awesome for conveyor belts, they can also be a little misleading. In the graphics, it looks like the items are just sitting on the belts, but they are actually "stuck" to the belt. This means that the items are actually part of the conveyor block, not entities that can be picked up. Since the items are "stuck" to the belt, you can feel free to run belts up walls or across the ceiling without any difficulty too.

When a belt is placed, it will default to moving items away from you. After placing the belt, just rotate it if you need it to go in a different direction. However, if you place a new belt at the end of an existing line, the new belt will often align to the same direction the existing belt is pointing instead of the default direction.

Getting the hang of passing items around corners with the belts can be tricky too. When laying out belts, each belt will just pass the item to the next block (at the end of the belt). The connection does not have to make sense, and you can pass an item through the top or bottom of a belt, into the side of another belt, or to a belt that is at a different orientation.

* Handling corners with Conveyor Belts

## Conveyor Types

 Transport Pipe Filter | Filter what type of items are allowed to enter the pipe from a hopper.

## Techniques

### Recessed Belts

Even though a Conveyor Belt looks like about half a block, it is actually a full block in height and when standing upon it your altitude will go up by one full block. For aesthetic reasons (or just because you don't like bouncing up and down a lot), it can be convenient to recess the conveyors one block into the ground or wall. This gives the appearance of items moving along in a trench, but you can walk across the top without any trouble.

### Climbing Walls

Once you dig a deeper mine and want to transport ores to the surface, getting the conveyors to climb the walls can be tricky depending on whether you left some place to stand in your mineshaft or not. However, there is a simple technique for placing many vertical belts:

1. Place the first belt at the bottom of the shaft, pointing up
2. Stand on the top of the first belt
3. Point your build gun at the wall just above the existing belt
4. Place a new belt

You can then ride your belt like an elevator to the top of the shaft. Because new belts align with existing belts, the new belts you place will be pointing up even though you are looking down when you place them. One caution though: keep a close eye on your belt direction, because if you click too fast, it may misalign one, then all subsequent belts will be facing in the wrong direction too. It's handy to place items on the belt and watch to make sure they follow you up the wall.

### Fully-Loading Belts

The normal export rate from a Storage Hopper is one item every other belt. By using two sides of the hopper then merging the belts together, you can achieve one item per belt. Note that you must merge the belts together at least one belt away from the hopper.

* Using two sides of a hopper to fully load a belt

### Super-Loading Belts

When one belt feeds into the side of another belt, the item is added to the second belt in the middle of the belt instead of the start of the belt. This mechanic means that diagonal belts are twice as efficient (it speed and load) as straight belts, because each item only has to travel half the distance (from the middle of each belt to the end instead of from the start to the end).

The usefulness of this mechanic is limited to only those situations where you need to transport items diagonally, but in those situations, the throughput advantage can be significant.

* Items move twice as fast on a diagonal belt as a straight belt
* Using four sides of a hopper to super load a diagonal belt
* In the time it takes a super-loaded belt to move 100 items, a fully-loaded belt can only move 47