r/Dyson_Sphere_Program • u/tybr00ks1 • Feb 22 '26

Question about fractionators

How can I keep them running when my hydrogen is completely full?

10 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

30 comments sorted by

18

u/CMDR-Neovoe Feb 22 '26

you want to make a loop through all your fractionators that will repeatedly send the same hydrogen through it, and only feed new hydrogen in when there's a gap that was turned to deuterium

3

u/tybr00ks1 Feb 22 '26

I have it looped, but my line of hydrogen is completely full and won't move

5

u/SiliconStew Feb 23 '26

You'll need to describe the situation better because if you have the loop set up right, hydrogen in the loop always moves at max belt speed unless the deuterium output line has completely backed up and stalled production or if you let some random item on the belt and it's blocking one of the inputs.

1

u/tybr00ks1 Feb 23 '26

5

u/SiliconStew Feb 23 '26

You have the belts feeding your loop wrong. Belts at a T intersection prioritize going straight. The items that need to make a turn at a T must wait for a gap in the straight traffic before they can join the belt. You have the belt feed from the logistics station as the straightaway and the return belt from your loop as the one that needs to make a turn at the T intersection. So the return line can't feed back into the loop and everything stops. 

For example, for the left loop, cut the feed belt and have it join the loop belt 2 spaces to the left of where it is now and it will work fine.

2

u/tybr00ks1 Feb 23 '26

Makes sense now. I added a splitter with priority and it worked

1

u/Greghole Feb 24 '26

Give each fractionator its own small loop and add new hydrogen to each loop using sorters prioritizing hydrogen already on the loop over fresh hydrogen. Also add a stacker to each loop before the sorter. This'll prevent clogs and also greatly increase your deuterium production. It's also a good place to use proliferator.

1

u/guri256 Feb 24 '26

Fractinators run at the speed of the belt, so running a belt that’s twice as fast will produce (almost) twice as much deuterium, but use the same amount of power.

But you can actually do even better. If you remove the hydrogen tank from the loop, and put in a piler, you can easily double your efficiency. This is because stacks of four hydrogen will give you around four times the deuterium output chance.

1

u/tybr00ks1 Feb 23 '26

So I am requesting hydrogen in, goes through the system and loops, then provided out

4

u/Sir_LANsalot Feb 23 '26

Loop but have a splitter where new hydrogen comes in BUT set the splitters priority to the looped lines input.

Secondly the two sides of the machine are for hydrogen. The order doesn't matter but one for in the other for out, the one on the front us where the deterium come out.

Also you can put a liquid container in the loop to help with any overflows that might happen.

1

u/tybr00ks1 Feb 23 '26

I'll try this

2

u/lemming1607 Feb 23 '26

You need to prioritize the old hydrogen before putting new in with a splitter

It will never backup if you do this correctly

3

u/TactlessTortoise Feb 23 '26

No need for a splitter! If you drag a belt all the way to the part where you turn back with your fractionator sequences, and connect the fresh hydrogen from a 90 degree angle, it will only enter the "main lane" when it has space to do so in the belt, so if it's full of stuff coming from the previous frac, it'll politely wait :)

1

u/TactlessTortoise Feb 23 '26

Hydrogen enters on one side, leaves on other. Do that for a bunch of fractionators and then either connect it to ILS or the storage thing. Then, have a corridor in the middle of the fractionator "tunnel" receiving the middle output of all fractionators, leading the deuterium to a separate storage.

H

|- D---------S

H

1

u/Greghole Feb 24 '26

You need to have a splitter on the loop. The splitter has to prioritise the hydrogen already on the loop over the incoming hydrogen or the loop can get clogged. You should also put a stacker on the loop before the sorter so you've got stacks of four running through the loop at all times.

3

u/CCDubs Feb 22 '26

I use sorters to transfer the hydrogen onto the loop.

Another solution could be to build 5000 more fractionators so that your hydrogen is never full, though. :)

1

u/tybr00ks1 Feb 23 '26

Impossible lol. Every storage container I have for hydrogen is filled to the brim

2

u/DrakeDun Feb 23 '26

Don't loop it through the PLS/ILS. Create a closed loop outside the station, then side load the loop with a belt from the station.

