Official Factorio Wiki - User contributions [en]

Inserters

2026-04-06T19:40:06Z

Zijkhal: /* Insertion limits */ formatting, clarification for inserter type, and changed ticks to seconds for ease of use and correctness

{{Languages}}
''For the common yellow electrical inserter, see [[Inserter]].''

'''Inserters''' are devices which are used to move items over short distances. When placed, they have a fixed direction. They can move items from behind and place them in front of them. By doing this, they can move items from one transport belt to another, but also extract items from—and insert items into—machines or storage devices.

== Types of inserters ==
{| class="wikitable"
| {{Imagelink|Burner inserter}} || The only [[fuel]]-powered inserter, with the slowest speed.
|-
| {{Imagelink|Inserter}} || The standard electrical inserter.
|-
| {{Imagelink|Long-handed inserter}} || Capable of inserting and removing items from a greater distance.
|-
| {{Imagelink|Fast inserter}} || Much faster than the inserter.
|-
| {{Imagelink|Bulk inserter}} || As fast as the fast inserter, but can move many more items at the same time at once.
|-
| {{Imagelink|Stack inserter|space-age=yes}} || As fast as the bulk inserter, but can stack items on a belt.
|}

== Mechanics ==
Inserters '''will''':
* Pick up items off the ground, off of a [[Transport belts|transport belt]], or from any object that has storage space, such as [[chests]], [[furnace]]s, [[assembling machine]]s, or [[vehicle]]s.
* Place the item onto the ground, onto a transport belt, or into any object that has storage space.
* Run at slower speeds when starved for energy.
* Pick up as many items as their [[inserter capacity bonus (research)|stack size]] allows at once, if they do not have to wait too long to pick them up.
* Pick up items and drop them into the void of space or lava, permanently destroying them. This is useful for getting rid of unwanted items.

Inserters '''will not''':
* Pick up any items that cannot be inserted into the adjacent entity.
* Pick up any items if the adjacent entity is a [[ghost]].
* Pick up items to place into an entity with a full inventory (however, it will pick up items up to its hand size even if not all of them will fit).
* Place more than one item at a time onto the same ground tile.
* Place items into an entity that cannot hold them, for example due to [[Stack#Filtered_stacks|filtered]] or [[Stack#Stack_limitation|limited slots]].
* Place items into a [[cargo wagon]] or fuel into a [[locomotive]] if the train it's part of is in motion, or in automatic mode and not stopped at a [[train stop]] (e.g. waiting at a signal). (Wagons will be visibly closed if they cannot be inserted into for this reason.)
* Fill up the entire target inventory of [[boiler]]s, [[nuclear reactor]]s, [[:Category:Producers|production building]]s, [[furnace]]s and [[turret]]s (see below).

If two or more inserters are picking up from the same tile, the inserter that can grab the items the fastest will grab them first. Besides faster inserters, this favors inserters taking from the inner lane of a transport belt.

=== Insertion limits ===
Depending on where an inserter is moving items, it does not always fill up the entire target inventory. This allows other inserters taking from the same transport belt to pick up their share of the items. For example, if a boiler has 5 or more items of fuel in it, an inserter will not insert additional fuel. This allows the other fuel to travel further down the transport belt. When the fuel drops below 5 items, the inserter will resume inserting fuel, up to the limit of 5 items.

{| class="wikitable"
! Entity !! Item type !! Automatic insertion limit
|-
| [[Boiler]]s, [[burner inserter]]s, [[furnace]]s, and [[nuclear reactor]]s || [[Fuel]] || style="text-align:center" | 5
|-
| [[Gun turret]]s || Magazines || style="text-align:center" | 10
|-
| [[Artillery turret]]s || [[Artillery shell]]s || style="text-align:center" | 5
|-
| [[Assembling machine]]s, [[furnace]]s, [[centrifuge]]s, [[chemical plant]]s, and [[Oil refinery|oil refineries]]|| Items needed for the recipe || The ingredients for 1 craft in addition to the ingredients for the number of crafts that can be completed (rounded up) during one full normal [[quality]] standard [[inserter]] swing (1.166 seconds); but at least the ingredients for 2 crafts and at most the ingredients for 100 crafts.[https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?p=309796#p309796]
|-
| [[Lab]]s || [[Science pack]]s || The number of normal quality science packs needed for one research unit in addition to the science packs for the number of research units that can be completed (rounded up) during one full normal quality standard inserter swing (1.166 seconds); but at least the ingredients for 2 research units and at most the ingredients for 100 research units.
|}

An inserter that has a higher [[inserter capacity bonus (research)|inserter capacity bonus]] than 1 can overfill the target building, due to the inserter picking up a higher amount of items than needed. Overfilling can also occur if multiple inserters are used to insert items into one building.

=== Inserters and transport belts ===
[[Transport belts]] have two lanes on which items can travel. Inserters only place items onto one side of the belt, either the far side from the inserter's perspective or, if the belt is going the same or the opposite direction as the inserter, the right side from the belt's perspective.

<gallery mode="nolines" class="center" widths=300px heights=350px>
File:Inserter_dropoff_locations.gif| Inserters place the item on the furthest lane. If a belt is in the same orientation as the inserter, the item will be placed on the right-hand lane, from the belt's perspective. In curves the inserter always places on the far side.
File:Inserter_pickup_locations.gif| If the belt is perpendicular to the inserter, inserters '''prefer''' taking items from the nearest lane. If the nearest lane is empty, the inserter will take from the far lane. If the belt is the same/opposite orientation of the inserter or a curve, the inserter '''prefers''' taking from the left lane, from the belt's perspective. If the left lane is empty it will take from the right lane.
</gallery>

=== Potential issues ===
Inserters may have problems picking up items:

* From very fast belts, because the items are moving too quickly.
* From the entry or exit of an underground belt (because the time they have to pick up is shorter)
* From turning belts if the item is on the inside of the corner

== Inserter speed ==
[[File:all_inserter_speeds.gif|frame|right|Animation showing all inserter speeds at once.]]
{| class="wikitable"
! Type
! Rotation-speed (turns per [[Time#Ticks|tick]]) Extension-speed ([[Map_structure#Tile|Tiles]] per Tick)
! Turns per [[Time#Seconds|Game-second]]
! Game-second per full turn
! Ticks per full turn
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Burner inserter}} || 0.013 0.035 || ~0.7895 || ~1.267 || 76
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Inserter}} || 0.014 0.035 || ~0.857 || ~1.167 || 70
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Long-handed inserter}} || 0.02 0.05 || 1.2 || 0.833 || 50
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Fast inserter}} {{Imagelink|Bulk inserter}} {{Imagelink|Stack inserter|space-age=yes}} || 0.04 0.1 || 2.5 || 0.4 || 24
|}

'''Note:''' The speeds per tick come directly from the [https://github.com/wube/factorio-data/tree/master/base/prototypes/entity factorio-data github repository], while the other values have been verified empirically in game. Discrepancies are due to rounding errors during the games runtime, so the empirical values are more accurate when dealing with speeds.

=== Rotation speed ===
Convention: 2π rad = 100% of a circle rotation = '''1 turn''' (or one full rotation).

Note:
* An Inserter doesn't always need to make full turns. When grabbing from a transport belt, it is slightly faster when grabbing items from the closest lane.
* If the rotation speed of an inserter would result in an odd number of ticks per full turn, the actual number of ticks per full turn for this inserter is truncated to be the next lowest even number. The reason for this is that the inserter needs to do two half turns to pick and drop an item. This takes a certain number of ticks two times, therefore the number of ticks for the full turn is always an even number. Example: The Fast inserter's rotation speed of 864°/s or 0.04 turns per tick would result in 25 ticks per full turn, but the inserter cannot do a half turn in "12.5 ticks", so it actually takes 2×12 = 24 ticks per full turn.

=== Extension speed ===
The extension-speed is normally not visible (only when compared to other inserters), but there are measurable speed differences when taking - for example - from the near or the far side of a belt. Also some mods can alter the pickup and drop locations of inserters, making this stat more relevant.

== Inserter throughput ==

=== Chest to chest ===
'''Note:''' Experimental data from 2.0.26, recorded in this doc [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1L8Td5o6TAicGi-TPwzh4lz2YiH0n7Jkpp3E8FxNpnAs/edit?usp=sharing]. Chest to chest transfer transfers the entire hand size during a single tick, so most of the time is spent during the swing to and from.

{| class="wikitable"
! rowspan=2 | Type
! rowspan=2 | Arm cycles per second (ticks per cycle)
! colspan=8 | Items/second at [[inserter capacity bonus (research)|capacity bonus]] level (stack size)
|-
! colspan=2 | No capacity bonus
! colspan=2 | Capacity bonus 2
! colspan=2 | Capacity bonus 7
! colspan=2 | [[Transport belt capacity (research)|Transport belt stacking]] {{SA}}
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Burner inserter}} || {{Quality | 0.79 (76 ticks) | 1.03 (58 ticks) | 1.25 (48 ticks) | 1.5 (40 ticks) | 2 (30 ticks) }}
|| {{ Quality | 0.79 |1.03 |1.25|1.5 |2 }}
|| (1)
|| {{ Quality | 1.58 |2.07 |2.5|3 |4 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 2.37 |3.10 |3.75|4.5 |6 }}
|| (3)
|| {{ Quality | 3.16 |4.14 |5|6 |8 }}
|| (4)
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Inserter}} || {{Quality | 0.86 (70 ticks) | 1.03 (58 ticks) | 1.36 (44 ticks) | 1.67 (36 ticks) | 2.14 (28 ticks) }}
|| {{ Quality | 0.86 |1.11 |1.36|1.67 |2.14 }}
|| (1)
|| {{ Quality | 1.71 |2.22 |2.73|3.33 |4.29 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 2.57 |3.33 |4.09|5 |6.43 }}
|| (3)
|| {{ Quality | 3.43 |4.44 |5.45|6.67 |8.57 }}
|| (4)
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Long-handed inserter}} || {{Quality | 1.2 (50 ticks) | 1.58 (38 ticks) | 2 (30 ticks) | 2.31 (26 ticks) | 3.33 (18 ticks) }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.2 |1.58 |2|2.31 |3.33 }}
|| (1)
|| {{ Quality | 2.4 |3.16 |4|4.62 |6.67 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 3.6 |4.74 |6|6.92 |10 }}
|| (3)
|| {{ Quality | 4.8 |6.32 |8|9.23 |13.33 }}
|| (4)
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Fast inserter}} || {{Quality | 2.5 (24 ticks) | 3.33 (18 ticks) | 4.29 (14 ticks) | 5 (12 ticks) | 7.5 (8 ticks) }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.5 |3.33 | 4.29 | 5 | 7.5 }}
|| (1)
|| {{ Quality | 5 |6.67 | 8.57 | 10 | 15 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 7.5 |10 |12.86|15 |22.5 }}
|| (3)
|| {{ Quality | 10 |13.33 |17.14|20 |30 }}
|| (4)
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Bulk inserter}} || {{Quality | 2.5 (24 ticks) | 3.33 (18 ticks) | 4.29 (14 ticks) | 5 (12 ticks) | 7.5 (8 ticks) }}
|| {{ Quality | 5 |6.673 | 8.57 | 10 | 15 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 10 |13.33 |17.14|20 |30 }}
|| (4)
|| {{ Quality | 30 |40 |51.43|60 |90 }}
|| (12)
|| {{ Quality | 30 |40 |51.43|60 |90 }}
|| (12)
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Stack inserter|space-age=yes}} || {{Quality | 2.5 (24 ticks) | 3.33 (18 ticks) | 4.29 (14 ticks) | 5 (12 ticks) | 7.5 (8 ticks) }}
|| {{ Quality | 15 |20 | 25.71 | 30 | 45 }}
|| (6)
|| {{ Quality | 20 |26.67 | 34.29 | 40 | 60 }}
|| (8)
|| {{ Quality | 40 | 53.33 | 68.57 | 80 | 120 }}
|| (16)
|| {{ Quality | 40 | 53.33 | 68.57 | 80 | 120 }}
|| (16)
|}

=== Chest to belt ===
Throughput going from chest to belt depends on how full the belt is. An inserter will not put down an item on a belt that has items back-to-back (aka full compression) - it waits until there is a gap. However, if the gap is narrower than the item, then the items upstream on the belt will stop to make room for the item being inserted. The direction of the belt compared to the inserter does not matter however.

In these measurements inserters move items onto an empty belt. Values are given for the stack sizes at four different [[inserter capacity bonus (research)|capacity bonus]] levels.

'''Note:''' Experimental data from 2.0

<div style="display:inline-block; width: 100%; overflow-x: auto; vertical-align:top; margin-right:20px;">
{|class="wikitable" min-width: 100%;
! rowspan="3" | Type
! colspan="20" | Items/second at [[inserter capacity bonus (research)|capacity bonus]] level (stack size)
|-
! colspan="5" | No capacity bonus
! colspan="5" | Capacity Bonus 2
! colspan="5" | Capacity bonus 7
! colspan="5" | [[Transport belt capacity (research)|Transport belt stacking]] {{SA}}
|-
! [[File:Transport belt.png|link=Transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Fast transport belt.png|link=Fast transport belt|32px ]] || [[File:Express transport belt.png|link=Express transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Turbo transport belt.png|link=Turbo transport belt|32px]] ||
! [[File:Transport belt.png|link=Transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Fast transport belt.png|link=Fast transport belt|32px ]] || [[File:Express transport belt.png|link=Express transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Turbo transport belt.png|link=Turbo transport belt|32px]] ||
! [[File:Transport belt.png|link=Transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Fast transport belt.png|link=Fast transport belt|32px ]] || [[File:Express transport belt.png|link=Express transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Turbo transport belt.png|link=Turbo transport belt|32px]] ||
! [[File:Transport belt.png|link=Transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Fast transport belt.png|link=Fast transport belt|32px ]] || [[File:Express transport belt.png|link=Express transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Turbo transport belt.png|link=Turbo transport belt|32px]] ||
|-
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Burner inserter}}
|| {{ Quality | 0.78 | 1.03 | 1.25 | 1.5 | 2 }}
|| {{ Quality | 0.78 | 1.03 | 1.25 | 1.5 | 2 }}
|| {{ Quality | 0.78 | 1.03 | 1.25 | 1.5 | 2 }}
|| {{ Quality | 0.78 | 1.03 | 1.25 | 1.5 | 2 }}
|| (1)
|| {{ Quality | 1.57 | 2.03 | 2.43 | 2.93 | 3.87 }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.57 | 2.03 | 2.43 | 2.93 | 3.87 }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.57 | 2.03 | 2.43 | 2.93 | 3.87 }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.57 | 2.03 | 2.43 | 2.93 | 3.87 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 2.15 | 2.72 | 3.2 | 3.75 | 4.75 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.25 | 2.9 | 3.45 | 4.1 | 5.3 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.3 | 3 | 3.6 | 4.3 | 5.6 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.3 | 3 | 3.6 | 4.3 | 5.6 }}
|| (3)
|| {{ Quality | 2.6 | 3.27 | 3.73 | 4.27 | 5.2 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.87 | 3.65 | 4.27 | 5 | 6.33 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.93 | 3.8 | 4.53 | 5.33 | 6.87 }}
|| {{ Quality | 3 | 3.87 | 4.6 | 5.47 | 7.07 }}
|| (4)
|-
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Inserter}}
|| {{ Quality | 0.85 | 1.12 | 1.37 | 1.67 | 2.13 }}
|| {{ Quality | 0.85 | 1.12 | 1.37 | 1.67 | 2.13 }}
|| {{ Quality | 0.85 | 1.12 | 1.37 | 1.67 | 2.13 }}
|| {{ Quality | 0.85 | 1.12 | 1.37 | 1.67 | 2.13 }}
|| (1)
|| {{ Quality | 1.7 | 2.17 | 2.67 | 3.23 | 4.13 }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.7 | 2.17 | 2.67 | 3.23 | 4.13 }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.7 | 2.17 | 2.67 | 3.23 | 4.13 }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.7 | 2.17 | 2.67 | 3.23 | 4.13 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 2.3 | 2.9 | 3.45 | 4.1 | 5 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.45 | 3.1 | 3.75 | 4.5 | 5.6 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.5 | 3.2 | 3.9 | 4.75 | 6 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.5 | 3.2 | 3.9 | 4.75 | 6 }}
|| (3)
|| {{ Quality | 2.8 | 3.43 | 4 | 4.6 | 5.47 }}
|| {{ Quality | 3.07 | 3.87 | 4.6 | 5.47 | 6.67 }}
|| {{ Quality | 3.2 | 4.07 | 4.87 | 5.87 | 7.27 }}
|| {{ Quality | 3.27 | 4.13 | 5 | 6 | 7.48 }}
|| (4)
|-
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Long-handed inserter}}
|| {{ Quality | 1.2 | 1.58 | 2 | 2.3 | 3.33 }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.2 | 1.58 | 2 | 2.3 | 3.33 }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.2 | 1.58 | 2 | 2.3 | 3.33 }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.2 | 1.58 | 2 | 2.3 | 3.33 }}
|| (1)
|| {{ Quality | 2.33 | 3 | 3.87 | 4.43 | 6.3 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.33 | 3 | 3.87 | 4.43 | 6.3 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.33 | 3 | 3.87 | 4.43 | 6.3 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.33 | 3 | 3.87 | 4.43 | 6.3 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 3.1 | 3.9 | 4.75 | 5.3 | 6.92 }}
|| {{ Quality | 3.35 | 4.3 | 5.3 | 6 | 8.18 }}
|| {{ Quality | 3.45 | 4.5 | 5.6 | 6.4 | 9 }}
|| {{ Quality | 3.45 | 4.5 | 5.6 | 6.4 | 9 }}
|| (3)
|| {{ Quality | 3.65 | 4.45 | 5.20 | 5.72 | 7.07 }}
|| {{ Quality | 4.13 | 5.2 | 6.33 | 7.07 | 9.23 }}
|| {{ Quality | 4.33 | 5.6 | 6.87 | 7.73 | 10.43 }}
|| {{ Quality | 4.47 | 5.73 | 7.07 | 8 | 10.92 }}
|| (4)
|-
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Fast inserter}}
|| {{ Quality | 2.5 | 3.33 | 4.28 | 5 | 7.5 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.5 | 3.33 | 4.28 | 5 | 7.5 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.5 | 3.33 | 4.28 | 5 | 7.5 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.5 | 3.33 | 4.28 | 5 | 7.5 }}
|| (1)
|| {{ Quality | 4.8 | 6.3 | 7.5 | 7.5 | 7.52 }}
|| {{ Quality | 4.8 | 6.3 | 8 | 9.23 | 13.33 }}
|| {{ Quality | 4.8 | 6.3 | 8 | 9.23 | 13.33 }}
|| {{ Quality | 4.8 | 6.3 | 8 | 9.23 | 13.33 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 5.62 | 6.92 | 7.5 | 7.5 | 7.52 }}
|| {{ Quality | 6.42 | 8.18 | 10 | 11.25 | 15 }}
|| {{ Quality | 6.9 | 9 | 11.25 | 12.85 | 18 }}
|| {{ Quality | 6.9 | 9 | 11.25 | 12.85 | 18 }}
|| (3)
|| {{ Quality | 6 | 7.07 | 7.5 | 7.52 | 7.52 }}
|| {{ Quality | 7.5 | 9.23 | 10.92 | 12 | 15 }}
|| {{ Quality | 8.27 | 10.43 | 12.62 | 14.13 | 18.47 }}
|| {{ Quality | 8.58 | 10.92 | 13.33 | 15 | 20 }}
|| (4)
|-
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Bulk inserter}}
|| {{ Quality | 4.8 | 6.3 | 7.5 | 7.5 | 7.52 }}
|| {{ Quality | 4.8 | 6.3 | 8 | 9.23 | 13.33 }}
|| {{ Quality | 4.8 | 6.3 | 8 | 9.23 | 13.33 }}
|| {{ Quality | 4.8 | 6.3 | 8 | 9.23 | 13.33 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 6 | 7.07 | 7.5 | 7.52 | 7.52 }}
|| {{ Quality | 7.5 | 9.23 | 10.92 | 12 | 15 }}
|| {{ Quality | 8.27 | 10.43 | 12.62 | 14.13 | 18.47 }}
|| {{ Quality | 8.58 | 10.92 | 13.33 | 15 | 20 }}
|| (4)
|| {{ Quality | 6.93 | 7.35 | 7.5 | 7.52 | 7.52 }}
|| {{ Quality | 11.23 | 12.4 | 13.33 | 13.85 | 15 }}
|| {{ Quality | 14.4 | 16.38 | 18 | 18.95 | 21.18 }}
|| {{ Quality | 16.4 | 18.97 | 21.2 | 22.5 | 25.72 }}
|| (12)
|| {{ Quality | 6.93 | 7.35 | 7.5 | 7.52 | 7.52 }}
|| {{ Quality | 11.12 | 12.4 | 13.33 | 13.85 | 15 }}
|| {{ Quality | 14.4 | 16.38 | 18 | 18.95 | 21.18 }}
|| {{ Quality | 16.4 | 18.97 | 21.2 | 22.5 | 25.72 }}
|| (12)
|-
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Stack inserter|space-age=yes}}
|| {{ Quality | 11.27 | 13.87 | 15 | 15 | 15.03 }}
|| {{ Quality | 12.87 | 16.37 | 20 | 22.5 | 30 }}
|| {{ Quality | 13.8 | 18 | 22.5 | 25.7 | 36 }}
|| {{ Quality | 13.8 | 18 | 22.5 | 25.7 | 36 }}
|| (6)
|| {{ Quality | 12 | 14.13 | 15 | 15.03 | 15.03 }}
|| {{ Quality | 15 | 18.47 | 21.83 | 24 | 30 }}
|| {{ Quality | 16.53 | 20.87 | 25.23 | 28.27 | 36.93 }}
|| {{ Quality | 17.17 | 21.83 | 26.67 | 30 | 40 }}
|| (8)
|| {{ Quality | 13.33 | 14.57 | 15 | 15.03 | 15.03 }}
|| {{ Quality | 20 | 22.87 | 25.27 | 26.67 | 30 }}
|| {{ Quality | 24 | 28.27 | 32 | 34.3 | 40 }}
|| {{ Quality | 26.67 | 32 | 36.9 | 40 | 48 }}
|| (16)
|| {{ Quality | 24 | 28.27 | 30 | 30.07 | 30.07 }}
|| {{ Quality | 30 | 36.93 | 43.67 | 48 | 60 }}
|| {{ Quality | 33.07 | 41.73 | 50.47 | 56.53 | 73.87 }}
|| {{ Quality | 34.33 | 43.67 | 53.33 | 60 | 80 }}
|| (16)
|}
</div>

=== Chest to splitter ===
When an inserter drops items onto the side of a perpendicular splitter, it always is considered to do so on the input side, enabling the splitter to move half of the items to the other belt (assuming that the splitter filter/priority settings allow it to do so and that there is available space on both belts). This allows the inserter to drop its items more quickly. A bulk inserter with capacity bonus 7 can move 16.0 items/second instead of the usual 14.4 items/second.

