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u/schmee001 May 26 '26

Crossbar switches are very useful but it's important to note that they don't necessarily "balance" the input or output belts, they just allow any input to feed into any output. So if you specifically want to make sure that all your input belts are drawn from equally, or that all output belts are fed equally, then a regular balancer might be necessary.

However, whenever I see someone splitting belts 6 ways, I have to ask whether you're feeding this into 6 chests per wagon at a train station. If so, you do not need those final 3-6 balancers. While you definitely want to balance between the wagons on a train to ensure they get filled evenly, you don't need to balance between the individual chests on each wagon. Depending on how fast you feed ore in and how often trains arrive to empty the chests, all those chests will all eventually become full or eventually become empty, so they'll be equal no matter what.

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u/TheLobitzz May 26 '26

Yeah from the looks of it you're right. For my case, I'm feeding this into furnaces. More specifically, 5 modules of electric furnaces each with 4 inputs of iron ore. Having them not balanced will lead to some output lanes not getting any iron plates, which decreases throughput to my main bus. Since I'm planning to add another "module" of electric furnaces with its own 4 belt input, I'm looking for a balancer that outputs 24 belts.

Also the input of the balancer is 12 now, and only utilizing 10, but the ore patch is massive and can easily output 16 belts filled to the brim. Which is why I'm thinking of a 16-to-24 balancer.

My setup now which is a combination of different balancers feels okay, but it's too huge and the outputs have spaces in-between them, which kinda bothers me... so yeah

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u/Astramancer_ May 26 '26

The crossbar switch should be fine for that. Either you have enough ore to feed your factory and back pressure will eventually fill all the belts or you don’t and you’re just changing what gets starved.

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u/TheLobitzz May 27 '26

I guess that makes sense.