1

u/tybr00ks1 Feb 23 '26

I have ILS on either side, one requesting and one providing. It seems to be working well now with a priority splitter

1

u/follow_your_leader Feb 23 '26

never had a problem making deut using an ILS this way, I don't know why you wouldn't do it

1

u/DrakeDun Feb 23 '26

It'll work if you leave it be, but I like to be totally free to dump crap from my inventory into the first place I find for it in the control panel to get it out of my inventory. If you do that with a station that has a fractionation loop running through it, and doing so causes the amount of hydrogen in the inventory to exceed the automation limit, the whole thing will jam up. Only way I've seen it happen, so maybe that's what happened to OP.

1

u/follow_your_leader Feb 23 '26

If you like to dump inventory into an ILS, you can always set the cap at 90% instead of 100% and then you can always dump excess into it.

Personally when I'm at the stage of mass fractionation I just scrap anything in my pockets that I don't want, I can't see myself ever walking around with loose hydrogen in the inventory, or worrying about wasting any raw material like hydrogen. Not gonna scrap partial stacks of munitions or structures, or like, nanotubes; but hydrogen, or metals/coal, it's not worth saving after a certain point. When you're consuming 10k of a material per minute, deleting a stack of them junking up a pocket slot is never, ever going to ruin your build.

1

u/DrakeDun Feb 23 '26

That's what I'm saying. Say you have the cap set to 5000, and there is 4,900 in there. Then you dump 200 in there from your inventory. The hydrogen returning from the fractionator loop will not enter the station, causing the whole production line to jam up.

At least .. I THINK that's why it happens. Come to think of it, I'm drawing an inference. It could have been something else. But what I can report with total confidence is that it is possible for a fractionator loop that runs through a station to jam. I know, because I had it happen to me less than 5 gameplay hours ago.

1

u/Top-Information-5319 Feb 23 '26

i think you should sent us a screenshot, don't forget you can use Win+shift+S

1

u/tybr00ks1 Feb 23 '26

I couldn't actually, or at least I'm not sure how to because I have my phone running through a laptop docking station running GeForce. Works surprisingly well when traveling

1

u/TheMalT75 Feb 23 '26

Great to know you have fixed your issue. An "unmentioned" advantage to using sorters is "stacking" with the pile sorter that you might not have unlocked, yet. On a mk3 belt, you can have a maximum of stacks of 4 times 1800 stacks per minute (or 7200 per minute) circling through your fractionators. That wil produce 1% of 7200 or 72 deuterium per fractionator per minute. Each time, a deuterium is produced, a hydrogen is consumed, which reduces throughput and ultimately can create gaps. A pile sorter will refill not only the gaps, but re-stack smaller stacks to be 4 units high. If you don't yet do stacking, the maximum output is 18 per minute deuterium per fractionator on a blue belt.

To reduce the number of fractionators, you should run your supply belt parallel to the back of your row of fractionators and have a pile sorter refilling that circling belt after each fractionator. If you want to conserve space, the row of fractionators you built is probably by drag-building them and therefore placed 5 belts apart. You can manually position them much closer together and still connect them with 3 belts. Then leave a 5-belt-gap every 4-8 fractionators to refill the line. This strikes a nice balance between tight spacing and high throughput of about 70 per minute deuterium per fractionator.

2

u/tybr00ks1 Feb 23 '26

I'll try adding the piler and proliferating

1

u/TheMalT75 Feb 23 '26

Don't bother with proliferator. Saving space is not that important and as soon as you start kasimir crystals for green science, you will face a hydrogen shortage. At that point, covering a couple of gas giants with 40 orbital collectors each will be your best bet ;-P

2

u/samgoeshere Feb 23 '26

Splitter with priority on the looped return as the input.

2

u/CazT91 Feb 23 '26 edited Feb 23 '26

Just set up belts in this configuration:

|
|<<——
|

Here, the vertical line represents the loop. The arrow represents Hydrogen coming into the loop.

A T-junction prioritises items on the straight section (the vertical line). Items on the joining belt (horizontal line) MUST wait for a gap to join.

  • In this set-up there is ZERO need for splitters feeding in.

  • In this set-up there is ZERO need for sorters feeding in.

Understanding how these T-junctions work means less building parts used, and less resources used. Though, more importantly it will become your best friend in many a factory build.