<gallery mode="nolines" class="center" widths=400px heights=250px>
File:Inserter to splitter comparison.gif|By inserting onto the side of a splitter, a fully-upgraded bulk inserter can fill 71% of an express belt lane instead of the usual 64%. (Gif from 1.1)
File:Inserter belt saturation.gif|In 1.1, three bulk inserters could saturate an express belt if one of them inserts onto a splitter. In 2.0, three bulk inserters can saturate an express belt if two of them insert onto splitters. (Gif from 1.1)
</gallery>

===Belt to chest (perpendicular)===

'''Note:''' The following is based on experimental data from [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Q4hxL69qrK3qeEKU8aDkuwM3gJy6I2dJ4FYSs-FQUpI/edit?usp=sharing 1.1].
Most of the 1.1 experimental data was gathered using the following circuit blueprint to measure the exact tick difference between inserter swings. A lot of the data on this page (specifically the belt to chest data) relies heavily on the conditions of the setup on which the measurements are done. If your setup differs from the ones tested on this page, you can use the following blueprint to do the measurements yourself.

{{BlueprintString|bp-string=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}}

When picking items from a belt, many more factors come into play besides belt fullness:

* How fast the items move (i.e. if they are queued up on the belt or move at belt speed).
* Whether the belt is perpendicular to the inserter or approaches it head on.
* Whether items are on the near or far lane of a perpendicular belt.
* Whether the belt turns or not, and whether the items are in the inner or outer side of the bend.
* If the belt is an underground entrance or exit. This shortens the time items are visible to the inserter for pickup.
* All sorts of intricate timing factors between the inserter and the items on the belt, since the game simulates the arm homing in on every item.

The test setup used below is with an inserter taking items from a perpendicular belt with items on the far lane only. The belt is fully compressed and timings are both for items that move at full speed and queued up as much as possible. Values are given for the stack sizes at three different [[inserter capacity bonus (research)|capacity bonus]] levels.

{| class="wikitable"
! rowspan=4 | Type
! colspan=15 | Items/second at [[inserter capacity bonus (research)|capacity bonus]] level (stack size)
|-
! colspan=5 | No capacity bonus
! colspan=5 | Capacity bonus 2
! colspan=5 | Capacity bonus 7
|-
! colspan=3 | Items at belt speed
! rowspan=2 | Items queued up
! rowspan=2 |
! colspan=3 | Items at belt speed
! rowspan=2 | Items queued up
! rowspan=2 |
! colspan=3 | Items at belt speed
! rowspan=2 | Items queued up
! rowspan=2 |
|-
! [[File:Transport belt.png|link=Transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Fast transport belt.png|link=Fast transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Express transport belt.png|link=Express transport belt|32px]]
! [[File:Transport belt.png|link=Transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Fast transport belt.png|link=Fast transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Express transport belt.png|link=Express transport belt|32px]]
! [[File:Transport belt.png|link=Transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Fast transport belt.png|link=Fast transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Express transport belt.png|link=Express transport belt|32px]]
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Burner inserter}} || 0.60 || '''0.65''' || 0.50 || 0.64 || (1) || 1.11 || '''1.20''' || 1.13 || 1.26 || (2) || 1.61 || 1.61 || '''1.65''' || 1.71 / 1.73 / 1.86 * || (3)
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Inserter}} || '''0.94''' || '''0.94''' || '''0.94''' || 0.88 || (1) || '''1.67''' || '''1.67''' || 1.50 || 1.74 || (2) || '''2.50''' || 2.25 || 2.33 || 2.37 / 2.37 / 2.54 * || (3)
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Long-handed inserter}} || 1.18 || 1.18 || '''1.25''' || 1.20 || (1) || 2.20 || 2.31 || '''2.40''' || 2.40 || (2) || 3.21 || 3.21 || '''3.46''' || 3.40 || (3)
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Fast inserter}} || '''2.50''' || 2.31 || '''2.50''' || 2.50 || (1) || 4.50 || 4.29 || '''5.00''' || 4.80 || (2) || '''6.43''' || 6.00 || '''6.43''' || 6.43 || (3)
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Bulk inserter}} || 4.50 || 4.29 || '''5.00''' || 4.80 || (2) || 7.50 || 7.50 || '''8.00''' || 7.50 / 8.57 / 8.28 * || (4) || 7.50 || 11.25 || '''15.00''' || 7.50 / 13.09 / 15.32 * || (12)
|}

<nowiki>*)</nowiki> Throughput for basic/fast/express belt.

Since there are many more factors involved, these measurements exhibit a more complex pattern than chest-to-belt.

* Boldface cells show for which belt each inserter has the best throughput on each bonus level when items move at belt speed. Higher speed belts mean that inserters have to work harder to catch the fast moving items. The effect is most noticeable for slower inserters and smaller stack sizes.
* When items are queued up the belt type hardly matters, so there is only a single column for that. The exceptions are the stack inserters - for basic transport belts it's the belt that sets the limit for stack sizes above 4, and there is also a notable difference between fast and express belts.

=== Belt to chest (facing inserter) ===
'''Note:''' Experimental data from 1.1

When picking up items from a belt facing the inserter, there are multiple small differences between different setups. The following throughput tests are performed with [[express transport belt]]s and [[bulk inserter]]s with the maximum [[inserter capacity bonus (research)|capacity bonus]].
Each setup in the following picture shows the amount of ticks per cycle of the inserter and the amount of items per second the inserter moves. These measurements are consistent in all orientations of the setup.

[[File:Inserter_belt_to_chest_throughput.png|center|900px]]

=== Insertion into lava/space ===

In [[Space Age]], inserters can dump items into lava on [[Vulcanus]] or into space on [[Space platform]]s. This act however is not as fast as inserting into a chest or similar container.

When inserting into lava/space, one item is removed from the inserter's hand every tick. So a [[stack inserter]] holding 16 items requires 16 ticks to dump its contents into lava/space. By contrast, when inserting into a container, the entire hand size is placed in the container in 1 tick.

== Power usage ==
Inserter power draw is determined by several factors.

Firstly like most machines, all of the inserters (with the exception of the burner) have drain. Drain is the energy cost of existence, and is expended constantly as long as the inserter exists on the power grid, regardless of activity or lack thereof.

Inserters also have a two costs associated with movement. These costs are applied separately and cumulatively for rotational motion as well as extension/retraction.

Lastly, inserters exhibit a power spike when acquiring and dropping off an item. This can be referred to as "item spike" because it is typically observed directly after item interaction. This is because after receiving/delivering an item it will begin extending/retracting a distance of 0.2 units (distance sourced from [https://github.com/wube/factorio-data/blob/master/base/prototypes/entity/entities.lua source code]). This power cost associated with linear movement is significantly more expensive than that of rotational movement, hence the sharp increase in power consumption.

[[File:Yellow Inserter Power Spikes.png|thumb|Power Consumption graph of Yellow Inserter]]

Here we can see that for the duration of the lateral movement the power consumption is significantly higher.

Burner Inserters, despite not using electricity, also have the same power consumption characteristics as the rest of the inserters (excluding drain). Upon accepting fuel they will replenish something resembling an internal battery, and draw from it in the same manner other inserters draw from the power grid, item spikes and all. Aside from their exclusion from drain, Burner Inserters function identically to other Inserters.

=== Energy costs ===

[[File:Inserter Testing Setup.png|thumb|Inserter Testing Setup]]

It's important to note that due to rounding errors the games values cannot be taken at face value when doing calculations, so a blend of theoretical and empirical methods must be used to ensure accuracy. More information can be viewed here at this [https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=128389 forum topic]

The game calculates inserter power based on its hard coded power modifiers:

'''Inserter Power Modifiers (kJ)'''

These values are derived from [https://github.com/wube/factorio-data/blob/master/base/prototypes/entity/entities.lua source code]

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Burner !! Yellow!! Red!! Blue !! Green !! Stack
|-
| 50 || 5 || 5 || 7 || 20 || 40
|-
|}

The way the game uses these values is it takes the game's programmed speed in ticks (which can be found higher up on the page), and then uses that alongside these numbers to derive a wattage, using the following equation:

<code>Speed × Power Modifier × Ticks per second</code>

Applying the equation we can derive the following values:

'''Cost of rotational movement in kW'''

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Burner !! Yellow!! Red!! Blue !! Green !! Stack
|-
| 39 || 4.2 || 6 || 16.8 || 48 || 96
|-
|}

'''Cost of linear movement in kW'''

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Burner !! Yellow!! Red!! Blue !! Green !! Stack
|-
| 105 || 10.5 || 15 || 42 || 120 || 240
|-
|}

Taking these two values and adding them together, alongside drain, will give you your max power. It is critical to note that while the duration of consumption is affected by rounding errors in the game like the time per spin and so on, the actual wattage is unaffected by these rounding errors. Just because the inserter spins slightly faster than in the games code doesn't mean it uses slightly more wattage, it still demands the same wattage.

Your rotational power is used during the entire time the inserter is spinning, while the the extension cost is only used briefly during item interaction, causing item spike. By calculating the duration of both you can accurately calculate how many joules your inserter is using in any given situation. Just like with the rotational speeds, item spike duration is subject to rounding errors from the game. You can calculate it by taking the games rated distance of 0.2 and dividing it by the inserters rated speed, and then truncating the number. To save you some hassle here is a reference table

'''Tick duration of Item Spike'''

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Burner !! Yellow!! Red!! Blue !! Green !! Stack
|-
| 5 || 5 || 4 || 1 || 1 || 1
|-
|}

Knowing these values, energy cost is easy to calculate, and is linear to inserter utilization. This means if your inserter is only running half the time, it will only use half the power, with the exception of drain which remains constant in all situations.

'''Cost per transfer cycle in kJ'''

These values are isolated from drain. Values were theoretically derived and empirically confirmed for accuracy. [https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=128389 More information]

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Burner !! Yellow!! Red!! Blue !! Green !! Stack
|-
| 66.9 || 6.65 || 7 || 8.12 || 23.2 || 46.4
|-
|}

=== Inserter efficiency ===

The above data can be used to compare inserter efficiency directly. Remember that the transfer cycle cost remains the same regardless of how many items are moved. This means that the later inserters with their larger stack sizes can outperform other inserters despite their higher transfer cost, since they can achieve a lower cost per item. Here are some graphs of chest-to-chest data showing the efficiency of different inserters at differing stack sizes. Because the other inserters maintain a proportional relationship (as in an identical stack size) these graphs will primarily focus on highlighting the Green Inserter and new Stack Inserter. Dots have been marked at the turning point where they overtake the other inserters in consumption

<gallery mode="slideshow">
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (No Capacity Bonus).png||No Capacity Bonus
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 2).png|Capacity Bonus 2
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 4).png|Capacity Bonus 4
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 5) .png|Capacity Bonus 5
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 6) (Zoomed).png|Capacity Bonus 6
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 7).png|Capacity Bonus 7
</gallery>

Important to note is that the actual efficiency of the inserters is best measured in terms of kJ / item. Such a version of these graphs wasn't generated because it is almost a flat line. This is because for this kind of linear power consumption the kJ / item would just be the slope of the line, or in other words it would be the ''kJ per transfer cycle / stack size''.

Now for an important caveat. The above graphs are assuming unlimited input. That is to say the graphs assume that the inserter is always spinning at its maximum hand size. In situations that are input limited however, the inserter will not always do so. When the inserter completes its spin, the only time it waits for items is when there are zero to take. As long as there is at least a single item, the inserter will transfer whatever is there immediately, regardless of the inefficiency of moving less than its maximum. Stack Inserters are an exception to this as they actually do wait for a full hand before making the transfer, but no other inserter does. An example of an input limited situation would be the unloading of an assembler. Here are some graphs showing power usage in input limited situations:

<gallery mode="slideshow">
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 2, Input Minimum 1).png | Capacity Bonus 2, Input Minimum 1
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 2, Input Minimum 1, kJ).png | Capacity Bonus 2, Input Minimum 1
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 7, Input Minimum 1).png| Capacity Bonus 7, Input Minimum 1
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 7, Input Minimum 1, kJ).png| Capacity Bonus 7, Input Minimum 1
</gallery>

Here is how the behavior works. The inserter will increase its spin speed to max power as a utilization function of its minimum input. In simpler terms, if the minimum input is 1, it will increase power consumption as though it had no capacity bonus. Once it reaches the maximum, it will maintain max power while gradually increasing the average hand size its moving, thereby gradually increasing its efficiency. We can see this behavior in the kJ graph, where we get this swooping descent curve as it gains efficiency. We can see that with each subsequent inserter the average improves, and it will ultimately converge towards the same value as the previous set of graphs, that being ''kJ per transfer cycle / stack size''. The graphs shared cover the most common use cases, but input minimums can very quite largely. For example the input minimum for crafting yellow belts would be 2, and in general for any recipe the input minimum would be the minimum craft quantity. When belt feeding, its possible for inserters to experience inserter limiting as the belt approaches empty, or if using circuit limited sushi. Due to how many possible permutations of these graphs there are, sharing them all is simply not feasible. If you need a graph not displayed, you can generate one yourself using the code shared [https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?p=670540#p670540 here]

Because the Burner Inserter doesn't have drain, its efficiency can only truly be appreciated in extremely low throughput situations. Thus we use these dedicated graphs. Before one graph with no capacity bonus would have been sufficient because at low throughputs inserters don't wait and always default to as stack size of 1. The new Stack Inserter changes this though, because Stack Inserters do in fact wait until they get a full hand before beginning their swing, meaning they always remain at optimal efficiency unlike the rest of the inserters. Though having generated the graphs it appears to be largely irrelevant, as the fundamental relationship never really changes from one extreme to the other.

<gallery mode="slideshow">
File:Burner Efficiency Graph (No Capacity Bonus).png|No Capacity Bonus
File:Burner Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 7).png|Capacity Bonus 7
</gallery>

Note: The Burner graphs are mislabeled on the y-axis. They should read kJ, not kW.

=== Belt differences===
Up until now all data was regarding chest-to-chest use cases, due to their sterile and consistent nature. The introduction of belts creates special conditions that require consideration. Here is a power chart from the game for reference:

[[File:Yellow Inserter Belt-to-Belt Power Signature.png|frameless|center|upright 3]]

The Yellow Inserter above is doing a belt-to-belt transfer, and it has a stack bonus.

The erratic section of the graph is the loading process. We can see the behavior is irregular as the inserter does not wait for the item, but rather fishes around for them. The exact behavior here is still being studied, and due to its dependence on stack size and belt speed it is very difficult to give any firm answers regarding how much power this actually uses as a quantifiable generalization. Likely a set of tables would need to be generated with every possible combination as a reference, but such data does not currently exist. The behavior should be consistent across belt speeds and stack sizes, so it can theoretically be gathered and collated into a reference table, though such data doesn't exist at this time.

Looking at the unloading section, we can see the inserter swings around normally, but then there is this dip that doesn't exist in the chest to chest behavior. This is the inserter waiting at the belt to drop off all its items. During this waiting, it uses no power aside from its drain. Once all the items are delivered, it resumes operation as normal. Different amounts of delay caused by different belt speeds and stack sizes can create variations in both our throughput and our total cost per transfer due to the additional drain. This can also be easily modeled into a table, though such a table is currently unavailable

If you are interested in volunteering to collect and share this data, you are encouraged to do so!

What this currently means in practice is that you should just use the chest-to-chest data. The overall relationship between the inserters doesn't change significantly and their efficiency hierarchy remains undisturbed, though the exact consumption in joules per item likely increases noticeably. This could be problematic for other cost estimates in your factory, but for choosing inserters its not an issue.

'''Important:''' The above efficiency graphs only apply when loading from a chest. When loading from a belt, until a more accurate dedicated data set is provided, it is advised to reference the initial no capacity bonus version of the graph for all decisions. With an inserter stack size of 1, the efficiency relationship between chests and belts is identical.

'''Regarding Quality:''' Quality inserters receive a linear speed boost for each level of quality, with a corresponding power cost increase. What this means is that the quality level of an inserter has no impact on its energy efficiency

''More data regarding inserters feeding from belts, as well as more detailed data regarding burner inserter power consumption is still needed. Please contribute if you are willing''

== See also ==
* [[Electric system]]
* [[Belt transport system]]
* [[Inserter capacity bonus (research)]]: Inserter moves more than an item per turn.

{{C|Logistics{{!}}#Inserters}} {{C|Inserters{{!}}#Inserters}}

Inserters

2026-04-06T11:19:15Z

Zijkhal: /* Insertion limits */ Added links to ticks

{{Languages}}
''For the common yellow electrical inserter, see [[Inserter]].''

'''Inserters''' are devices which are used to move items over short distances. When placed, they have a fixed direction. They can move items from behind and place them in front of them. By doing this, they can move items from one transport belt to another, but also extract items from—and insert items into—machines or storage devices.

== Types of inserters ==
{| class="wikitable"
| {{Imagelink|Burner inserter}} || The only [[fuel]]-powered inserter, with the slowest speed.
|-
| {{Imagelink|Inserter}} || The standard electrical inserter.
|-
| {{Imagelink|Long-handed inserter}} || Capable of inserting and removing items from a greater distance.
|-
| {{Imagelink|Fast inserter}} || Much faster than the inserter.
|-
| {{Imagelink|Bulk inserter}} || As fast as the fast inserter, but can move many more items at the same time at once.
|-
| {{Imagelink|Stack inserter|space-age=yes}} || As fast as the bulk inserter, but can stack items on a belt.
|}

== Mechanics ==
Inserters '''will''':
* Pick up items off the ground, off of a [[Transport belts|transport belt]], or from any object that has storage space, such as [[chests]], [[furnace]]s, [[assembling machine]]s, or [[vehicle]]s.
* Place the item onto the ground, onto a transport belt, or into any object that has storage space.
* Run at slower speeds when starved for energy.
* Pick up as many items as their [[inserter capacity bonus (research)|stack size]] allows at once, if they do not have to wait too long to pick them up.
* Pick up items and drop them into the void of space or lava, permanently destroying them. This is useful for getting rid of unwanted items.

Inserters '''will not''':
* Pick up any items that cannot be inserted into the adjacent entity.
* Pick up any items if the adjacent entity is a [[ghost]].
* Pick up items to place into an entity with a full inventory (however, it will pick up items up to its hand size even if not all of them will fit).
* Place more than one item at a time onto the same ground tile.
* Place items into an entity that cannot hold them, for example due to [[Stack#Filtered_stacks|filtered]] or [[Stack#Stack_limitation|limited slots]].
* Place items into a [[cargo wagon]] or fuel into a [[locomotive]] if the train it's part of is in motion, or in automatic mode and not stopped at a [[train stop]] (e.g. waiting at a signal). (Wagons will be visibly closed if they cannot be inserted into for this reason.)
* Fill up the entire target inventory of [[boiler]]s, [[nuclear reactor]]s, [[:Category:Producers|production building]]s, [[furnace]]s and [[turret]]s (see below).

If two or more inserters are picking up from the same tile, the inserter that can grab the items the fastest will grab them first. Besides faster inserters, this favors inserters taking from the inner lane of a transport belt.

=== Insertion limits ===
Depending on where an inserter is moving items, it does not always fill up the entire target inventory. This allows other inserters taking from the same transport belt to pick up their share of the items. For example, if a boiler has 5 or more items of fuel in it, an inserter will not insert additional fuel. This allows the other fuel to travel further down the transport belt. When the fuel drops below 5 items, the inserter will resume inserting fuel, up to the limit of 5 items.

