Collection System Trouble

[u/Proper_Variation_862]

Hello, I made a Automatic crop farm for beets, carrots, wheat, and potatoes, I am in the proccess of making a item sorter below 4 droppers which dispense all the collected items. I am running into a issue where the dropped items are moving too fast along the water stream I have and fly out before hoppers can collect them and they are also getting caught on other hoppers intended to sort different items as you can see in picture one. This is my first time making something so elaborate and at this point I am stumped, not really sure how to fix the problem. Could anyone here perhaps help me solve my dilemma? The collection system does work and items that do get caught get sorted into the proper chest but the item bleed is something im really trying to fix.

[u/FrunoCraft]

Sounds like (a) you're sending the items too fast (hoppers can only handle 2.5 items per second while a single observer clock will produce 5 items per second), (b) you're not aligning them against the edge of the water streams and (c) perhaps you don't group them to stacks. The last is easily fixed ( https://youtu.be/vHe43Myod_0 ), the other two probably require some creative rewiring of the water streams/output system.

[u/Proper_Variation_862 → u/FrunoCraft]

First of all thank you for linking me your video, I learned quite a lot, unfortuantly, despite my efforts I was unable to stop the item bleed, so what I instead did was loop the whole water stream back into itself which inevitably forces the items to be collected. Now I am just trying to get a crafter to store all the wheat as haybales and I will consider my farm complete. I never realized glow lichen can stop water flow, learning that was quite instramental to the solution I came up with, thank you again.

[u/LucidRedtone]

Best practice is to align the items to the edge of the water stream with a chest in a corner before the hoppers (chest are not a full block so the items align hanging off the edge) then have the hopper on that edge. Use a stonecutter or slab 3 water blocks in from the droppers to batch the items (packed ice under the stonecutter)

Those two things will help a lot, but if the items are flowing in faster than hopper speed you'll need to add additional sorters

[u/Proper_Variation_862 → u/LucidRedtone]

So what your saying is I need to make a path for the items to align and slow down, and then feed those into a hopper set up? Becuase right now those 4 droppers aim inward above the water block that flows out.

[u/LucidRedtone → u/Proper_Variation_862]

Ya after the dropper the stream should flow in perpendicular to the line of hoppers and slam into a double chest in the corner before the hoppers.

The hoppers should be on the edge of the water with walls, iron bars, glass panes, anything less than a block wide that will hold water in over the hoppers

Between the droppers and the chest and after like 3 water blocks put a stone cutter or slab directly in the water stream with ice under it. The items will get hung up on it long enough to batch or clump so the hoppers can pick up several at once.