{| class="wikitable"
! Entity !! Item type !! Automatic insertion limit
|-
| [[Boiler]]s, [[burner inserter]]s, [[furnace]]s, and [[nuclear reactor]]s || [[Fuel]] || style="text-align:center" | 5
|-
| [[Gun turret]]s || Magazines || style="text-align:center" | 10
|-
| [[Artillery turret]]s || [[Artillery shell]]s || style="text-align:center" | 5
|-
| [[Assembling machine]]s, [[furnace]]s, [[centrifuge]]s, [[chemical plant]]s, and [[Oil refinery|oil refineries]]|| Items needed for the recipe || The ingredients for 1 craft in addition to the ingredients for the number of crafts that can be completed (rounded up) during one full normal [[quality]] [[inserter]] swing (70 [[Time#Ticks|ticks]]); but at least the ingredients for 2 crafts and at most the ingredients for 100 crafts.[https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?p=309796#p309796]
|-
| [[Lab]]s || [[Science pack]]s || The number of normal [[quality]] science packs needed for one research unit in addition to the science packs for the number of research units that can be completed (rounded up) during one full normal [[quality]] [[inserter]] swing (70 [[Time#Ticks|ticks]]); but at least the ingredients for 2 research units and at most the ingredients for 100 research units.
|}

An inserter that has a higher [[inserter capacity bonus (research)|inserter capacity bonus]] than 1 can overfill the target building, due to the inserter picking up a higher amount of items than needed. Overfilling can also occur if multiple inserters are used to insert items into one building.

=== Inserters and transport belts ===
[[Transport belts]] have two lanes on which items can travel. Inserters only place items onto one side of the belt, either the far side from the inserter's perspective or, if the belt is going the same or the opposite direction as the inserter, the right side from the belt's perspective.

<gallery mode="nolines" class="center" widths=300px heights=350px>
File:Inserter_dropoff_locations.gif| Inserters place the item on the furthest lane. If a belt is in the same orientation as the inserter, the item will be placed on the right-hand lane, from the belt's perspective. In curves the inserter always places on the far side.
File:Inserter_pickup_locations.gif| If the belt is perpendicular to the inserter, inserters '''prefer''' taking items from the nearest lane. If the nearest lane is empty, the inserter will take from the far lane. If the belt is the same/opposite orientation of the inserter or a curve, the inserter '''prefers''' taking from the left lane, from the belt's perspective. If the left lane is empty it will take from the right lane.
</gallery>

=== Potential issues ===
Inserters may have problems picking up items:

* From very fast belts, because the items are moving too quickly.
* From the entry or exit of an underground belt (because the time they have to pick up is shorter)
* From turning belts if the item is on the inside of the corner

== Inserter speed ==
[[File:all_inserter_speeds.gif|frame|right|Animation showing all inserter speeds at once.]]
{| class="wikitable"
! Type
! Rotation-speed (turns per [[Time#Ticks|tick]]) Extension-speed ([[Map_structure#Tile|Tiles]] per Tick)
! Turns per [[Time#Seconds|Game-second]]
! Game-second per full turn
! Ticks per full turn
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Burner inserter}} || 0.013 0.035 || ~0.7895 || ~1.267 || 76
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Inserter}} || 0.014 0.035 || ~0.857 || ~1.167 || 70
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Long-handed inserter}} || 0.02 0.05 || 1.2 || 0.833 || 50
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Fast inserter}} {{Imagelink|Bulk inserter}} {{Imagelink|Stack inserter|space-age=yes}} || 0.04 0.1 || 2.5 || 0.4 || 24
|}

'''Note:''' The speeds per tick come directly from the [https://github.com/wube/factorio-data/tree/master/base/prototypes/entity factorio-data github repository], while the other values have been verified empirically in game. Discrepancies are due to rounding errors during the games runtime, so the empirical values are more accurate when dealing with speeds.

=== Rotation speed ===
Convention: 2π rad = 100% of a circle rotation = '''1 turn''' (or one full rotation).

Note:
* An Inserter doesn't always need to make full turns. When grabbing from a transport belt, it is slightly faster when grabbing items from the closest lane.
* If the rotation speed of an inserter would result in an odd number of ticks per full turn, the actual number of ticks per full turn for this inserter is truncated to be the next lowest even number. The reason for this is that the inserter needs to do two half turns to pick and drop an item. This takes a certain number of ticks two times, therefore the number of ticks for the full turn is always an even number. Example: The Fast inserter's rotation speed of 864°/s or 0.04 turns per tick would result in 25 ticks per full turn, but the inserter cannot do a half turn in "12.5 ticks", so it actually takes 2×12 = 24 ticks per full turn.

=== Extension speed ===
The extension-speed is normally not visible (only when compared to other inserters), but there are measurable speed differences when taking - for example - from the near or the far side of a belt. Also some mods can alter the pickup and drop locations of inserters, making this stat more relevant.

== Inserter throughput ==

=== Chest to chest ===
'''Note:''' Experimental data from 2.0.26, recorded in this doc [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1L8Td5o6TAicGi-TPwzh4lz2YiH0n7Jkpp3E8FxNpnAs/edit?usp=sharing]. Chest to chest transfer transfers the entire hand size during a single tick, so most of the time is spent during the swing to and from.

{| class="wikitable"
! rowspan=2 | Type
! rowspan=2 | Arm cycles per second (ticks per cycle)
! colspan=8 | Items/second at [[inserter capacity bonus (research)|capacity bonus]] level (stack size)
|-
! colspan=2 | No capacity bonus
! colspan=2 | Capacity bonus 2
! colspan=2 | Capacity bonus 7
! colspan=2 | [[Transport belt capacity (research)|Transport belt stacking]] {{SA}}
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Burner inserter}} || {{Quality | 0.79 (76 ticks) | 1.03 (58 ticks) | 1.25 (48 ticks) | 1.5 (40 ticks) | 2 (30 ticks) }}
|| {{ Quality | 0.79 |1.03 |1.25|1.5 |2 }}
|| (1)
|| {{ Quality | 1.58 |2.07 |2.5|3 |4 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 2.37 |3.10 |3.75|4.5 |6 }}
|| (3)
|| {{ Quality | 3.16 |4.14 |5|6 |8 }}
|| (4)
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Inserter}} || {{Quality | 0.86 (70 ticks) | 1.03 (58 ticks) | 1.36 (44 ticks) | 1.67 (36 ticks) | 2.14 (28 ticks) }}
|| {{ Quality | 0.86 |1.11 |1.36|1.67 |2.14 }}
|| (1)
|| {{ Quality | 1.71 |2.22 |2.73|3.33 |4.29 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 2.57 |3.33 |4.09|5 |6.43 }}
|| (3)
|| {{ Quality | 3.43 |4.44 |5.45|6.67 |8.57 }}
|| (4)
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Long-handed inserter}} || {{Quality | 1.2 (50 ticks) | 1.58 (38 ticks) | 2 (30 ticks) | 2.31 (26 ticks) | 3.33 (18 ticks) }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.2 |1.58 |2|2.31 |3.33 }}
|| (1)
|| {{ Quality | 2.4 |3.16 |4|4.62 |6.67 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 3.6 |4.74 |6|6.92 |10 }}
|| (3)
|| {{ Quality | 4.8 |6.32 |8|9.23 |13.33 }}
|| (4)
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Fast inserter}} || {{Quality | 2.5 (24 ticks) | 3.33 (18 ticks) | 4.29 (14 ticks) | 5 (12 ticks) | 7.5 (8 ticks) }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.5 |3.33 | 4.29 | 5 | 7.5 }}
|| (1)
|| {{ Quality | 5 |6.67 | 8.57 | 10 | 15 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 7.5 |10 |12.86|15 |22.5 }}
|| (3)
|| {{ Quality | 10 |13.33 |17.14|20 |30 }}
|| (4)
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Bulk inserter}} || {{Quality | 2.5 (24 ticks) | 3.33 (18 ticks) | 4.29 (14 ticks) | 5 (12 ticks) | 7.5 (8 ticks) }}
|| {{ Quality | 5 |6.673 | 8.57 | 10 | 15 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 10 |13.33 |17.14|20 |30 }}
|| (4)
|| {{ Quality | 30 |40 |51.43|60 |90 }}
|| (12)
|| {{ Quality | 30 |40 |51.43|60 |90 }}
|| (12)
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Stack inserter|space-age=yes}} || {{Quality | 2.5 (24 ticks) | 3.33 (18 ticks) | 4.29 (14 ticks) | 5 (12 ticks) | 7.5 (8 ticks) }}
|| {{ Quality | 15 |20 | 25.71 | 30 | 45 }}
|| (6)
|| {{ Quality | 20 |26.67 | 34.29 | 40 | 60 }}
|| (8)
|| {{ Quality | 40 | 53.33 | 68.57 | 80 | 120 }}
|| (16)
|| {{ Quality | 40 | 53.33 | 68.57 | 80 | 120 }}
|| (16)
|}

=== Chest to belt ===
Throughput going from chest to belt depends on how full the belt is. An inserter will not put down an item on a belt that has items back-to-back (aka full compression) - it waits until there is a gap. However, if the gap is narrower than the item, then the items upstream on the belt will stop to make room for the item being inserted. The direction of the belt compared to the inserter does not matter however.

In these measurements inserters move items onto an empty belt. Values are given for the stack sizes at four different [[inserter capacity bonus (research)|capacity bonus]] levels.

'''Note:''' Experimental data from 2.0

<div style="display:inline-block; width: 100%; overflow-x: auto; vertical-align:top; margin-right:20px;">
{|class="wikitable" min-width: 100%;
! rowspan="3" | Type
! colspan="20" | Items/second at [[inserter capacity bonus (research)|capacity bonus]] level (stack size)
|-
! colspan="5" | No capacity bonus
! colspan="5" | Capacity Bonus 2
! colspan="5" | Capacity bonus 7
! colspan="5" | [[Transport belt capacity (research)|Transport belt stacking]] {{SA}}
|-
! [[File:Transport belt.png|link=Transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Fast transport belt.png|link=Fast transport belt|32px ]] || [[File:Express transport belt.png|link=Express transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Turbo transport belt.png|link=Turbo transport belt|32px]] ||
! [[File:Transport belt.png|link=Transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Fast transport belt.png|link=Fast transport belt|32px ]] || [[File:Express transport belt.png|link=Express transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Turbo transport belt.png|link=Turbo transport belt|32px]] ||
! [[File:Transport belt.png|link=Transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Fast transport belt.png|link=Fast transport belt|32px ]] || [[File:Express transport belt.png|link=Express transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Turbo transport belt.png|link=Turbo transport belt|32px]] ||
! [[File:Transport belt.png|link=Transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Fast transport belt.png|link=Fast transport belt|32px ]] || [[File:Express transport belt.png|link=Express transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Turbo transport belt.png|link=Turbo transport belt|32px]] ||
|-
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Burner inserter}}
|| {{ Quality | 0.78 | 1.03 | 1.25 | 1.5 | 2 }}
|| {{ Quality | 0.78 | 1.03 | 1.25 | 1.5 | 2 }}
|| {{ Quality | 0.78 | 1.03 | 1.25 | 1.5 | 2 }}
|| {{ Quality | 0.78 | 1.03 | 1.25 | 1.5 | 2 }}
|| (1)
|| {{ Quality | 1.57 | 2.03 | 2.43 | 2.93 | 3.87 }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.57 | 2.03 | 2.43 | 2.93 | 3.87 }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.57 | 2.03 | 2.43 | 2.93 | 3.87 }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.57 | 2.03 | 2.43 | 2.93 | 3.87 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 2.15 | 2.72 | 3.2 | 3.75 | 4.75 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.25 | 2.9 | 3.45 | 4.1 | 5.3 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.3 | 3 | 3.6 | 4.3 | 5.6 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.3 | 3 | 3.6 | 4.3 | 5.6 }}
|| (3)
|| {{ Quality | 2.6 | 3.27 | 3.73 | 4.27 | 5.2 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.87 | 3.65 | 4.27 | 5 | 6.33 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.93 | 3.8 | 4.53 | 5.33 | 6.87 }}
|| {{ Quality | 3 | 3.87 | 4.6 | 5.47 | 7.07 }}
|| (4)
|-
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Inserter}}
|| {{ Quality | 0.85 | 1.12 | 1.37 | 1.67 | 2.13 }}
|| {{ Quality | 0.85 | 1.12 | 1.37 | 1.67 | 2.13 }}
|| {{ Quality | 0.85 | 1.12 | 1.37 | 1.67 | 2.13 }}
|| {{ Quality | 0.85 | 1.12 | 1.37 | 1.67 | 2.13 }}
|| (1)
|| {{ Quality | 1.7 | 2.17 | 2.67 | 3.23 | 4.13 }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.7 | 2.17 | 2.67 | 3.23 | 4.13 }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.7 | 2.17 | 2.67 | 3.23 | 4.13 }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.7 | 2.17 | 2.67 | 3.23 | 4.13 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 2.3 | 2.9 | 3.45 | 4.1 | 5 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.45 | 3.1 | 3.75 | 4.5 | 5.6 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.5 | 3.2 | 3.9 | 4.75 | 6 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.5 | 3.2 | 3.9 | 4.75 | 6 }}
|| (3)
|| {{ Quality | 2.8 | 3.43 | 4 | 4.6 | 5.47 }}
|| {{ Quality | 3.07 | 3.87 | 4.6 | 5.47 | 6.67 }}
|| {{ Quality | 3.2 | 4.07 | 4.87 | 5.87 | 7.27 }}
|| {{ Quality | 3.27 | 4.13 | 5 | 6 | 7.48 }}
|| (4)
|-
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Long-handed inserter}}
|| {{ Quality | 1.2 | 1.58 | 2 | 2.3 | 3.33 }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.2 | 1.58 | 2 | 2.3 | 3.33 }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.2 | 1.58 | 2 | 2.3 | 3.33 }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.2 | 1.58 | 2 | 2.3 | 3.33 }}
|| (1)
|| {{ Quality | 2.33 | 3 | 3.87 | 4.43 | 6.3 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.33 | 3 | 3.87 | 4.43 | 6.3 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.33 | 3 | 3.87 | 4.43 | 6.3 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.33 | 3 | 3.87 | 4.43 | 6.3 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 3.1 | 3.9 | 4.75 | 5.3 | 6.92 }}
|| {{ Quality | 3.35 | 4.3 | 5.3 | 6 | 8.18 }}
|| {{ Quality | 3.45 | 4.5 | 5.6 | 6.4 | 9 }}
|| {{ Quality | 3.45 | 4.5 | 5.6 | 6.4 | 9 }}
|| (3)
|| {{ Quality | 3.65 | 4.45 | 5.20 | 5.72 | 7.07 }}
|| {{ Quality | 4.13 | 5.2 | 6.33 | 7.07 | 9.23 }}
|| {{ Quality | 4.33 | 5.6 | 6.87 | 7.73 | 10.43 }}
|| {{ Quality | 4.47 | 5.73 | 7.07 | 8 | 10.92 }}
|| (4)
|-
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Fast inserter}}
|| {{ Quality | 2.5 | 3.33 | 4.28 | 5 | 7.5 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.5 | 3.33 | 4.28 | 5 | 7.5 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.5 | 3.33 | 4.28 | 5 | 7.5 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.5 | 3.33 | 4.28 | 5 | 7.5 }}
|| (1)
|| {{ Quality | 4.8 | 6.3 | 7.5 | 7.5 | 7.52 }}
|| {{ Quality | 4.8 | 6.3 | 8 | 9.23 | 13.33 }}
|| {{ Quality | 4.8 | 6.3 | 8 | 9.23 | 13.33 }}
|| {{ Quality | 4.8 | 6.3 | 8 | 9.23 | 13.33 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 5.62 | 6.92 | 7.5 | 7.5 | 7.52 }}
|| {{ Quality | 6.42 | 8.18 | 10 | 11.25 | 15 }}
|| {{ Quality | 6.9 | 9 | 11.25 | 12.85 | 18 }}
|| {{ Quality | 6.9 | 9 | 11.25 | 12.85 | 18 }}
|| (3)
|| {{ Quality | 6 | 7.07 | 7.5 | 7.52 | 7.52 }}
|| {{ Quality | 7.5 | 9.23 | 10.92 | 12 | 15 }}
|| {{ Quality | 8.27 | 10.43 | 12.62 | 14.13 | 18.47 }}
|| {{ Quality | 8.58 | 10.92 | 13.33 | 15 | 20 }}
|| (4)
|-
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Bulk inserter}}
|| {{ Quality | 4.8 | 6.3 | 7.5 | 7.5 | 7.52 }}
|| {{ Quality | 4.8 | 6.3 | 8 | 9.23 | 13.33 }}
|| {{ Quality | 4.8 | 6.3 | 8 | 9.23 | 13.33 }}
|| {{ Quality | 4.8 | 6.3 | 8 | 9.23 | 13.33 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 6 | 7.07 | 7.5 | 7.52 | 7.52 }}
|| {{ Quality | 7.5 | 9.23 | 10.92 | 12 | 15 }}
|| {{ Quality | 8.27 | 10.43 | 12.62 | 14.13 | 18.47 }}
|| {{ Quality | 8.58 | 10.92 | 13.33 | 15 | 20 }}
|| (4)
|| {{ Quality | 6.93 | 7.35 | 7.5 | 7.52 | 7.52 }}
|| {{ Quality | 11.23 | 12.4 | 13.33 | 13.85 | 15 }}
|| {{ Quality | 14.4 | 16.38 | 18 | 18.95 | 21.18 }}
|| {{ Quality | 16.4 | 18.97 | 21.2 | 22.5 | 25.72 }}
|| (12)
|| {{ Quality | 6.93 | 7.35 | 7.5 | 7.52 | 7.52 }}
|| {{ Quality | 11.12 | 12.4 | 13.33 | 13.85 | 15 }}
|| {{ Quality | 14.4 | 16.38 | 18 | 18.95 | 21.18 }}
|| {{ Quality | 16.4 | 18.97 | 21.2 | 22.5 | 25.72 }}
|| (12)
|-
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Stack inserter|space-age=yes}}
|| {{ Quality | 11.27 | 13.87 | 15 | 15 | 15.03 }}
|| {{ Quality | 12.87 | 16.37 | 20 | 22.5 | 30 }}
|| {{ Quality | 13.8 | 18 | 22.5 | 25.7 | 36 }}
|| {{ Quality | 13.8 | 18 | 22.5 | 25.7 | 36 }}
|| (6)
|| {{ Quality | 12 | 14.13 | 15 | 15.03 | 15.03 }}
|| {{ Quality | 15 | 18.47 | 21.83 | 24 | 30 }}
|| {{ Quality | 16.53 | 20.87 | 25.23 | 28.27 | 36.93 }}
|| {{ Quality | 17.17 | 21.83 | 26.67 | 30 | 40 }}
|| (8)
|| {{ Quality | 13.33 | 14.57 | 15 | 15.03 | 15.03 }}
|| {{ Quality | 20 | 22.87 | 25.27 | 26.67 | 30 }}
|| {{ Quality | 24 | 28.27 | 32 | 34.3 | 40 }}
|| {{ Quality | 26.67 | 32 | 36.9 | 40 | 48 }}
|| (16)
|| {{ Quality | 24 | 28.27 | 30 | 30.07 | 30.07 }}
|| {{ Quality | 30 | 36.93 | 43.67 | 48 | 60 }}
|| {{ Quality | 33.07 | 41.73 | 50.47 | 56.53 | 73.87 }}
|| {{ Quality | 34.33 | 43.67 | 53.33 | 60 | 80 }}
|| (16)
|}
</div>

=== Chest to splitter ===
When an inserter drops items onto the side of a perpendicular splitter, it always is considered to do so on the input side, enabling the splitter to move half of the items to the other belt (assuming that the splitter filter/priority settings allow it to do so and that there is available space on both belts). This allows the inserter to drop its items more quickly. A bulk inserter with capacity bonus 7 can move 16.0 items/second instead of the usual 14.4 items/second.

<gallery mode="nolines" class="center" widths=400px heights=250px>
File:Inserter to splitter comparison.gif|By inserting onto the side of a splitter, a fully-upgraded bulk inserter can fill 71% of an express belt lane instead of the usual 64%. (Gif from 1.1)
File:Inserter belt saturation.gif|In 1.1, three bulk inserters could saturate an express belt if one of them inserts onto a splitter. In 2.0, three bulk inserters can saturate an express belt if two of them insert onto splitters. (Gif from 1.1)
</gallery>

===Belt to chest (perpendicular)===

'''Note:''' The following is based on experimental data from [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Q4hxL69qrK3qeEKU8aDkuwM3gJy6I2dJ4FYSs-FQUpI/edit?usp=sharing 1.1].
Most of the 1.1 experimental data was gathered using the following circuit blueprint to measure the exact tick difference between inserter swings. A lot of the data on this page (specifically the belt to chest data) relies heavily on the conditions of the setup on which the measurements are done. If your setup differs from the ones tested on this page, you can use the following blueprint to do the measurements yourself.

{{BlueprintString|bp-string=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}}

When picking items from a belt, many more factors come into play besides belt fullness:

* How fast the items move (i.e. if they are queued up on the belt or move at belt speed).
* Whether the belt is perpendicular to the inserter or approaches it head on.
* Whether items are on the near or far lane of a perpendicular belt.
* Whether the belt turns or not, and whether the items are in the inner or outer side of the bend.
* If the belt is an underground entrance or exit. This shortens the time items are visible to the inserter for pickup.
* All sorts of intricate timing factors between the inserter and the items on the belt, since the game simulates the arm homing in on every item.

The test setup used below is with an inserter taking items from a perpendicular belt with items on the far lane only. The belt is fully compressed and timings are both for items that move at full speed and queued up as much as possible. Values are given for the stack sizes at three different [[inserter capacity bonus (research)|capacity bonus]] levels.

{| class="wikitable"
! rowspan=4 | Type
! colspan=15 | Items/second at [[inserter capacity bonus (research)|capacity bonus]] level (stack size)
|-
! colspan=5 | No capacity bonus
! colspan=5 | Capacity bonus 2
! colspan=5 | Capacity bonus 7
|-
! colspan=3 | Items at belt speed
! rowspan=2 | Items queued up
! rowspan=2 |
! colspan=3 | Items at belt speed
! rowspan=2 | Items queued up
! rowspan=2 |
! colspan=3 | Items at belt speed
! rowspan=2 | Items queued up
! rowspan=2 |
|-
! [[File:Transport belt.png|link=Transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Fast transport belt.png|link=Fast transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Express transport belt.png|link=Express transport belt|32px]]
! [[File:Transport belt.png|link=Transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Fast transport belt.png|link=Fast transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Express transport belt.png|link=Express transport belt|32px]]
! [[File:Transport belt.png|link=Transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Fast transport belt.png|link=Fast transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Express transport belt.png|link=Express transport belt|32px]]
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Burner inserter}} || 0.60 || '''0.65''' || 0.50 || 0.64 || (1) || 1.11 || '''1.20''' || 1.13 || 1.26 || (2) || 1.61 || 1.61 || '''1.65''' || 1.71 / 1.73 / 1.86 * || (3)
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Inserter}} || '''0.94''' || '''0.94''' || '''0.94''' || 0.88 || (1) || '''1.67''' || '''1.67''' || 1.50 || 1.74 || (2) || '''2.50''' || 2.25 || 2.33 || 2.37 / 2.37 / 2.54 * || (3)
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Long-handed inserter}} || 1.18 || 1.18 || '''1.25''' || 1.20 || (1) || 2.20 || 2.31 || '''2.40''' || 2.40 || (2) || 3.21 || 3.21 || '''3.46''' || 3.40 || (3)
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Fast inserter}} || '''2.50''' || 2.31 || '''2.50''' || 2.50 || (1) || 4.50 || 4.29 || '''5.00''' || 4.80 || (2) || '''6.43''' || 6.00 || '''6.43''' || 6.43 || (3)
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Bulk inserter}} || 4.50 || 4.29 || '''5.00''' || 4.80 || (2) || 7.50 || 7.50 || '''8.00''' || 7.50 / 8.57 / 8.28 * || (4) || 7.50 || 11.25 || '''15.00''' || 7.50 / 13.09 / 15.32 * || (12)
|}

<nowiki>*)</nowiki> Throughput for basic/fast/express belt.

Since there are many more factors involved, these measurements exhibit a more complex pattern than chest-to-belt.

* Boldface cells show for which belt each inserter has the best throughput on each bonus level when items move at belt speed. Higher speed belts mean that inserters have to work harder to catch the fast moving items. The effect is most noticeable for slower inserters and smaller stack sizes.
* When items are queued up the belt type hardly matters, so there is only a single column for that. The exceptions are the stack inserters - for basic transport belts it's the belt that sets the limit for stack sizes above 4, and there is also a notable difference between fast and express belts.

=== Belt to chest (facing inserter) ===
'''Note:''' Experimental data from 1.1

When picking up items from a belt facing the inserter, there are multiple small differences between different setups. The following throughput tests are performed with [[express transport belt]]s and [[bulk inserter]]s with the maximum [[inserter capacity bonus (research)|capacity bonus]].
Each setup in the following picture shows the amount of ticks per cycle of the inserter and the amount of items per second the inserter moves. These measurements are consistent in all orientations of the setup.

[[File:Inserter_belt_to_chest_throughput.png|center|900px]]

=== Insertion into lava/space ===

In [[Space Age]], inserters can dump items into lava on [[Vulcanus]] or into space on [[Space platform]]s. This act however is not as fast as inserting into a chest or similar container.

When inserting into lava/space, one item is removed from the inserter's hand every tick. So a [[stack inserter]] holding 16 items requires 16 ticks to dump its contents into lava/space. By contrast, when inserting into a container, the entire hand size is placed in the container in 1 tick.

== Power usage ==
Inserter power draw is determined by several factors.

Firstly like most machines, all of the inserters (with the exception of the burner) have drain. Drain is the energy cost of existence, and is expended constantly as long as the inserter exists on the power grid, regardless of activity or lack thereof.

Inserters also have a two costs associated with movement. These costs are applied separately and cumulatively for rotational motion as well as extension/retraction.

Lastly, inserters exhibit a power spike when acquiring and dropping off an item. This can be referred to as "item spike" because it is typically observed directly after item interaction. This is because after receiving/delivering an item it will begin extending/retracting a distance of 0.2 units (distance sourced from [https://github.com/wube/factorio-data/blob/master/base/prototypes/entity/entities.lua source code]). This power cost associated with linear movement is significantly more expensive than that of rotational movement, hence the sharp increase in power consumption.

[[File:Yellow Inserter Power Spikes.png|thumb|Power Consumption graph of Yellow Inserter]]

Here we can see that for the duration of the lateral movement the power consumption is significantly higher.

Burner Inserters, despite not using electricity, also have the same power consumption characteristics as the rest of the inserters (excluding drain). Upon accepting fuel they will replenish something resembling an internal battery, and draw from it in the same manner other inserters draw from the power grid, item spikes and all. Aside from their exclusion from drain, Burner Inserters function identically to other Inserters.

=== Energy costs ===

[[File:Inserter Testing Setup.png|thumb|Inserter Testing Setup]]

It's important to note that due to rounding errors the games values cannot be taken at face value when doing calculations, so a blend of theoretical and empirical methods must be used to ensure accuracy. More information can be viewed here at this [https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=128389 forum topic]

The game calculates inserter power based on its hard coded power modifiers:

'''Inserter Power Modifiers (kJ)'''

These values are derived from [https://github.com/wube/factorio-data/blob/master/base/prototypes/entity/entities.lua source code]

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Burner !! Yellow!! Red!! Blue !! Green !! Stack
|-
| 50 || 5 || 5 || 7 || 20 || 40
|-
|}

The way the game uses these values is it takes the game's programmed speed in ticks (which can be found higher up on the page), and then uses that alongside these numbers to derive a wattage, using the following equation:

<code>Speed × Power Modifier × Ticks per second</code>

Applying the equation we can derive the following values:

'''Cost of rotational movement in kW'''

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Burner !! Yellow!! Red!! Blue !! Green !! Stack
|-
| 39 || 4.2 || 6 || 16.8 || 48 || 96
|-
|}

'''Cost of linear movement in kW'''

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Burner !! Yellow!! Red!! Blue !! Green !! Stack
|-
| 105 || 10.5 || 15 || 42 || 120 || 240
|-
|}

Taking these two values and adding them together, alongside drain, will give you your max power. It is critical to note that while the duration of consumption is affected by rounding errors in the game like the time per spin and so on, the actual wattage is unaffected by these rounding errors. Just because the inserter spins slightly faster than in the games code doesn't mean it uses slightly more wattage, it still demands the same wattage.

Your rotational power is used during the entire time the inserter is spinning, while the the extension cost is only used briefly during item interaction, causing item spike. By calculating the duration of both you can accurately calculate how many joules your inserter is using in any given situation. Just like with the rotational speeds, item spike duration is subject to rounding errors from the game. You can calculate it by taking the games rated distance of 0.2 and dividing it by the inserters rated speed, and then truncating the number. To save you some hassle here is a reference table

'''Tick duration of Item Spike'''

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Burner !! Yellow!! Red!! Blue !! Green !! Stack
|-
| 5 || 5 || 4 || 1 || 1 || 1
|-
|}

Knowing these values, energy cost is easy to calculate, and is linear to inserter utilization. This means if your inserter is only running half the time, it will only use half the power, with the exception of drain which remains constant in all situations.

'''Cost per transfer cycle in kJ'''

These values are isolated from drain. Values were theoretically derived and empirically confirmed for accuracy. [https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=128389 More information]

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Burner !! Yellow!! Red!! Blue !! Green !! Stack
|-
| 66.9 || 6.65 || 7 || 8.12 || 23.2 || 46.4
|-
|}

=== Inserter efficiency ===

The above data can be used to compare inserter efficiency directly. Remember that the transfer cycle cost remains the same regardless of how many items are moved. This means that the later inserters with their larger stack sizes can outperform other inserters despite their higher transfer cost, since they can achieve a lower cost per item. Here are some graphs of chest-to-chest data showing the efficiency of different inserters at differing stack sizes. Because the other inserters maintain a proportional relationship (as in an identical stack size) these graphs will primarily focus on highlighting the Green Inserter and new Stack Inserter. Dots have been marked at the turning point where they overtake the other inserters in consumption

<gallery mode="slideshow">
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (No Capacity Bonus).png||No Capacity Bonus
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 2).png|Capacity Bonus 2
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 4).png|Capacity Bonus 4
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 5) .png|Capacity Bonus 5
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 6) (Zoomed).png|Capacity Bonus 6
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 7).png|Capacity Bonus 7
</gallery>

Important to note is that the actual efficiency of the inserters is best measured in terms of kJ / item. Such a version of these graphs wasn't generated because it is almost a flat line. This is because for this kind of linear power consumption the kJ / item would just be the slope of the line, or in other words it would be the ''kJ per transfer cycle / stack size''.

Now for an important caveat. The above graphs are assuming unlimited input. That is to say the graphs assume that the inserter is always spinning at its maximum hand size. In situations that are input limited however, the inserter will not always do so. When the inserter completes its spin, the only time it waits for items is when there are zero to take. As long as there is at least a single item, the inserter will transfer whatever is there immediately, regardless of the inefficiency of moving less than its maximum. Stack Inserters are an exception to this as they actually do wait for a full hand before making the transfer, but no other inserter does. An example of an input limited situation would be the unloading of an assembler. Here are some graphs showing power usage in input limited situations:

<gallery mode="slideshow">
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 2, Input Minimum 1).png | Capacity Bonus 2, Input Minimum 1
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 2, Input Minimum 1, kJ).png | Capacity Bonus 2, Input Minimum 1
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 7, Input Minimum 1).png| Capacity Bonus 7, Input Minimum 1
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 7, Input Minimum 1, kJ).png| Capacity Bonus 7, Input Minimum 1
</gallery>

Here is how the behavior works. The inserter will increase its spin speed to max power as a utilization function of its minimum input. In simpler terms, if the minimum input is 1, it will increase power consumption as though it had no capacity bonus. Once it reaches the maximum, it will maintain max power while gradually increasing the average hand size its moving, thereby gradually increasing its efficiency. We can see this behavior in the kJ graph, where we get this swooping descent curve as it gains efficiency. We can see that with each subsequent inserter the average improves, and it will ultimately converge towards the same value as the previous set of graphs, that being ''kJ per transfer cycle / stack size''. The graphs shared cover the most common use cases, but input minimums can very quite largely. For example the input minimum for crafting yellow belts would be 2, and in general for any recipe the input minimum would be the minimum craft quantity. When belt feeding, its possible for inserters to experience inserter limiting as the belt approaches empty, or if using circuit limited sushi. Due to how many possible permutations of these graphs there are, sharing them all is simply not feasible. If you need a graph not displayed, you can generate one yourself using the code shared [https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?p=670540#p670540 here]

Because the Burner Inserter doesn't have drain, its efficiency can only truly be appreciated in extremely low throughput situations. Thus we use these dedicated graphs. Before one graph with no capacity bonus would have been sufficient because at low throughputs inserters don't wait and always default to as stack size of 1. The new Stack Inserter changes this though, because Stack Inserters do in fact wait until they get a full hand before beginning their swing, meaning they always remain at optimal efficiency unlike the rest of the inserters. Though having generated the graphs it appears to be largely irrelevant, as the fundamental relationship never really changes from one extreme to the other.

<gallery mode="slideshow">
File:Burner Efficiency Graph (No Capacity Bonus).png|No Capacity Bonus
File:Burner Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 7).png|Capacity Bonus 7
</gallery>

Note: The Burner graphs are mislabeled on the y-axis. They should read kJ, not kW.

=== Belt differences===
Up until now all data was regarding chest-to-chest use cases, due to their sterile and consistent nature. The introduction of belts creates special conditions that require consideration. Here is a power chart from the game for reference:

[[File:Yellow Inserter Belt-to-Belt Power Signature.png|frameless|center|upright 3]]

The Yellow Inserter above is doing a belt-to-belt transfer, and it has a stack bonus.

The erratic section of the graph is the loading process. We can see the behavior is irregular as the inserter does not wait for the item, but rather fishes around for them. The exact behavior here is still being studied, and due to its dependence on stack size and belt speed it is very difficult to give any firm answers regarding how much power this actually uses as a quantifiable generalization. Likely a set of tables would need to be generated with every possible combination as a reference, but such data does not currently exist. The behavior should be consistent across belt speeds and stack sizes, so it can theoretically be gathered and collated into a reference table, though such data doesn't exist at this time.

Looking at the unloading section, we can see the inserter swings around normally, but then there is this dip that doesn't exist in the chest to chest behavior. This is the inserter waiting at the belt to drop off all its items. During this waiting, it uses no power aside from its drain. Once all the items are delivered, it resumes operation as normal. Different amounts of delay caused by different belt speeds and stack sizes can create variations in both our throughput and our total cost per transfer due to the additional drain. This can also be easily modeled into a table, though such a table is currently unavailable

If you are interested in volunteering to collect and share this data, you are encouraged to do so!

What this currently means in practice is that you should just use the chest-to-chest data. The overall relationship between the inserters doesn't change significantly and their efficiency hierarchy remains undisturbed, though the exact consumption in joules per item likely increases noticeably. This could be problematic for other cost estimates in your factory, but for choosing inserters its not an issue.

'''Important:''' The above efficiency graphs only apply when loading from a chest. When loading from a belt, until a more accurate dedicated data set is provided, it is advised to reference the initial no capacity bonus version of the graph for all decisions. With an inserter stack size of 1, the efficiency relationship between chests and belts is identical.

'''Regarding Quality:''' Quality inserters receive a linear speed boost for each level of quality, with a corresponding power cost increase. What this means is that the quality level of an inserter has no impact on its energy efficiency

''More data regarding inserters feeding from belts, as well as more detailed data regarding burner inserter power consumption is still needed. Please contribute if you are willing''

== See also ==
* [[Electric system]]
* [[Belt transport system]]
* [[Inserter capacity bonus (research)]]: Inserter moves more than an item per turn.

{{C|Logistics{{!}}#Inserters}} {{C|Inserters{{!}}#Inserters}}

Inserters

2026-04-06T11:13:34Z

Zijkhal: Added clarification about quality, and that it's a yellow inserter's swing time, not whatever inserter is feeding the machines

{{Languages}}
''For the common yellow electrical inserter, see [[Inserter]].''

'''Inserters''' are devices which are used to move items over short distances. When placed, they have a fixed direction. They can move items from behind and place them in front of them. By doing this, they can move items from one transport belt to another, but also extract items from—and insert items into—machines or storage devices.

== Types of inserters ==
{| class="wikitable"
| {{Imagelink|Burner inserter}} || The only [[fuel]]-powered inserter, with the slowest speed.
|-
| {{Imagelink|Inserter}} || The standard electrical inserter.
|-
| {{Imagelink|Long-handed inserter}} || Capable of inserting and removing items from a greater distance.
|-
| {{Imagelink|Fast inserter}} || Much faster than the inserter.
|-
| {{Imagelink|Bulk inserter}} || As fast as the fast inserter, but can move many more items at the same time at once.
|-
| {{Imagelink|Stack inserter|space-age=yes}} || As fast as the bulk inserter, but can stack items on a belt.
|}

== Mechanics ==
Inserters '''will''':
* Pick up items off the ground, off of a [[Transport belts|transport belt]], or from any object that has storage space, such as [[chests]], [[furnace]]s, [[assembling machine]]s, or [[vehicle]]s.
* Place the item onto the ground, onto a transport belt, or into any object that has storage space.
* Run at slower speeds when starved for energy.
* Pick up as many items as their [[inserter capacity bonus (research)|stack size]] allows at once, if they do not have to wait too long to pick them up.
* Pick up items and drop them into the void of space or lava, permanently destroying them. This is useful for getting rid of unwanted items.

Inserters '''will not''':
* Pick up any items that cannot be inserted into the adjacent entity.
* Pick up any items if the adjacent entity is a [[ghost]].
* Pick up items to place into an entity with a full inventory (however, it will pick up items up to its hand size even if not all of them will fit).
* Place more than one item at a time onto the same ground tile.
* Place items into an entity that cannot hold them, for example due to [[Stack#Filtered_stacks|filtered]] or [[Stack#Stack_limitation|limited slots]].
* Place items into a [[cargo wagon]] or fuel into a [[locomotive]] if the train it's part of is in motion, or in automatic mode and not stopped at a [[train stop]] (e.g. waiting at a signal). (Wagons will be visibly closed if they cannot be inserted into for this reason.)
* Fill up the entire target inventory of [[boiler]]s, [[nuclear reactor]]s, [[:Category:Producers|production building]]s, [[furnace]]s and [[turret]]s (see below).

If two or more inserters are picking up from the same tile, the inserter that can grab the items the fastest will grab them first. Besides faster inserters, this favors inserters taking from the inner lane of a transport belt.

=== Insertion limits ===
Depending on where an inserter is moving items, it does not always fill up the entire target inventory. This allows other inserters taking from the same transport belt to pick up their share of the items. For example, if a boiler has 5 or more items of fuel in it, an inserter will not insert additional fuel. This allows the other fuel to travel further down the transport belt. When the fuel drops below 5 items, the inserter will resume inserting fuel, up to the limit of 5 items.

{| class="wikitable"
! Entity !! Item type !! Automatic insertion limit
|-
| [[Boiler]]s, [[burner inserter]]s, [[furnace]]s, and [[nuclear reactor]]s || [[Fuel]] || style="text-align:center" | 5
|-
| [[Gun turret]]s || Magazines || style="text-align:center" | 10
|-
| [[Artillery turret]]s || [[Artillery shell]]s || style="text-align:center" | 5
|-
| [[Assembling machine]]s, [[furnace]]s, [[centrifuge]]s, [[chemical plant]]s, and [[Oil refinery|oil refineries]]|| Items needed for the recipe || The ingredients for 1 craft in addition to the ingredients for the number of crafts that can be completed (rounded up) during one full normal [[quality]] [[inserter]] swing (70 ticks); but at least the ingredients for 2 crafts and at most the ingredients for 100 crafts.[https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?p=309796#p309796]
|-
| [[Lab]]s || [[Science pack]]s || The number of normal [[quality]] science packs needed for one research unit in addition to the science packs for the number of research units that can be completed (rounded up) during one full normal [[quality]] [[inserter]] swing (70 ticks); but at least the ingredients for 2 research units and at most the ingredients for 100 research units.
|}

An inserter that has a higher [[inserter capacity bonus (research)|inserter capacity bonus]] than 1 can overfill the target building, due to the inserter picking up a higher amount of items than needed. Overfilling can also occur if multiple inserters are used to insert items into one building.

=== Inserters and transport belts ===
[[Transport belts]] have two lanes on which items can travel. Inserters only place items onto one side of the belt, either the far side from the inserter's perspective or, if the belt is going the same or the opposite direction as the inserter, the right side from the belt's perspective.

<gallery mode="nolines" class="center" widths=300px heights=350px>
File:Inserter_dropoff_locations.gif| Inserters place the item on the furthest lane. If a belt is in the same orientation as the inserter, the item will be placed on the right-hand lane, from the belt's perspective. In curves the inserter always places on the far side.
File:Inserter_pickup_locations.gif| If the belt is perpendicular to the inserter, inserters '''prefer''' taking items from the nearest lane. If the nearest lane is empty, the inserter will take from the far lane. If the belt is the same/opposite orientation of the inserter or a curve, the inserter '''prefers''' taking from the left lane, from the belt's perspective. If the left lane is empty it will take from the right lane.
</gallery>

=== Potential issues ===
Inserters may have problems picking up items:

* From very fast belts, because the items are moving too quickly.
* From the entry or exit of an underground belt (because the time they have to pick up is shorter)
* From turning belts if the item is on the inside of the corner

== Inserter speed ==
[[File:all_inserter_speeds.gif|frame|right|Animation showing all inserter speeds at once.]]
{| class="wikitable"
! Type
! Rotation-speed (turns per [[Time#Ticks|tick]]) Extension-speed ([[Map_structure#Tile|Tiles]] per Tick)
! Turns per [[Time#Seconds|Game-second]]
! Game-second per full turn
! Ticks per full turn
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Burner inserter}} || 0.013 0.035 || ~0.7895 || ~1.267 || 76
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Inserter}} || 0.014 0.035 || ~0.857 || ~1.167 || 70
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Long-handed inserter}} || 0.02 0.05 || 1.2 || 0.833 || 50
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Fast inserter}} {{Imagelink|Bulk inserter}} {{Imagelink|Stack inserter|space-age=yes}} || 0.04 0.1 || 2.5 || 0.4 || 24
|}

'''Note:''' The speeds per tick come directly from the [https://github.com/wube/factorio-data/tree/master/base/prototypes/entity factorio-data github repository], while the other values have been verified empirically in game. Discrepancies are due to rounding errors during the games runtime, so the empirical values are more accurate when dealing with speeds.

=== Rotation speed ===
Convention: 2π rad = 100% of a circle rotation = '''1 turn''' (or one full rotation).

Note:
* An Inserter doesn't always need to make full turns. When grabbing from a transport belt, it is slightly faster when grabbing items from the closest lane.
* If the rotation speed of an inserter would result in an odd number of ticks per full turn, the actual number of ticks per full turn for this inserter is truncated to be the next lowest even number. The reason for this is that the inserter needs to do two half turns to pick and drop an item. This takes a certain number of ticks two times, therefore the number of ticks for the full turn is always an even number. Example: The Fast inserter's rotation speed of 864°/s or 0.04 turns per tick would result in 25 ticks per full turn, but the inserter cannot do a half turn in "12.5 ticks", so it actually takes 2×12 = 24 ticks per full turn.

=== Extension speed ===
The extension-speed is normally not visible (only when compared to other inserters), but there are measurable speed differences when taking - for example - from the near or the far side of a belt. Also some mods can alter the pickup and drop locations of inserters, making this stat more relevant.

== Inserter throughput ==

=== Chest to chest ===
'''Note:''' Experimental data from 2.0.26, recorded in this doc [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1L8Td5o6TAicGi-TPwzh4lz2YiH0n7Jkpp3E8FxNpnAs/edit?usp=sharing]. Chest to chest transfer transfers the entire hand size during a single tick, so most of the time is spent during the swing to and from.

{| class="wikitable"
! rowspan=2 | Type
! rowspan=2 | Arm cycles per second (ticks per cycle)
! colspan=8 | Items/second at [[inserter capacity bonus (research)|capacity bonus]] level (stack size)
|-
! colspan=2 | No capacity bonus
! colspan=2 | Capacity bonus 2
! colspan=2 | Capacity bonus 7
! colspan=2 | [[Transport belt capacity (research)|Transport belt stacking]] {{SA}}
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Burner inserter}} || {{Quality | 0.79 (76 ticks) | 1.03 (58 ticks) | 1.25 (48 ticks) | 1.5 (40 ticks) | 2 (30 ticks) }}
|| {{ Quality | 0.79 |1.03 |1.25|1.5 |2 }}
|| (1)
|| {{ Quality | 1.58 |2.07 |2.5|3 |4 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 2.37 |3.10 |3.75|4.5 |6 }}
|| (3)
|| {{ Quality | 3.16 |4.14 |5|6 |8 }}
|| (4)
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Inserter}} || {{Quality | 0.86 (70 ticks) | 1.03 (58 ticks) | 1.36 (44 ticks) | 1.67 (36 ticks) | 2.14 (28 ticks) }}
|| {{ Quality | 0.86 |1.11 |1.36|1.67 |2.14 }}
|| (1)
|| {{ Quality | 1.71 |2.22 |2.73|3.33 |4.29 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 2.57 |3.33 |4.09|5 |6.43 }}
|| (3)
|| {{ Quality | 3.43 |4.44 |5.45|6.67 |8.57 }}
|| (4)
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Long-handed inserter}} || {{Quality | 1.2 (50 ticks) | 1.58 (38 ticks) | 2 (30 ticks) | 2.31 (26 ticks) | 3.33 (18 ticks) }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.2 |1.58 |2|2.31 |3.33 }}
|| (1)
|| {{ Quality | 2.4 |3.16 |4|4.62 |6.67 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 3.6 |4.74 |6|6.92 |10 }}
|| (3)
|| {{ Quality | 4.8 |6.32 |8|9.23 |13.33 }}
|| (4)
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Fast inserter}} || {{Quality | 2.5 (24 ticks) | 3.33 (18 ticks) | 4.29 (14 ticks) | 5 (12 ticks) | 7.5 (8 ticks) }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.5 |3.33 | 4.29 | 5 | 7.5 }}
|| (1)
|| {{ Quality | 5 |6.67 | 8.57 | 10 | 15 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 7.5 |10 |12.86|15 |22.5 }}
|| (3)
|| {{ Quality | 10 |13.33 |17.14|20 |30 }}
|| (4)
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Bulk inserter}} || {{Quality | 2.5 (24 ticks) | 3.33 (18 ticks) | 4.29 (14 ticks) | 5 (12 ticks) | 7.5 (8 ticks) }}
|| {{ Quality | 5 |6.673 | 8.57 | 10 | 15 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 10 |13.33 |17.14|20 |30 }}
|| (4)
|| {{ Quality | 30 |40 |51.43|60 |90 }}
|| (12)
|| {{ Quality | 30 |40 |51.43|60 |90 }}
|| (12)
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Stack inserter|space-age=yes}} || {{Quality | 2.5 (24 ticks) | 3.33 (18 ticks) | 4.29 (14 ticks) | 5 (12 ticks) | 7.5 (8 ticks) }}
|| {{ Quality | 15 |20 | 25.71 | 30 | 45 }}
|| (6)
|| {{ Quality | 20 |26.67 | 34.29 | 40 | 60 }}
|| (8)
|| {{ Quality | 40 | 53.33 | 68.57 | 80 | 120 }}
|| (16)
|| {{ Quality | 40 | 53.33 | 68.57 | 80 | 120 }}
|| (16)
|}

=== Chest to belt ===
Throughput going from chest to belt depends on how full the belt is. An inserter will not put down an item on a belt that has items back-to-back (aka full compression) - it waits until there is a gap. However, if the gap is narrower than the item, then the items upstream on the belt will stop to make room for the item being inserted. The direction of the belt compared to the inserter does not matter however.

In these measurements inserters move items onto an empty belt. Values are given for the stack sizes at four different [[inserter capacity bonus (research)|capacity bonus]] levels.

'''Note:''' Experimental data from 2.0

<div style="display:inline-block; width: 100%; overflow-x: auto; vertical-align:top; margin-right:20px;">
{|class="wikitable" min-width: 100%;
! rowspan="3" | Type
! colspan="20" | Items/second at [[inserter capacity bonus (research)|capacity bonus]] level (stack size)
|-
! colspan="5" | No capacity bonus
! colspan="5" | Capacity Bonus 2
! colspan="5" | Capacity bonus 7
! colspan="5" | [[Transport belt capacity (research)|Transport belt stacking]] {{SA}}
|-
! [[File:Transport belt.png|link=Transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Fast transport belt.png|link=Fast transport belt|32px ]] || [[File:Express transport belt.png|link=Express transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Turbo transport belt.png|link=Turbo transport belt|32px]] ||
! [[File:Transport belt.png|link=Transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Fast transport belt.png|link=Fast transport belt|32px ]] || [[File:Express transport belt.png|link=Express transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Turbo transport belt.png|link=Turbo transport belt|32px]] ||
! [[File:Transport belt.png|link=Transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Fast transport belt.png|link=Fast transport belt|32px ]] || [[File:Express transport belt.png|link=Express transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Turbo transport belt.png|link=Turbo transport belt|32px]] ||
! [[File:Transport belt.png|link=Transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Fast transport belt.png|link=Fast transport belt|32px ]] || [[File:Express transport belt.png|link=Express transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Turbo transport belt.png|link=Turbo transport belt|32px]] ||
|-
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Burner inserter}}
|| {{ Quality | 0.78 | 1.03 | 1.25 | 1.5 | 2 }}
|| {{ Quality | 0.78 | 1.03 | 1.25 | 1.5 | 2 }}
|| {{ Quality | 0.78 | 1.03 | 1.25 | 1.5 | 2 }}
|| {{ Quality | 0.78 | 1.03 | 1.25 | 1.5 | 2 }}
|| (1)
|| {{ Quality | 1.57 | 2.03 | 2.43 | 2.93 | 3.87 }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.57 | 2.03 | 2.43 | 2.93 | 3.87 }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.57 | 2.03 | 2.43 | 2.93 | 3.87 }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.57 | 2.03 | 2.43 | 2.93 | 3.87 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 2.15 | 2.72 | 3.2 | 3.75 | 4.75 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.25 | 2.9 | 3.45 | 4.1 | 5.3 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.3 | 3 | 3.6 | 4.3 | 5.6 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.3 | 3 | 3.6 | 4.3 | 5.6 }}
|| (3)
|| {{ Quality | 2.6 | 3.27 | 3.73 | 4.27 | 5.2 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.87 | 3.65 | 4.27 | 5 | 6.33 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.93 | 3.8 | 4.53 | 5.33 | 6.87 }}
|| {{ Quality | 3 | 3.87 | 4.6 | 5.47 | 7.07 }}
|| (4)
|-
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Inserter}}
|| {{ Quality | 0.85 | 1.12 | 1.37 | 1.67 | 2.13 }}
|| {{ Quality | 0.85 | 1.12 | 1.37 | 1.67 | 2.13 }}
|| {{ Quality | 0.85 | 1.12 | 1.37 | 1.67 | 2.13 }}
|| {{ Quality | 0.85 | 1.12 | 1.37 | 1.67 | 2.13 }}
|| (1)
|| {{ Quality | 1.7 | 2.17 | 2.67 | 3.23 | 4.13 }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.7 | 2.17 | 2.67 | 3.23 | 4.13 }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.7 | 2.17 | 2.67 | 3.23 | 4.13 }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.7 | 2.17 | 2.67 | 3.23 | 4.13 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 2.3 | 2.9 | 3.45 | 4.1 | 5 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.45 | 3.1 | 3.75 | 4.5 | 5.6 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.5 | 3.2 | 3.9 | 4.75 | 6 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.5 | 3.2 | 3.9 | 4.75 | 6 }}
|| (3)
|| {{ Quality | 2.8 | 3.43 | 4 | 4.6 | 5.47 }}
|| {{ Quality | 3.07 | 3.87 | 4.6 | 5.47 | 6.67 }}
|| {{ Quality | 3.2 | 4.07 | 4.87 | 5.87 | 7.27 }}
|| {{ Quality | 3.27 | 4.13 | 5 | 6 | 7.48 }}
|| (4)
|-
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Long-handed inserter}}
|| {{ Quality | 1.2 | 1.58 | 2 | 2.3 | 3.33 }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.2 | 1.58 | 2 | 2.3 | 3.33 }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.2 | 1.58 | 2 | 2.3 | 3.33 }}
|| {{ Quality | 1.2 | 1.58 | 2 | 2.3 | 3.33 }}
|| (1)
|| {{ Quality | 2.33 | 3 | 3.87 | 4.43 | 6.3 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.33 | 3 | 3.87 | 4.43 | 6.3 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.33 | 3 | 3.87 | 4.43 | 6.3 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.33 | 3 | 3.87 | 4.43 | 6.3 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 3.1 | 3.9 | 4.75 | 5.3 | 6.92 }}
|| {{ Quality | 3.35 | 4.3 | 5.3 | 6 | 8.18 }}
|| {{ Quality | 3.45 | 4.5 | 5.6 | 6.4 | 9 }}
|| {{ Quality | 3.45 | 4.5 | 5.6 | 6.4 | 9 }}
|| (3)
|| {{ Quality | 3.65 | 4.45 | 5.20 | 5.72 | 7.07 }}
|| {{ Quality | 4.13 | 5.2 | 6.33 | 7.07 | 9.23 }}
|| {{ Quality | 4.33 | 5.6 | 6.87 | 7.73 | 10.43 }}
|| {{ Quality | 4.47 | 5.73 | 7.07 | 8 | 10.92 }}
|| (4)
|-
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Fast inserter}}
|| {{ Quality | 2.5 | 3.33 | 4.28 | 5 | 7.5 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.5 | 3.33 | 4.28 | 5 | 7.5 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.5 | 3.33 | 4.28 | 5 | 7.5 }}
|| {{ Quality | 2.5 | 3.33 | 4.28 | 5 | 7.5 }}
|| (1)
|| {{ Quality | 4.8 | 6.3 | 7.5 | 7.5 | 7.52 }}
|| {{ Quality | 4.8 | 6.3 | 8 | 9.23 | 13.33 }}
|| {{ Quality | 4.8 | 6.3 | 8 | 9.23 | 13.33 }}
|| {{ Quality | 4.8 | 6.3 | 8 | 9.23 | 13.33 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 5.62 | 6.92 | 7.5 | 7.5 | 7.52 }}
|| {{ Quality | 6.42 | 8.18 | 10 | 11.25 | 15 }}
|| {{ Quality | 6.9 | 9 | 11.25 | 12.85 | 18 }}
|| {{ Quality | 6.9 | 9 | 11.25 | 12.85 | 18 }}
|| (3)
|| {{ Quality | 6 | 7.07 | 7.5 | 7.52 | 7.52 }}
|| {{ Quality | 7.5 | 9.23 | 10.92 | 12 | 15 }}
|| {{ Quality | 8.27 | 10.43 | 12.62 | 14.13 | 18.47 }}
|| {{ Quality | 8.58 | 10.92 | 13.33 | 15 | 20 }}
|| (4)
|-
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Bulk inserter}}
|| {{ Quality | 4.8 | 6.3 | 7.5 | 7.5 | 7.52 }}
|| {{ Quality | 4.8 | 6.3 | 8 | 9.23 | 13.33 }}
|| {{ Quality | 4.8 | 6.3 | 8 | 9.23 | 13.33 }}
|| {{ Quality | 4.8 | 6.3 | 8 | 9.23 | 13.33 }}
|| (2)
|| {{ Quality | 6 | 7.07 | 7.5 | 7.52 | 7.52 }}
|| {{ Quality | 7.5 | 9.23 | 10.92 | 12 | 15 }}
|| {{ Quality | 8.27 | 10.43 | 12.62 | 14.13 | 18.47 }}
|| {{ Quality | 8.58 | 10.92 | 13.33 | 15 | 20 }}
|| (4)
|| {{ Quality | 6.93 | 7.35 | 7.5 | 7.52 | 7.52 }}
|| {{ Quality | 11.23 | 12.4 | 13.33 | 13.85 | 15 }}
|| {{ Quality | 14.4 | 16.38 | 18 | 18.95 | 21.18 }}
|| {{ Quality | 16.4 | 18.97 | 21.2 | 22.5 | 25.72 }}
|| (12)
|| {{ Quality | 6.93 | 7.35 | 7.5 | 7.52 | 7.52 }}
|| {{ Quality | 11.12 | 12.4 | 13.33 | 13.85 | 15 }}
|| {{ Quality | 14.4 | 16.38 | 18 | 18.95 | 21.18 }}
|| {{ Quality | 16.4 | 18.97 | 21.2 | 22.5 | 25.72 }}
|| (12)
|-
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Stack inserter|space-age=yes}}
|| {{ Quality | 11.27 | 13.87 | 15 | 15 | 15.03 }}
|| {{ Quality | 12.87 | 16.37 | 20 | 22.5 | 30 }}
|| {{ Quality | 13.8 | 18 | 22.5 | 25.7 | 36 }}
|| {{ Quality | 13.8 | 18 | 22.5 | 25.7 | 36 }}
|| (6)
|| {{ Quality | 12 | 14.13 | 15 | 15.03 | 15.03 }}
|| {{ Quality | 15 | 18.47 | 21.83 | 24 | 30 }}
|| {{ Quality | 16.53 | 20.87 | 25.23 | 28.27 | 36.93 }}
|| {{ Quality | 17.17 | 21.83 | 26.67 | 30 | 40 }}
|| (8)
|| {{ Quality | 13.33 | 14.57 | 15 | 15.03 | 15.03 }}
|| {{ Quality | 20 | 22.87 | 25.27 | 26.67 | 30 }}
|| {{ Quality | 24 | 28.27 | 32 | 34.3 | 40 }}
|| {{ Quality | 26.67 | 32 | 36.9 | 40 | 48 }}
|| (16)
|| {{ Quality | 24 | 28.27 | 30 | 30.07 | 30.07 }}
|| {{ Quality | 30 | 36.93 | 43.67 | 48 | 60 }}
|| {{ Quality | 33.07 | 41.73 | 50.47 | 56.53 | 73.87 }}
|| {{ Quality | 34.33 | 43.67 | 53.33 | 60 | 80 }}
|| (16)
|}
</div>

=== Chest to splitter ===
When an inserter drops items onto the side of a perpendicular splitter, it always is considered to do so on the input side, enabling the splitter to move half of the items to the other belt (assuming that the splitter filter/priority settings allow it to do so and that there is available space on both belts). This allows the inserter to drop its items more quickly. A bulk inserter with capacity bonus 7 can move 16.0 items/second instead of the usual 14.4 items/second.

<gallery mode="nolines" class="center" widths=400px heights=250px>
File:Inserter to splitter comparison.gif|By inserting onto the side of a splitter, a fully-upgraded bulk inserter can fill 71% of an express belt lane instead of the usual 64%. (Gif from 1.1)
File:Inserter belt saturation.gif|In 1.1, three bulk inserters could saturate an express belt if one of them inserts onto a splitter. In 2.0, three bulk inserters can saturate an express belt if two of them insert onto splitters. (Gif from 1.1)
</gallery>

===Belt to chest (perpendicular)===

'''Note:''' The following is based on experimental data from [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Q4hxL69qrK3qeEKU8aDkuwM3gJy6I2dJ4FYSs-FQUpI/edit?usp=sharing 1.1].
Most of the 1.1 experimental data was gathered using the following circuit blueprint to measure the exact tick difference between inserter swings. A lot of the data on this page (specifically the belt to chest data) relies heavily on the conditions of the setup on which the measurements are done. If your setup differs from the ones tested on this page, you can use the following blueprint to do the measurements yourself.

{{BlueprintString|bp-string=0eNrtXF1v4kYU/SuRq75UkMz32GhbKY996FvfuivkwBCsBYNss20U8d87NiHAwMVzHdjsKKtIURzb1zPn3K85Y3iOHmYrsyyyvIoGz9HYlKMiW1bZIo8G0V8mLVeFKW+yvDRFZYqbalosVo/T5aq6WeVj+49xNpmYwuTVzWiRj7P6xvL2c/45n1bVshzc3f2bfc1uJ+moWhTZ4na0mN/9+WKs/GX71/DvV7Of86gXZdZWGQ3+eY7K7DFPZ/XIqqelsUPKKjO3V+TpvD4qq3T0tb8dXbS2t9pR/RcN6LrXenNaZNV0bqps1LfDesjy1I5xzwZbf+lFdmZ2UmYzmubgaZiv5g/2aQPaYqoXLRdltsHyObIW+/pW9qIn+we3jxlnhRltzopeZKdcFYvZ8MFM02+ZvdvesjM73KFbn5hkRVkNj+b3LSuqlf3PDp/miv59PavS1DZqQxa1mm1KetFiaYr0he07e99iVVkSUJbX62bw+WYuzfBo/asw433QMnvE7ZVZMVplVXNI11/svQy4mEp7el3z6MDO0LCr94HdpKPpHvI4uvaZ+fSpAzWbpyPYkUfs9KLHwpi8hUa2o/Hk5VQBRHI0kfJHjp9frx4/1GWod3Ca8RYm2HH8neJFoHnhHzuvKUxea1g6BbtEw85+5jUPdtj5qNFgnlO4PMcEQKxCE0s/dp4T5xnjtIUJ6Zfn9Osot5M9zwrZsmLjbn2aiUk2qzvb070rBA6JGmurGuw+JVonXFEWtzSzkDV6YI3HgjLC2V5XizHGDowlhBCaaLqzxlHW+J41O0+uBY2ZeDUmUMbEwdCojmWSiD1rEmVNHnKQCE05FztrCmVN7VljVHAWJ/vGNMqYPhialDROmIjJq7UYZS0+sKY4lbFgUr1aS1DWkgNrzP5IHu9ZowRl7v7kVHfWNoHftZ89zCKJX5KIscmbfOxeiFJMM8Qh2BMs7PRnL+TBDtzsuLy1dTucAczVLvcyyrEZZWNTnOVNvLDWlNQ93tRp3l5Mvo20NH+qpln+uMk221gh9cF8mRbNQAfRHx0IqSFvjC6fhk0eG06KxXyY5dZKNJiks9JAbJ1mhZ/XSNgRaRC9nms/iha12MfuVeOWXjVpiSPPMkTRqpfY71XbA+tSvLxEwBEzfXrIzG9dowsXPwTMaqfC6ehqh0zlSRaHFOojlnT7mmL7xPlibIaLyXAPxT0lrjDpeDhNN5hXdkAWmapYmd0VzcnmstpS46rdgQSnvhOPynk6m/Vn6Xx5Yi0Vb+dNt/P2G4cg0IN38sncjLPVvG9m1mJho2S5mJlzQyDgENo1uKYK2ieb7HH6sFg1Sz/Ge5x+OTVG5QeOPgIHdIrXWO0QquR8/fsUoUKNnY8dGkPEaT9Q1PcBhV4UFJpAs46RrkCuOmt22Vkrh3wBNosJkvzrwsAvC4N2YYCkX0b8YJBBJgaIfEb9Zi261goNPZgh4b6u14nLwk1cr4P23xjHlkzRqWTy8y2yaK+otrjz5FRFZZ7tBg8xcOT5ispAXqUfKCzEisrAoFZIVwipojLhkC+hPphpJPkhVVQmXRigdQjz7K9oiImBg+R7tlOkY0WV0Ds5nCDhDqqixq7XQTu9nGIrKulUUdX5ihq/oaJyv96IhBg3SYu8A9LKvTChIdZTDoa0wDlCSOWUu9RLSJ3gEkd9SNWUcxcFSK3gqsueDv2eezqvOy8/yHaO327N2a0B5blnw/1aPhZkqwMGZoybdEgNB3eFIwUJRzxBNhy8m+jd8uap1m9QxQXBbRkQXM9K3aWTAN97pbiB4LcuHFahBbxgOHH4ur4tLyuKus20gLouwXHa8HVRUJfeF3BQgNowIXC+cN3kri+KgnDbMAWJO0LifIEG1IYJtw1TUM0TCqdbh5QXmOsLAkRB47YNkPWCHenTUFcsYhwd13XK+LJO6W7hKRCFBEcHfhPH6TUg8UsSnAAcVHS4dEhoU01SnP4bUtVkri9I8LM0DOcLIVVN6faRGmpoJcf5QkhVUx6tQcCIEDhtOqS8wF1fkNCaQkrc1gC2aroNrYRaOalwdIRUNaW71tRggtI4OvAbNc5AoFWWjFEyb1DB4bKhwNYhQam8IdVM7nqCgqqFIihPCKpkuqKDhpbbiqI8IaiK6aZoDdUKxTrI/cRV+9n3VPv5ETaXVvvrl6lxkafObzcqhnk3XQnfr2fw3TZQHKWgB5X53XhXYLyLDq5O39XVXWx+7/YZl4tta6mWN7/dzYG2T2+fuv4kdRLlvyH1kcqVBDUkhimF27NgSPUFBF/jZGl2VfSTy2pfwleQVTFOlr4uCveXRUEei/OekqBKcMIoC6i0iNjXOTTBCaPY0ITQ1xSnfYUUmpL5qj6a4bSvkEJT8mMF0FN30BynvoQUmlJ5O4fAqS/I0AS1Ly1RS+yQIlMR39WlVqgldkiBqeixzuDZyGndYSHC3nUhwi6w5r7vuOJ+2wpZ4FYs51fm9Uf8e29bymjcy2whJWUlT+cFC1nzdayDvS+g7UWz9MHYMUbbb4a9eUxXj/VrbN9MUW48PKZCJ0xLQbkkcr3+HxANddo=}}

When picking items from a belt, many more factors come into play besides belt fullness:

* How fast the items move (i.e. if they are queued up on the belt or move at belt speed).
* Whether the belt is perpendicular to the inserter or approaches it head on.
* Whether items are on the near or far lane of a perpendicular belt.
* Whether the belt turns or not, and whether the items are in the inner or outer side of the bend.
* If the belt is an underground entrance or exit. This shortens the time items are visible to the inserter for pickup.
* All sorts of intricate timing factors between the inserter and the items on the belt, since the game simulates the arm homing in on every item.

The test setup used below is with an inserter taking items from a perpendicular belt with items on the far lane only. The belt is fully compressed and timings are both for items that move at full speed and queued up as much as possible. Values are given for the stack sizes at three different [[inserter capacity bonus (research)|capacity bonus]] levels.

{| class="wikitable"
! rowspan=4 | Type
! colspan=15 | Items/second at [[inserter capacity bonus (research)|capacity bonus]] level (stack size)
|-
! colspan=5 | No capacity bonus
! colspan=5 | Capacity bonus 2
! colspan=5 | Capacity bonus 7
|-
! colspan=3 | Items at belt speed
! rowspan=2 | Items queued up
! rowspan=2 |
! colspan=3 | Items at belt speed
! rowspan=2 | Items queued up
! rowspan=2 |
! colspan=3 | Items at belt speed
! rowspan=2 | Items queued up
! rowspan=2 |
|-
! [[File:Transport belt.png|link=Transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Fast transport belt.png|link=Fast transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Express transport belt.png|link=Express transport belt|32px]]
! [[File:Transport belt.png|link=Transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Fast transport belt.png|link=Fast transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Express transport belt.png|link=Express transport belt|32px]]
! [[File:Transport belt.png|link=Transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Fast transport belt.png|link=Fast transport belt|32px]] || [[File:Express transport belt.png|link=Express transport belt|32px]]
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Burner inserter}} || 0.60 || '''0.65''' || 0.50 || 0.64 || (1) || 1.11 || '''1.20''' || 1.13 || 1.26 || (2) || 1.61 || 1.61 || '''1.65''' || 1.71 / 1.73 / 1.86 * || (3)
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Inserter}} || '''0.94''' || '''0.94''' || '''0.94''' || 0.88 || (1) || '''1.67''' || '''1.67''' || 1.50 || 1.74 || (2) || '''2.50''' || 2.25 || 2.33 || 2.37 / 2.37 / 2.54 * || (3)
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Long-handed inserter}} || 1.18 || 1.18 || '''1.25''' || 1.20 || (1) || 2.20 || 2.31 || '''2.40''' || 2.40 || (2) || 3.21 || 3.21 || '''3.46''' || 3.40 || (3)
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Fast inserter}} || '''2.50''' || 2.31 || '''2.50''' || 2.50 || (1) || 4.50 || 4.29 || '''5.00''' || 4.80 || (2) || '''6.43''' || 6.00 || '''6.43''' || 6.43 || (3)
|- align="center"
| align="left"| {{Imagelink|Bulk inserter}} || 4.50 || 4.29 || '''5.00''' || 4.80 || (2) || 7.50 || 7.50 || '''8.00''' || 7.50 / 8.57 / 8.28 * || (4) || 7.50 || 11.25 || '''15.00''' || 7.50 / 13.09 / 15.32 * || (12)
|}

<nowiki>*)</nowiki> Throughput for basic/fast/express belt.

Since there are many more factors involved, these measurements exhibit a more complex pattern than chest-to-belt.

* Boldface cells show for which belt each inserter has the best throughput on each bonus level when items move at belt speed. Higher speed belts mean that inserters have to work harder to catch the fast moving items. The effect is most noticeable for slower inserters and smaller stack sizes.
* When items are queued up the belt type hardly matters, so there is only a single column for that. The exceptions are the stack inserters - for basic transport belts it's the belt that sets the limit for stack sizes above 4, and there is also a notable difference between fast and express belts.

=== Belt to chest (facing inserter) ===
'''Note:''' Experimental data from 1.1

When picking up items from a belt facing the inserter, there are multiple small differences between different setups. The following throughput tests are performed with [[express transport belt]]s and [[bulk inserter]]s with the maximum [[inserter capacity bonus (research)|capacity bonus]].
Each setup in the following picture shows the amount of ticks per cycle of the inserter and the amount of items per second the inserter moves. These measurements are consistent in all orientations of the setup.

[[File:Inserter_belt_to_chest_throughput.png|center|900px]]

=== Insertion into lava/space ===

In [[Space Age]], inserters can dump items into lava on [[Vulcanus]] or into space on [[Space platform]]s. This act however is not as fast as inserting into a chest or similar container.

When inserting into lava/space, one item is removed from the inserter's hand every tick. So a [[stack inserter]] holding 16 items requires 16 ticks to dump its contents into lava/space. By contrast, when inserting into a container, the entire hand size is placed in the container in 1 tick.

== Power usage ==
Inserter power draw is determined by several factors.

Firstly like most machines, all of the inserters (with the exception of the burner) have drain. Drain is the energy cost of existence, and is expended constantly as long as the inserter exists on the power grid, regardless of activity or lack thereof.

Inserters also have a two costs associated with movement. These costs are applied separately and cumulatively for rotational motion as well as extension/retraction.

Lastly, inserters exhibit a power spike when acquiring and dropping off an item. This can be referred to as "item spike" because it is typically observed directly after item interaction. This is because after receiving/delivering an item it will begin extending/retracting a distance of 0.2 units (distance sourced from [https://github.com/wube/factorio-data/blob/master/base/prototypes/entity/entities.lua source code]). This power cost associated with linear movement is significantly more expensive than that of rotational movement, hence the sharp increase in power consumption.

[[File:Yellow Inserter Power Spikes.png|thumb|Power Consumption graph of Yellow Inserter]]

Here we can see that for the duration of the lateral movement the power consumption is significantly higher.

Burner Inserters, despite not using electricity, also have the same power consumption characteristics as the rest of the inserters (excluding drain). Upon accepting fuel they will replenish something resembling an internal battery, and draw from it in the same manner other inserters draw from the power grid, item spikes and all. Aside from their exclusion from drain, Burner Inserters function identically to other Inserters.

=== Energy costs ===

[[File:Inserter Testing Setup.png|thumb|Inserter Testing Setup]]

It's important to note that due to rounding errors the games values cannot be taken at face value when doing calculations, so a blend of theoretical and empirical methods must be used to ensure accuracy. More information can be viewed here at this [https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=128389 forum topic]

The game calculates inserter power based on its hard coded power modifiers:

'''Inserter Power Modifiers (kJ)'''

These values are derived from [https://github.com/wube/factorio-data/blob/master/base/prototypes/entity/entities.lua source code]

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Burner !! Yellow!! Red!! Blue !! Green !! Stack
|-
| 50 || 5 || 5 || 7 || 20 || 40
|-
|}

The way the game uses these values is it takes the game's programmed speed in ticks (which can be found higher up on the page), and then uses that alongside these numbers to derive a wattage, using the following equation:

<code>Speed × Power Modifier × Ticks per second</code>

Applying the equation we can derive the following values:

'''Cost of rotational movement in kW'''

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Burner !! Yellow!! Red!! Blue !! Green !! Stack
|-
| 39 || 4.2 || 6 || 16.8 || 48 || 96
|-
|}

'''Cost of linear movement in kW'''

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Burner !! Yellow!! Red!! Blue !! Green !! Stack
|-
| 105 || 10.5 || 15 || 42 || 120 || 240
|-
|}

Taking these two values and adding them together, alongside drain, will give you your max power. It is critical to note that while the duration of consumption is affected by rounding errors in the game like the time per spin and so on, the actual wattage is unaffected by these rounding errors. Just because the inserter spins slightly faster than in the games code doesn't mean it uses slightly more wattage, it still demands the same wattage.

Your rotational power is used during the entire time the inserter is spinning, while the the extension cost is only used briefly during item interaction, causing item spike. By calculating the duration of both you can accurately calculate how many joules your inserter is using in any given situation. Just like with the rotational speeds, item spike duration is subject to rounding errors from the game. You can calculate it by taking the games rated distance of 0.2 and dividing it by the inserters rated speed, and then truncating the number. To save you some hassle here is a reference table

'''Tick duration of Item Spike'''

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Burner !! Yellow!! Red!! Blue !! Green !! Stack
|-
| 5 || 5 || 4 || 1 || 1 || 1
|-
|}

Knowing these values, energy cost is easy to calculate, and is linear to inserter utilization. This means if your inserter is only running half the time, it will only use half the power, with the exception of drain which remains constant in all situations.

'''Cost per transfer cycle in kJ'''

These values are isolated from drain. Values were theoretically derived and empirically confirmed for accuracy. [https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=128389 More information]

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Burner !! Yellow!! Red!! Blue !! Green !! Stack
|-
| 66.9 || 6.65 || 7 || 8.12 || 23.2 || 46.4
|-
|}

=== Inserter efficiency ===

The above data can be used to compare inserter efficiency directly. Remember that the transfer cycle cost remains the same regardless of how many items are moved. This means that the later inserters with their larger stack sizes can outperform other inserters despite their higher transfer cost, since they can achieve a lower cost per item. Here are some graphs of chest-to-chest data showing the efficiency of different inserters at differing stack sizes. Because the other inserters maintain a proportional relationship (as in an identical stack size) these graphs will primarily focus on highlighting the Green Inserter and new Stack Inserter. Dots have been marked at the turning point where they overtake the other inserters in consumption

<gallery mode="slideshow">
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (No Capacity Bonus).png||No Capacity Bonus
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 2).png|Capacity Bonus 2
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 4).png|Capacity Bonus 4
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 5) .png|Capacity Bonus 5
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 6) (Zoomed).png|Capacity Bonus 6
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 7).png|Capacity Bonus 7
</gallery>

Important to note is that the actual efficiency of the inserters is best measured in terms of kJ / item. Such a version of these graphs wasn't generated because it is almost a flat line. This is because for this kind of linear power consumption the kJ / item would just be the slope of the line, or in other words it would be the ''kJ per transfer cycle / stack size''.

Now for an important caveat. The above graphs are assuming unlimited input. That is to say the graphs assume that the inserter is always spinning at its maximum hand size. In situations that are input limited however, the inserter will not always do so. When the inserter completes its spin, the only time it waits for items is when there are zero to take. As long as there is at least a single item, the inserter will transfer whatever is there immediately, regardless of the inefficiency of moving less than its maximum. Stack Inserters are an exception to this as they actually do wait for a full hand before making the transfer, but no other inserter does. An example of an input limited situation would be the unloading of an assembler. Here are some graphs showing power usage in input limited situations:

<gallery mode="slideshow">
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 2, Input Minimum 1).png | Capacity Bonus 2, Input Minimum 1
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 2, Input Minimum 1, kJ).png | Capacity Bonus 2, Input Minimum 1
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 7, Input Minimum 1).png| Capacity Bonus 7, Input Minimum 1
File:Inserter Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 7, Input Minimum 1, kJ).png| Capacity Bonus 7, Input Minimum 1
</gallery>

Here is how the behavior works. The inserter will increase its spin speed to max power as a utilization function of its minimum input. In simpler terms, if the minimum input is 1, it will increase power consumption as though it had no capacity bonus. Once it reaches the maximum, it will maintain max power while gradually increasing the average hand size its moving, thereby gradually increasing its efficiency. We can see this behavior in the kJ graph, where we get this swooping descent curve as it gains efficiency. We can see that with each subsequent inserter the average improves, and it will ultimately converge towards the same value as the previous set of graphs, that being ''kJ per transfer cycle / stack size''. The graphs shared cover the most common use cases, but input minimums can very quite largely. For example the input minimum for crafting yellow belts would be 2, and in general for any recipe the input minimum would be the minimum craft quantity. When belt feeding, its possible for inserters to experience inserter limiting as the belt approaches empty, or if using circuit limited sushi. Due to how many possible permutations of these graphs there are, sharing them all is simply not feasible. If you need a graph not displayed, you can generate one yourself using the code shared [https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?p=670540#p670540 here]

Because the Burner Inserter doesn't have drain, its efficiency can only truly be appreciated in extremely low throughput situations. Thus we use these dedicated graphs. Before one graph with no capacity bonus would have been sufficient because at low throughputs inserters don't wait and always default to as stack size of 1. The new Stack Inserter changes this though, because Stack Inserters do in fact wait until they get a full hand before beginning their swing, meaning they always remain at optimal efficiency unlike the rest of the inserters. Though having generated the graphs it appears to be largely irrelevant, as the fundamental relationship never really changes from one extreme to the other.

<gallery mode="slideshow">
File:Burner Efficiency Graph (No Capacity Bonus).png|No Capacity Bonus
File:Burner Efficiency Graph (Capacity Bonus 7).png|Capacity Bonus 7
</gallery>

Note: The Burner graphs are mislabeled on the y-axis. They should read kJ, not kW.

=== Belt differences===
Up until now all data was regarding chest-to-chest use cases, due to their sterile and consistent nature. The introduction of belts creates special conditions that require consideration. Here is a power chart from the game for reference:

[[File:Yellow Inserter Belt-to-Belt Power Signature.png|frameless|center|upright 3]]

The Yellow Inserter above is doing a belt-to-belt transfer, and it has a stack bonus.

The erratic section of the graph is the loading process. We can see the behavior is irregular as the inserter does not wait for the item, but rather fishes around for them. The exact behavior here is still being studied, and due to its dependence on stack size and belt speed it is very difficult to give any firm answers regarding how much power this actually uses as a quantifiable generalization. Likely a set of tables would need to be generated with every possible combination as a reference, but such data does not currently exist. The behavior should be consistent across belt speeds and stack sizes, so it can theoretically be gathered and collated into a reference table, though such data doesn't exist at this time.

Looking at the unloading section, we can see the inserter swings around normally, but then there is this dip that doesn't exist in the chest to chest behavior. This is the inserter waiting at the belt to drop off all its items. During this waiting, it uses no power aside from its drain. Once all the items are delivered, it resumes operation as normal. Different amounts of delay caused by different belt speeds and stack sizes can create variations in both our throughput and our total cost per transfer due to the additional drain. This can also be easily modeled into a table, though such a table is currently unavailable

If you are interested in volunteering to collect and share this data, you are encouraged to do so!

What this currently means in practice is that you should just use the chest-to-chest data. The overall relationship between the inserters doesn't change significantly and their efficiency hierarchy remains undisturbed, though the exact consumption in joules per item likely increases noticeably. This could be problematic for other cost estimates in your factory, but for choosing inserters its not an issue.

'''Important:''' The above efficiency graphs only apply when loading from a chest. When loading from a belt, until a more accurate dedicated data set is provided, it is advised to reference the initial no capacity bonus version of the graph for all decisions. With an inserter stack size of 1, the efficiency relationship between chests and belts is identical.

'''Regarding Quality:''' Quality inserters receive a linear speed boost for each level of quality, with a corresponding power cost increase. What this means is that the quality level of an inserter has no impact on its energy efficiency

''More data regarding inserters feeding from belts, as well as more detailed data regarding burner inserter power consumption is still needed. Please contribute if you are willing''

== See also ==
* [[Electric system]]
* [[Belt transport system]]
* [[Inserter capacity bonus (research)]]: Inserter moves more than an item per turn.

{{C|Logistics{{!}}#Inserters}} {{C|Inserters{{!}}#Inserters}}

Tutorial:Nuclear power

2025-11-01T15:46:17Z

Zijkhal: /* Always on! */ clarified wording so it's clear that the circuitry describes is to avoid wasting nuclear fuel, and has nothing to do with coal power mentioned in the paragraph above

{{Cleanup|This tutorial needs to be updated due to changes in Factorio 2.0. For example, it is now simple to automate nuclear power production control without any tanks since reactors can be wired directly to read their heat level.}}

{{Languages}}[[Nuclear power]] requires higher level technology compared to either solar power or steam boiler power, but it offers very high power output in exchange. It's a great solution for middle- to end-game power generation and it works well in combination with other power generation techniques.

This guide is written for people who want to know exactly how nuclear power works, but don't necessarily want all the solutions. It focuses on what you should do and what you should know to get Nuclear up and running, but doesn't tell you what to do or exactly how to solve the problems.

== First steps ==

:'''Technology required:''' [[Nuclear power (research)|Nuclear power]]
:''You can mine uranium ore sooner, but you'll need the nuclear power technology to do anything useful with it.''

=== [[Uranium ore]] ===
To start, you'll need uranium ore. It glows green, so you can't miss it. It tends to form smaller deposits, though, and you may have to search a while to find a good patch.

Like every other ore in the game, you can mine it with an [[electric mining drill|Electric mining drill]]. Unlike every other ore, however, you will need more than just an [[electric mining drill| Electric mining drill]]. You also need to supply [[sulfuric acid]] to the drill. The drills conduct excess acid through themselves, so a row of drills can be supplied by acid from a single side.

:'''Mixed ores:''' If a mining drill covers even a single patch of uranium ore, acid must be supplied to the miner or the mining drill will stop running once it encounters the uranium ore. The miner will produce mixed ore, as usual.

=== [[Uranium processing|Ore processing]] ===
Once you've got raw uranium ore, you'll need to process it into [[uranium-235]] and [[uranium-238]]. You do this in a centrifuge.

In an un-moduled [[centrifuge]], you can process ten ore every 12 seconds.

Centrifuges produce a combination of U-235 (the light green stuff) and U-238 (the dark green stuff). Every ten ore processed have a chance to become precisely one of these two products. Out of every 10k ore you process, you can expect to get, on average:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Count !! Product
|-
| 7 || U-235
|-
| 993 || U-238
|}

That means you can roughly expect to get a single U-235 in one out of every 1428 ore. A centrifuge can then be expected to produce U-235 every 1716 seconds. Later on, this won't matter so much. However, when you first start out, this will be an important bottleneck.

:'''Regarding averages:''' Be aware, random is random. These values are ''average'' values. Which means that over the long term, they work out to about these figures. In reality, you'll see long stretches with no U-235 and short stretches with lots of them. Eventually, it won't matter much. But early on, make sure your generation rate is sufficiently high, or you have a sufficient reserve, so you don't find yourself without power when you hit an unlucky stretch.

=== Fuel ===
Before you can burn it in a nuclear reactor, you need to create [[uranium fuel cell]]s. You'll probably be using an assembling machine 2, so these will take 13.3 seconds to create as well. Which is fine because fuel cell creation will very rarely be the bottleneck.

You won't want to automatically convert all U-235 into fuel. Only convert what you need to fill your reactor. You're going to want a big fat stockpile of it when you research [[Kovarex enrichment process|kovarex enrichment]] later on.

Fuel cells are produced in stacks of 10, and to produce one such stack you need 1 U-235, 19 U-238, and 10 iron plate.

:'''Tip:''' It isn't a bad idea to use a chest and just stick a pile of iron in it rather than belting the iron in. A full chest of iron probably won't run out before you get bots and replace it with a requester.

Each fuel cell has a nominal energy value of 8 GJ, but it's possible to make them go even farther with reactor neighbor bonuses (more on that later).

=== [[Nuclear reactor]] ===
Once you've got fuel, you'll need to burn it in a nuclear reactor. This is the first step toward turning it into usable energy.

A reactor will produce exactly 40 MW of heat energy. Since a Watt is a Joule per second, this means the reactor will consume one fuel cell every 200 seconds.

Once expended, reactors will produce a "[[used up uranium fuel cell]]", which will need to be cleared. Initially, these will simply accumulate in a chest. Eventually, you can reprocess them into U-238.

:'''Working backward:''' A reactor consumes a fuel cell every 200 seconds and each U-235 gives 10 fuel cells, so every U-235 provides 2000 seconds of reactor power. A centrifuge requires about 1714 seconds to produce a U-235, so you'll need about one processing centrifuges per reactor.

The reactor needs input of fuel and produces heat that needs to be exported using [[heat pipe]]s that go to a [[heat exchanger]] (unless a [[heat exchanger]] is attached to the reactor).

=== [[Heat exchanger]] ===
The heat exchanger takes heat and uses it to convert [[water]] into [[steam]]. It works much like the boiler, but instead of burning fuel, you need to connect it to a heat source. The heat input is marked by a flame when you're placing it.

For simple reactor designs, you can connect it directly to your reactor (which produces heat at points also marked with a flame).

Heat exchangers also require water input, in precisely the way boilers do. They can heat up to about 10.3 units/second of water into about 103 units/second of 500°C steam. One water pump can maximally produce 1200 water/second, satisfying exactly 116.4 heat exchanger.

Heat exchangers produce nothing when they are below 500°C. Since they only cool as a consequence of heating water, they will never cool to below that temperature once they've reached it.

Heat exchangers transfer 10 MW of power, so you'll need 4 exchangers to fully consume the power produced by a lone reactor. (Neighbor bonuses can increase this significantly. Again, discussed later.)

The [[steam]] can then be transported to the [[steam turbine]] using normal [[pipe]]s.

==== [[Heat pipe]]s ====
More complex designs will require heat pipes. Unlike regular pipes, they have limited throughput, which means that shorter pipes are better.

Connect heat pipes point to point, flame to flame, exactly as you would with water pipes. Heat pipes cannot go underground, so if water pipes need to cross them, the water pipe will need to go under. They don't block movement, though, so you can walk right over them.

Throughput on heat pipes, in contrast to regular pipes, is limited. Here are some rough limits on transfer distance:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Power !! Distance
|-
| 40 MW || ~133
|-
| 80 MW || ~59
|-
| 120 MW || ~45
|-
| 160 MW || ~30
|-
| 240 MW || ~10
|-
| ~278 MW || 4
|-
| ~284 MW || 3
|-
| ~290 MW || 2
|-
| ~297 MW || 1
|-
| ~302 MW || 0
|}

Past these distances, less than 100% of the power will be transferred. This is because at this distance, the heat from the reactor does not travel fast enough to heat the pipe to beyond 500ºC in a running setup. However, if the heat is unused, the heat will spread much farther, because there is no heat loss over time or distance, so it builds up until it is used again.

:'''Heat pipe storage:''' Heat pipes can store quite a bit of heat as well. A single heat pipe can hold as much energy as a tank with 5.1k steam in it, which makes them even more space efficient than tanks for holding energy (though considerably more expensive). Be cautious, however, with how slowly heat moves through the system. A reactor always burns fuel if provided but will never go above 1000 degrees. Insufficient heat pipes may not send enough heat to exchangers and will allow the reactor to hit 1000 degrees at which point fuel is being wasted - heat is going into nothing rather than exchangers.

Throughput may also be thought of in terms of exchangers per pipe. Exchangers can be placed on one or both sides of a heat pipe. Laying two or more pipes in parallel can increase the distance heat travels.
{| class="wikitable" |-
! Parallel Pipes !! Exchangers on one side !! Exchangers on both sides
|-
| 1 || 21 || 31
|-
| 2 || 29 || 42
|-
|}

[[File:Heat_exchangers_per_pipe.png|800px]]

This picture also shows how distance between your heat source and heat exchangers will affect output. The last exchanger in a given row may not operate at full capacity.

=== [[Steam turbine]] ===
These are the steam engine's beefy big brother. Using regular fluid pipes, you'll pipe the steam produced by heat exchangers into these turbines.

:'''Perfect matches:''' The steam turbine is a perfect match for the heat exchanger. The steam engine is a perfect match for the boiler. Although it is possible to get energy out of mismatched systems, it's very wasteful and there's no real reason to do it.

Steam turbines consume up to 60 units of steam/second, so you need roughly two steam turbines for every heat exchanger. At large scales, however, you can use fewer turbines, since exchangers only produce 103.09 steam/second, compared to the 120 steam/seconds two turbines can consume. The exact ratio, rounded up, is 1.718.

=== Simplest thing that works ===
At this point, you have all the parts to build your very first reactor:

* A few uranium miners, supplied with sulfuric acid
* 1 Centrifuge, processing uranium ore
* 1 Assembling machine, making uranium fuel cells
* 1 Nuclear reactor
* 4 Heat exchangers, supplied by a single off-shore pump
* 8 Steam turbines

And, of course, assorted belts, inserters, filter inserters, and other tools for moving things around. This will produce a maximum of 40 MW of power.

== Moving forward ==
Past your simplest reactor, there are some additional nuclear features of which you should be aware.

=== Neighbor bonus ===
This is a critical part of how nuclear designs scale, but it's not complicated. Simply put:

'''Every reactor gets +100% heating power for every active neighboring reactor.'''

Neighbors have to align completely on each side, so reactors will line up in a nice square grid. When they do, the neighbor bonus is activated. You can see the current bonus by hovering over an active reactor.

The bonus to heating power does not increase the fuel consumption. Rather, it simply increases the heat produced!

This, of course, means you'll need more heat exchangers and steam turbines to turn that heat into electricity.

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Configuration !! Reactors !! Exchangers !! Water pumps !! Turbines !! Power !! Power per reactor
|-
| Single || 1 || 4 || 1 || 7 || 40MW || 40MW
|-
| 2×1 || 2 || 16 || 1 || 28 || 160MW || 80MW
|-
| 2×2 || 4 || 48 || 1 || 83 || 480MW || 120MW
|-
| 2×3 || 6 || 80 || 1 || 138 || 800MW || 133MW
|-
| 2×4 || 8 || 112 || 1 || 193 || 1120MW || 140MW
|-
| 2×5 || 10 || 144 || 2 || 248 || 1440MW || 144MW
|-
| 2×6 || 12 || 176 || 2 || 303 || 1760MW || 147MW
|-
| 2×7 || 14 || 208 || 2 || 358 || 2080MW || 149MW
|-
| 2×8 || 16 || 240 || 3 || 413 || 2400MW || 150MW
|-
| 2×N || 2 ⸱ N || 32 ⸱ N - 16 || 0.275 ⸱ N - 0.137 || 55 ⸱ N - 27 || 320MW ⸱ N - 160MW || 160MW - (80MW / N)
|}

'''How to count heat exchangers:''' Count the number of edges where reactors fully touch. Double that. Add the total number of reactors. Then multiply it all by 4. That's your count of Heat Exchangers. You'll need 1.718 turbines per exchanger (rounded up). Each exchanger will provide up to 10 MW of power. One water pump can supply for exactly 1164MW of power or 116.4 exchangers.

=== Always on! ===
Unlike every other power generation technique, nuclear reactors '''DO NOT''' scale down power usage. Nuclear reactors will continue consuming one fuel cell every 200 seconds, regardless of the need.

As the reactor consumes its fuel, it heats up to a maximum temperature of 1000°C. At that point, additional fuel burned is simply wasted. This is the only way to lose energy in the system as all heat transfers are perfectly efficient.

Turbines do scale their production (and steam consumption) to match demand. Likewise, exchangers won't consume heat if there's nowhere to put the steam.

:'''Turbines and engines:''' Be aware that steam turbines and steam engines are both the same "class" of energy producer, so they'll need to be scaled all together. This means that in a complete energy system, your coal boilers may be running when the nuclear plant could fully cover the load. And, worse yet, the nuclear power is just being wasted!
:Consider using accumulators, switches, and circuit logic to disable the coal boilers when nuclear systems can cover the demand.


The simplest solution to avoid wasting nuclear fuel is to add the following two items:

* An [[inserter]]
* A [[decider combinator]]

Wire the '''input''' of the combinator to the nuclear reactor, then open the reactor and tick both options "Read temperature" and "Read fuel". For the temperature signal, choose [[file:Signal-T.png|16px]] (the default).

Click the combinator, and set its signals to:

Conditions
[[File:Uranium fuel cell.png|16px]] = 0
'''AND'''
[[file:Signal-T.png|16px]] < 650

Output
X in 1 amount (X can be any signal)

Wire the '''output''' of the combinator to the inserter, then open the inserter and tick both options "Override stack size" and "Enable/disable". For the stack size choose 1. For the enable condition, choose X = 1. This way, it will only grab items when it is not at max temperature (1.0k) and will not grab over-excessive amounts of fuel, ensuring that no power will be wasted!

Note a fuel cell is added while the reactor's temperature is too high, drawing the maximum amount of power from the steam turbines, the reactor will max out its temperature and lose energy. As such, it is important to have the test temperature be low enough, relative to the amount of power being consumed, that the reactor will not hit 1000 C before the cell is fully consumed.

{|
|-
| [[File:Nuclear reactor with circuit.png|thumb|alt=Nuclear reactor (input) and inserter (output) wired to a decider combinator|Example fueling circuit]]
| [[File:Nuclear reactor config.png|thumb|alt=Nuclear reactor dialog with "Read fuel" and "Read temperature" selected. Temperature signal is set to "T". Current reactor temperature is 1.0k C|Nuclear reactor settings for monitoring]]
| [[File:Nuclear reactor DC config.png|thumb|alt=Shows decider combinator conditions [T signal on green wire < 999] AND [Uranium-fuel-cell signal on green wire = 0] with output [X signal set 1]. Current state input is signal T=15C. Current state output is signal X=1.|Decider combinator conditions for monitoring and control]]
| [[File:Nuclear reactor inserter config.png|thumb|alt=Inserter dialog with settings "Override stack size" and "Enable/disable" selected. The override setting is set to 1. The enable setting is set to signal X = 1.|Inserter settings for controlling fuel usage]]
|}

=== Enrichment ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Kovarex enrichment process (research)|Kovarex enrichment process]]
:''Kovarex Enrichment allows you to turn some U-238 into U-235, but it's slow and takes a lot of U-235 as catalyst.''

Your first few patches of uranium ore will last you a reasonable length of time, but eventually you will start running out of ore and places to put extraneous U-238. Enrichment helps solve both problems.

The enrichment process takes 60 seconds in an un-moduled centrifuge. It requires 40 U-235 (!) and 5 U-238 and makes 41 U-235 and 2 U-238. In effect, it takes 3 U-238 and turns it into 1 U-235; it just requires an extra 40 U-235 and 2 U-238 along for the ride to act as a catalyst.

:'''All the things!:''' Before you ''enrich all the things!'', be aware that you do need 19 U-238 for each 10-pack of fuel cells, as well as requiring it for uranium ammo you will want for storing inside biters and their nests. Circuit logic can help you put a limiter on large-scale enrichment operations.

One un-moduled Centrifuge enriching uranium is sufficient to supply 33.33 reactors with fuel, assuming plenty of U-238. One Centrifuge with two Productivity modules is enough to supply 25.2 reactors, one Centrifuge with two Productivity modules 3 is enough to supply 28 reactors.

You only get 1 [[Uranium-235]] from bonus productivity (not 41!) as it is a catalytic recipe.

=== Reprocessing fuel ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Nuclear fuel reprocessing (research)|Nuclear fuel reprocessing]]
:''Reprocessing turns your spent fuel into U-238.''

Eventually, you will run out of places to put spent fuel. You can use reprocessing to turn it back into U-238 to use for enrichment, fuel cells, or ammo. Of the 19 U-238 that go into each 10-pack of fuel cells, this returns 6. This significantly reduces the total ore requirement for nuclear fuel.

=== Raw resource cost of running a single reactor (late game) ===

Water is free and infinite, so there are only two costs to run a Nuclear Reactor. One is the material cost for the buildings involved, and the other is the materials needed for the fuel cells. Since the building materials are only needed once, we will only consider the resources needed to produce enough fuel cells for a reactor to continously run. And we will do this computation for the late game by including Kovarex processing and the reprocessing of used fuel cells.

# 1 reactor uses 1 fuel cell every 200 seconds, which is 0.005 fuel cells per second
# To make 10 fuel cell the recipe uses 1 U235, 19 U238 and 10 Iron plate
# So 1 fuel cell costs 0.1 U235 + 1.9 U238 + 1 Iron plate
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing the used fuel cells (1 used cell gives back 0.6 U238): 0.1 U235 + 1.3 U238 + 1 Iron plate
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing + Kovarex (where you get 1 U235 for 3 U238): 0.3 U238 + 1.3 U238 + 1 Iron plate = 1.6 U238 + 1 Iron plate#
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing + Kovarex (measured in raw ore cost): 16 Uranium ore + 1 Iron ore

So '''to power 1 reactor continously with Kovarex enrichment you need''' 0.005 times the above ore cost, which is '''0.08 Uranium ore and 0.005 iron ore being mined every second'''. (Because a small fraction of U235 does not require Kovarex enrichment, the actual cost is marginally less, 0.0789 Uranium ore per second.)

=== Weapons ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Uranium ammo (research)|Uranium ammo]] / [[Atomic bomb (research)|Atomic bomb]]
:''Better bullets / Bigger bombs''

With the Nuclear Age comes nuclear weapons. [[Uranium rounds magazine|Uranium ammunition]] is top-tier, with 3 times as much damage as [[piercing rounds magazine|piercing rounds]] and when loaded into a tank mows down biter nests and clears swarms quite quickly. It uses U-238, so you've probably got plenty of it lying around.

On the other side, you can get [[atomic bomb]]s, which are rockets (shot by a [[rocket launcher]]) that do incredible damage. Be aware, they can easily kill you if you fire them anywhere near you, and even at max range, it's advised that you run in the opposite direction. Rather than a single explosion, they do damage in an expanding ring, giving you time to escape. They require a lot of U-235 and blue chips, so they're an expensive weapon.

== Version ==
This guide is compatible with Factorio 0.17, 0.16 and 0.15.13+.

: This guide was originally written by ''alficles'' and published on [https://gist.github.com/alficles/972796997d1bc40d57866b0a3725895a gist].
:'''License:''' [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ CC BY-SA 4.0]
:As an exception to the above, any or all of this work or adaptations thereof may be used on the official [https://wiki.factorio.com Factorio Wiki].

== Other power related [[tutorials]] ==
* [[Tutorial:Applied power math|Applied power math]]
* [[Tutorial:Producing power from oil|Producing power from oil]]

Tutorial:Nuclear power

2025-11-01T15:36:12Z

Zijkhal: Updated formulae for 2xN configuration to account for less neighbour bonus on the ends of the array. Corrected heat exchanger count from 55.2 to 55 (rounded from 54.98)

{{Cleanup|This tutorial needs to be updated due to changes in Factorio 2.0. For example, it is now simple to automate nuclear power production control without any tanks since reactors can be wired directly to read their heat level.}}

{{Languages}}[[Nuclear power]] requires higher level technology compared to either solar power or steam boiler power, but it offers very high power output in exchange. It's a great solution for middle- to end-game power generation and it works well in combination with other power generation techniques.

This guide is written for people who want to know exactly how nuclear power works, but don't necessarily want all the solutions. It focuses on what you should do and what you should know to get Nuclear up and running, but doesn't tell you what to do or exactly how to solve the problems.

== First steps ==

:'''Technology required:''' [[Nuclear power (research)|Nuclear power]]
:''You can mine uranium ore sooner, but you'll need the nuclear power technology to do anything useful with it.''

=== [[Uranium ore]] ===
To start, you'll need uranium ore. It glows green, so you can't miss it. It tends to form smaller deposits, though, and you may have to search a while to find a good patch.

Like every other ore in the game, you can mine it with an [[electric mining drill|Electric mining drill]]. Unlike every other ore, however, you will need more than just an [[electric mining drill| Electric mining drill]]. You also need to supply [[sulfuric acid]] to the drill. The drills conduct excess acid through themselves, so a row of drills can be supplied by acid from a single side.

:'''Mixed ores:''' If a mining drill covers even a single patch of uranium ore, acid must be supplied to the miner or the mining drill will stop running once it encounters the uranium ore. The miner will produce mixed ore, as usual.

=== [[Uranium processing|Ore processing]] ===
Once you've got raw uranium ore, you'll need to process it into [[uranium-235]] and [[uranium-238]]. You do this in a centrifuge.

In an un-moduled [[centrifuge]], you can process ten ore every 12 seconds.

Centrifuges produce a combination of U-235 (the light green stuff) and U-238 (the dark green stuff). Every ten ore processed have a chance to become precisely one of these two products. Out of every 10k ore you process, you can expect to get, on average:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Count !! Product
|-
| 7 || U-235
|-
| 993 || U-238
|}

That means you can roughly expect to get a single U-235 in one out of every 1428 ore. A centrifuge can then be expected to produce U-235 every 1716 seconds. Later on, this won't matter so much. However, when you first start out, this will be an important bottleneck.

:'''Regarding averages:''' Be aware, random is random. These values are ''average'' values. Which means that over the long term, they work out to about these figures. In reality, you'll see long stretches with no U-235 and short stretches with lots of them. Eventually, it won't matter much. But early on, make sure your generation rate is sufficiently high, or you have a sufficient reserve, so you don't find yourself without power when you hit an unlucky stretch.

=== Fuel ===
Before you can burn it in a nuclear reactor, you need to create [[uranium fuel cell]]s. You'll probably be using an assembling machine 2, so these will take 13.3 seconds to create as well. Which is fine because fuel cell creation will very rarely be the bottleneck.

You won't want to automatically convert all U-235 into fuel. Only convert what you need to fill your reactor. You're going to want a big fat stockpile of it when you research [[Kovarex enrichment process|kovarex enrichment]] later on.

Fuel cells are produced in stacks of 10, and to produce one such stack you need 1 U-235, 19 U-238, and 10 iron plate.

:'''Tip:''' It isn't a bad idea to use a chest and just stick a pile of iron in it rather than belting the iron in. A full chest of iron probably won't run out before you get bots and replace it with a requester.

Each fuel cell has a nominal energy value of 8 GJ, but it's possible to make them go even farther with reactor neighbor bonuses (more on that later).

=== [[Nuclear reactor]] ===
Once you've got fuel, you'll need to burn it in a nuclear reactor. This is the first step toward turning it into usable energy.

A reactor will produce exactly 40 MW of heat energy. Since a Watt is a Joule per second, this means the reactor will consume one fuel cell every 200 seconds.

Once expended, reactors will produce a "[[used up uranium fuel cell]]", which will need to be cleared. Initially, these will simply accumulate in a chest. Eventually, you can reprocess them into U-238.

:'''Working backward:''' A reactor consumes a fuel cell every 200 seconds and each U-235 gives 10 fuel cells, so every U-235 provides 2000 seconds of reactor power. A centrifuge requires about 1714 seconds to produce a U-235, so you'll need about one processing centrifuges per reactor.

The reactor needs input of fuel and produces heat that needs to be exported using [[heat pipe]]s that go to a [[heat exchanger]] (unless a [[heat exchanger]] is attached to the reactor).

=== [[Heat exchanger]] ===
The heat exchanger takes heat and uses it to convert [[water]] into [[steam]]. It works much like the boiler, but instead of burning fuel, you need to connect it to a heat source. The heat input is marked by a flame when you're placing it.

For simple reactor designs, you can connect it directly to your reactor (which produces heat at points also marked with a flame).

Heat exchangers also require water input, in precisely the way boilers do. They can heat up to about 10.3 units/second of water into about 103 units/second of 500°C steam. One water pump can maximally produce 1200 water/second, satisfying exactly 116.4 heat exchanger.

Heat exchangers produce nothing when they are below 500°C. Since they only cool as a consequence of heating water, they will never cool to below that temperature once they've reached it.

Heat exchangers transfer 10 MW of power, so you'll need 4 exchangers to fully consume the power produced by a lone reactor. (Neighbor bonuses can increase this significantly. Again, discussed later.)

The [[steam]] can then be transported to the [[steam turbine]] using normal [[pipe]]s.

==== [[Heat pipe]]s ====
More complex designs will require heat pipes. Unlike regular pipes, they have limited throughput, which means that shorter pipes are better.

Connect heat pipes point to point, flame to flame, exactly as you would with water pipes. Heat pipes cannot go underground, so if water pipes need to cross them, the water pipe will need to go under. They don't block movement, though, so you can walk right over them.

Throughput on heat pipes, in contrast to regular pipes, is limited. Here are some rough limits on transfer distance:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Power !! Distance
|-
| 40 MW || ~133
|-
| 80 MW || ~59
|-
| 120 MW || ~45
|-
| 160 MW || ~30
|-
| 240 MW || ~10
|-
| ~278 MW || 4
|-
| ~284 MW || 3
|-
| ~290 MW || 2
|-
| ~297 MW || 1
|-
| ~302 MW || 0
|}

Past these distances, less than 100% of the power will be transferred. This is because at this distance, the heat from the reactor does not travel fast enough to heat the pipe to beyond 500ºC in a running setup. However, if the heat is unused, the heat will spread much farther, because there is no heat loss over time or distance, so it builds up until it is used again.

:'''Heat pipe storage:''' Heat pipes can store quite a bit of heat as well. A single heat pipe can hold as much energy as a tank with 5.1k steam in it, which makes them even more space efficient than tanks for holding energy (though considerably more expensive). Be cautious, however, with how slowly heat moves through the system. A reactor always burns fuel if provided but will never go above 1000 degrees. Insufficient heat pipes may not send enough heat to exchangers and will allow the reactor to hit 1000 degrees at which point fuel is being wasted - heat is going into nothing rather than exchangers.

Throughput may also be thought of in terms of exchangers per pipe. Exchangers can be placed on one or both sides of a heat pipe. Laying two or more pipes in parallel can increase the distance heat travels.
{| class="wikitable" |-
! Parallel Pipes !! Exchangers on one side !! Exchangers on both sides
|-
| 1 || 21 || 31
|-
| 2 || 29 || 42
|-
|}

[[File:Heat_exchangers_per_pipe.png|800px]]

This picture also shows how distance between your heat source and heat exchangers will affect output. The last exchanger in a given row may not operate at full capacity.

=== [[Steam turbine]] ===
These are the steam engine's beefy big brother. Using regular fluid pipes, you'll pipe the steam produced by heat exchangers into these turbines.

:'''Perfect matches:''' The steam turbine is a perfect match for the heat exchanger. The steam engine is a perfect match for the boiler. Although it is possible to get energy out of mismatched systems, it's very wasteful and there's no real reason to do it.

Steam turbines consume up to 60 units of steam/second, so you need roughly two steam turbines for every heat exchanger. At large scales, however, you can use fewer turbines, since exchangers only produce 103.09 steam/second, compared to the 120 steam/seconds two turbines can consume. The exact ratio, rounded up, is 1.718.

=== Simplest thing that works ===
At this point, you have all the parts to build your very first reactor:

* A few uranium miners, supplied with sulfuric acid
* 1 Centrifuge, processing uranium ore
* 1 Assembling machine, making uranium fuel cells
* 1 Nuclear reactor
* 4 Heat exchangers, supplied by a single off-shore pump
* 8 Steam turbines

And, of course, assorted belts, inserters, filter inserters, and other tools for moving things around. This will produce a maximum of 40 MW of power.

== Moving forward ==
Past your simplest reactor, there are some additional nuclear features of which you should be aware.

=== Neighbor bonus ===
This is a critical part of how nuclear designs scale, but it's not complicated. Simply put:

'''Every reactor gets +100% heating power for every active neighboring reactor.'''

Neighbors have to align completely on each side, so reactors will line up in a nice square grid. When they do, the neighbor bonus is activated. You can see the current bonus by hovering over an active reactor.

The bonus to heating power does not increase the fuel consumption. Rather, it simply increases the heat produced!

This, of course, means you'll need more heat exchangers and steam turbines to turn that heat into electricity.

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Configuration !! Reactors !! Exchangers !! Water pumps !! Turbines !! Power !! Power per reactor
|-
| Single || 1 || 4 || 1 || 7 || 40MW || 40MW
|-
| 2×1 || 2 || 16 || 1 || 28 || 160MW || 80MW
|-
| 2×2 || 4 || 48 || 1 || 83 || 480MW || 120MW
|-
| 2×3 || 6 || 80 || 1 || 138 || 800MW || 133MW
|-
| 2×4 || 8 || 112 || 1 || 193 || 1120MW || 140MW
|-
| 2×5 || 10 || 144 || 2 || 248 || 1440MW || 144MW
|-
| 2×6 || 12 || 176 || 2 || 303 || 1760MW || 147MW
|-
| 2×7 || 14 || 208 || 2 || 358 || 2080MW || 149MW
|-
| 2×8 || 16 || 240 || 3 || 413 || 2400MW || 150MW
|-
| 2×N || 2 ⸱ N || 32 ⸱ N - 16 || 0.275 ⸱ N - 0.137 || 55 ⸱ N - 27 || 320MW ⸱ N - 160MW || 160MW - (80MW / N)
|}

'''How to count heat exchangers:''' Count the number of edges where reactors fully touch. Double that. Add the total number of reactors. Then multiply it all by 4. That's your count of Heat Exchangers. You'll need 1.718 turbines per exchanger (rounded up). Each exchanger will provide up to 10 MW of power. One water pump can supply for exactly 1164MW of power or 116.4 exchangers.

=== Always on! ===
Unlike every other power generation technique, nuclear reactors '''DO NOT''' scale down power usage. Nuclear reactors will continue consuming one fuel cell every 200 seconds, regardless of the need.

As the reactor consumes its fuel, it heats up to a maximum temperature of 1000°C. At that point, additional fuel burned is simply wasted. This is the only way to lose energy in the system as all heat transfers are perfectly efficient.

Turbines do scale their production (and steam consumption) to match demand. Likewise, exchangers won't consume heat if there's nowhere to put the steam.

:'''Turbines and engines:''' Be aware that steam turbines and steam engines are both the same "class" of energy producer, so they'll need to be scaled all together. This means that in a complete energy system, your coal boilers may be running when the nuclear plant could fully cover the load. And, worse yet, the nuclear power is just being wasted!
:Consider using accumulators, switches, and circuit logic to disable the coal boilers when nuclear systems can cover the demand.


The simplest solution to this problem is to add the following two items:

* An [[inserter]]
* A [[decider combinator]]

Wire the '''input''' of the combinator to the nuclear reactor, then open the reactor and tick both options "Read temperature" and "Read fuel". For the temperature signal, choose [[file:Signal-T.png|16px]] (the default).

Click the combinator, and set its signals to:

Conditions
[[File:Uranium fuel cell.png|16px]] = 0
'''AND'''
[[file:Signal-T.png|16px]] < 650

Output
X in 1 amount (X can be any signal)

Wire the '''output''' of the combinator to the inserter, then open the inserter and tick both options "Override stack size" and "Enable/disable". For the stack size choose 1. For the enable condition, choose X = 1. This way, it will only grab items when it is not at max temperature (1.0k) and will not grab over-excessive amounts of fuel, ensuring that no power will be wasted!

Note a fuel cell is added while the reactor's temperature is too high, drawing the maximum amount of power from the steam turbines, the reactor will max out its temperature and lose energy. As such, it is important to have the test temperature be low enough, relative to the amount of power being consumed, that the reactor will not hit 1000 C before the cell is fully consumed.

{|
|-
| [[File:Nuclear reactor with circuit.png|thumb|alt=Nuclear reactor (input) and inserter (output) wired to a decider combinator|Example fueling circuit]]
| [[File:Nuclear reactor config.png|thumb|alt=Nuclear reactor dialog with "Read fuel" and "Read temperature" selected. Temperature signal is set to "T". Current reactor temperature is 1.0k C|Nuclear reactor settings for monitoring]]
| [[File:Nuclear reactor DC config.png|thumb|alt=Shows decider combinator conditions [T signal on green wire < 999] AND [Uranium-fuel-cell signal on green wire = 0] with output [X signal set 1]. Current state input is signal T=15C. Current state output is signal X=1.|Decider combinator conditions for monitoring and control]]
| [[File:Nuclear reactor inserter config.png|thumb|alt=Inserter dialog with settings "Override stack size" and "Enable/disable" selected. The override setting is set to 1. The enable setting is set to signal X = 1.|Inserter settings for controlling fuel usage]]
|}

=== Enrichment ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Kovarex enrichment process (research)|Kovarex enrichment process]]
:''Kovarex Enrichment allows you to turn some U-238 into U-235, but it's slow and takes a lot of U-235 as catalyst.''

Your first few patches of uranium ore will last you a reasonable length of time, but eventually you will start running out of ore and places to put extraneous U-238. Enrichment helps solve both problems.

The enrichment process takes 60 seconds in an un-moduled centrifuge. It requires 40 U-235 (!) and 5 U-238 and makes 41 U-235 and 2 U-238. In effect, it takes 3 U-238 and turns it into 1 U-235; it just requires an extra 40 U-235 and 2 U-238 along for the ride to act as a catalyst.

:'''All the things!:''' Before you ''enrich all the things!'', be aware that you do need 19 U-238 for each 10-pack of fuel cells, as well as requiring it for uranium ammo you will want for storing inside biters and their nests. Circuit logic can help you put a limiter on large-scale enrichment operations.

One un-moduled Centrifuge enriching uranium is sufficient to supply 33.33 reactors with fuel, assuming plenty of U-238. One Centrifuge with two Productivity modules is enough to supply 25.2 reactors, one Centrifuge with two Productivity modules 3 is enough to supply 28 reactors.

You only get 1 [[Uranium-235]] from bonus productivity (not 41!) as it is a catalytic recipe.

=== Reprocessing fuel ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Nuclear fuel reprocessing (research)|Nuclear fuel reprocessing]]
:''Reprocessing turns your spent fuel into U-238.''

Eventually, you will run out of places to put spent fuel. You can use reprocessing to turn it back into U-238 to use for enrichment, fuel cells, or ammo. Of the 19 U-238 that go into each 10-pack of fuel cells, this returns 6. This significantly reduces the total ore requirement for nuclear fuel.

=== Raw resource cost of running a single reactor (late game) ===

Water is free and infinite, so there are only two costs to run a Nuclear Reactor. One is the material cost for the buildings involved, and the other is the materials needed for the fuel cells. Since the building materials are only needed once, we will only consider the resources needed to produce enough fuel cells for a reactor to continously run. And we will do this computation for the late game by including Kovarex processing and the reprocessing of used fuel cells.

# 1 reactor uses 1 fuel cell every 200 seconds, which is 0.005 fuel cells per second
# To make 10 fuel cell the recipe uses 1 U235, 19 U238 and 10 Iron plate
# So 1 fuel cell costs 0.1 U235 + 1.9 U238 + 1 Iron plate
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing the used fuel cells (1 used cell gives back 0.6 U238): 0.1 U235 + 1.3 U238 + 1 Iron plate
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing + Kovarex (where you get 1 U235 for 3 U238): 0.3 U238 + 1.3 U238 + 1 Iron plate = 1.6 U238 + 1 Iron plate#
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing + Kovarex (measured in raw ore cost): 16 Uranium ore + 1 Iron ore

So '''to power 1 reactor continously with Kovarex enrichment you need''' 0.005 times the above ore cost, which is '''0.08 Uranium ore and 0.005 iron ore being mined every second'''. (Because a small fraction of U235 does not require Kovarex enrichment, the actual cost is marginally less, 0.0789 Uranium ore per second.)

=== Weapons ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Uranium ammo (research)|Uranium ammo]] / [[Atomic bomb (research)|Atomic bomb]]
:''Better bullets / Bigger bombs''

With the Nuclear Age comes nuclear weapons. [[Uranium rounds magazine|Uranium ammunition]] is top-tier, with 3 times as much damage as [[piercing rounds magazine|piercing rounds]] and when loaded into a tank mows down biter nests and clears swarms quite quickly. It uses U-238, so you've probably got plenty of it lying around.

On the other side, you can get [[atomic bomb]]s, which are rockets (shot by a [[rocket launcher]]) that do incredible damage. Be aware, they can easily kill you if you fire them anywhere near you, and even at max range, it's advised that you run in the opposite direction. Rather than a single explosion, they do damage in an expanding ring, giving you time to escape. They require a lot of U-235 and blue chips, so they're an expensive weapon.

== Version ==
This guide is compatible with Factorio 0.17, 0.16 and 0.15.13+.

: This guide was originally written by ''alficles'' and published on [https://gist.github.com/alficles/972796997d1bc40d57866b0a3725895a gist].
:'''License:''' [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ CC BY-SA 4.0]
:As an exception to the above, any or all of this work or adaptations thereof may be used on the official [https://wiki.factorio.com Factorio Wiki].

== Other power related [[tutorials]] ==
* [[Tutorial:Applied power math|Applied power math]]
* [[Tutorial:Producing power from oil|Producing power from oil]]

Tutorial talk:Nuclear power

2025-11-01T15:28:11Z

Zijkhal: /* Error in neighbour bonus section */

Apperantly there are multiple tutorials. Although there is no link from this page to the [[Tutorial]] page. Is it an idea to link to the Tutorial page? I am doubting in which format this is best implemented. Perhaps a section "See Also" ? --[[User:Hayertjez|Hayertjez]] ([[User talk:Hayertjez|talk]]) 13:57, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

:I support linking pages like [[power production]] and other power related tutorials in a see also section, but what kind of relevance do tutorials in general have for one specific tutorial? -- [[User:Bilka|Bilka]] ([[User talk:Bilka|talk]]) - Admin 14:18, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

::Seemingly there is a reference on the landing page to the tutorials. But I overlook that catergory because I do not consider myself a "Beginner" After visiting the nuclear power tutorial page I thought, there could be more tutorials but where?. So I removed :Nulcear_Power from the Nuclear power URL to see if there are more tutorials available, and they where. Then I thought is there a category Tutorials or so but could not find them. So I posted this message to think about a better guidance to the Tutorials (even if the content is not so much for beginners). Perhaps it is good the way it is and my finding of the page tutorials is too special to adjust the current setup. {{Unsigned|Hayertjez|14:54, 2 August 2018‎}}

:::Thanks for the info. I have added a see also section that includes a link to the overview page, I hope it's what you were looking for. -- [[User:Bilka|Bilka]] ([[User talk:Bilka|talk]]) - Admin 15:48, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
:::: Great, I hope this helps future users. Also thanks for considering my feedback. --[[User:Hayertjez|Hayertjez]] ([[User talk:Hayertjez|talk]]) 06:45, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

== Possible error in [[Tutorial:Nuclear_power#Always_on.21|Always on]] section ==

<blockquote>Since exchanges produce 120 steam/second and a tank holds 25k steam, a tank will keep 208 seconds worth of heat exchanger.</blockquote>

If I understand correctly, the numbers should be "103 steam/second" and "242.5 seconds". [[User:Diraria|Diraria]] ([[User talk:Diraria|talk]]) 18:31, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
:From what I know, you are right, so please correct the page :) -- [[User:Bilka|Bilka]] ([[User talk:Bilka|talk]]) - Admin 18:34, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

== Error in the raw resource cost ==

The section "Raw resource cost of running a single reactor (late game)" contains an error. It assume all U235 will be produced by Kovarex enrichment. In fact, some U235 will be produced by ore processing, and that reduces the resource cost a little. By my calculations, the cost of running one reactor for one second is not 0.08 uranium ore per second as stated, but 40/507 ≈ 0.0789 uranium ore per second. I did not correct the calculations because I believe adding this level of detail is more likely to confuse than clarify. However, for correctness, I think it is necessary to document that the 0.08 ore per second is an approximation, so I added a note to that effect.

== How is the power/distance table for heat pipes calculated? ==

I built a setup with a 70 tile long heat pipe outgoing from a 80 MW reactor and one heat exchanger at the last pipe. There were still 857°C incoming. How is your table calculated? It is not clear how heat exchangers act there. Is it necessary to change all of the reactors heat performance into steam and then the last exchangers should be placed at most at the given distance?

--[[User:DRY411S|DRY411S]] ([[User talk:DRY411S|talk]]) 16:15, 10 January 2023 (UTC) I really don't understand this table either.

== Always On with steam tank storage ==

Right now the section describes inserting a fuel cell when the temperature is below 650.
However, with steam tanks, it's more efficient to only insert a fuel cell when the steam levels are below a threshold, meaning the steam in the tanks is being used up (instead of excess heat from the reactor, above 500 C)
Is this correct? Should this be added?

Edit: this is just for fun because in normal gameplay uranium is ridiculously abundant.
https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/a4yrxt/comment/ebiunmf says a full steam tank holds 2.4 GJ, which is 485 accumulators. But the reactor itself stores 5 GJ and each heat pipe 0.5 GJ. So there is already a buffer.

[[User:Qwr|Qwr]] ([[User talk:Qwr|talk]]) 03:35, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

: More "efficient" in what way? Remember: it takes time for the heat from a reactor to be generated, flow to the exchangers and be converted into steam. And the only time you lose energy from a fuel cell is if the temperature of the reactor hits 1000 C. So the temperature method could only be less efficient if the reactor could hit 1000 C. Why do you think it will hit that temperature? [[User:Alfonse|Alfonse]] ([[User talk:Alfonse|talk]]) 03:30, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

:: Frequently in my world, the temperature of the reactor is frequently at 1000 C. But I probably set things up wrong. Does the reactor temperature only go down if there is no steam left? The steam says it's at 500 C but maybe the reactor doesn't use heat to heat up steam if there is already steam in the tanks. [[User:Qwr|Qwr]] ([[User talk:Qwr|talk]]) 03:58, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

:: I was under the impression from old tutorials that you only wanted to insert cells when the steam in the tanks was getting used up. But I did some more testing and one fuel cell in one reactor can't heat all the way from 650 to 1000 C, so I can just leave the steam tanks full as a backup of sorts, or remove them completely? But with 2 reactors, my factory only uses ~ 40 / 160 total MW, so the reactors will heat up to 1000 C. [[User:Qwr|Qwr]] ([[User talk:Qwr|talk]]) 04:11, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

== Error in neighbour bonus section ==

First, in the table, the values for the 2xN reactor do not take the end section that has a lower neighbour bonus into account. For example, the heat exchanger count is listed as 32 · N, but in reality it's 32 · N - 16. The same goes for the other values. Is the 2xN section for general calculation of a reactor setup with a static length value, or is it for expandable designs? If the first, I think the correction for the end sections should be added. If the latter, then I think it needs to be make clear that those numbers are for extendable designs. Maybe even add a separate row for 2xN static, and have the current 2xN be the 2xN extendable.

Second, in the same table the turbine count is listed as 55.2 · N, but the actual count is 54.98 · N (minus 27.49 for the end sections, but that's irrelevant to this point). Each middle pair is producing 320MW worth of steam, and each trubine is consuming 5.82MW worth of steam. 320 / 5.82 = 54.9828. The 55.2 figure is when using the 5.8MW figure for the steam turbine, which is not accurate. The 54.98 figure is also accurate when calculating from steam / s produced and consumed. IMO it'd be better to just round it to 55 in the table.

PS.: I did not want to edit in the changes without some sort of note accompanying the edit, to provide a short explanation (like commit comments for Git), but I did not see where I could do that on the edit page. Is there a way I can add comments to changes that only other editors can see?

: You may use the code <code><nowiki></nowiki></code>, just replace "*" with your notes, they will not be displayed on the page, but other editors will see them when editing the page (as a part of source code). BTW, some of the information on this page is outdated, and you may need to check the context and revise and update multiple sections on the page. -- [[User:Cardinal|Cardinal]] ([[User talk:Cardinal|talk]]) 20:46, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

:: Thanks! I read through the page, and a lot of the information seems to have already been updated -- [[User:Zijkhal|Zijkhal]] ([[User talk:Zijkhal|talk]]) 15:27, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

Tutorial talk:Nuclear power

2025-11-01T15:27:26Z

Zijkhal: /* Error in neighbour bonus section */

Apperantly there are multiple tutorials. Although there is no link from this page to the [[Tutorial]] page. Is it an idea to link to the Tutorial page? I am doubting in which format this is best implemented. Perhaps a section "See Also" ? --[[User:Hayertjez|Hayertjez]] ([[User talk:Hayertjez|talk]]) 13:57, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

:I support linking pages like [[power production]] and other power related tutorials in a see also section, but what kind of relevance do tutorials in general have for one specific tutorial? -- [[User:Bilka|Bilka]] ([[User talk:Bilka|talk]]) - Admin 14:18, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

::Seemingly there is a reference on the landing page to the tutorials. But I overlook that catergory because I do not consider myself a "Beginner" After visiting the nuclear power tutorial page I thought, there could be more tutorials but where?. So I removed :Nulcear_Power from the Nuclear power URL to see if there are more tutorials available, and they where. Then I thought is there a category Tutorials or so but could not find them. So I posted this message to think about a better guidance to the Tutorials (even if the content is not so much for beginners). Perhaps it is good the way it is and my finding of the page tutorials is too special to adjust the current setup. {{Unsigned|Hayertjez|14:54, 2 August 2018‎}}

:::Thanks for the info. I have added a see also section that includes a link to the overview page, I hope it's what you were looking for. -- [[User:Bilka|Bilka]] ([[User talk:Bilka|talk]]) - Admin 15:48, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
:::: Great, I hope this helps future users. Also thanks for considering my feedback. --[[User:Hayertjez|Hayertjez]] ([[User talk:Hayertjez|talk]]) 06:45, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

== Possible error in [[Tutorial:Nuclear_power#Always_on.21|Always on]] section ==

<blockquote>Since exchanges produce 120 steam/second and a tank holds 25k steam, a tank will keep 208 seconds worth of heat exchanger.</blockquote>

If I understand correctly, the numbers should be "103 steam/second" and "242.5 seconds". [[User:Diraria|Diraria]] ([[User talk:Diraria|talk]]) 18:31, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
:From what I know, you are right, so please correct the page :) -- [[User:Bilka|Bilka]] ([[User talk:Bilka|talk]]) - Admin 18:34, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

== Error in the raw resource cost ==

The section "Raw resource cost of running a single reactor (late game)" contains an error. It assume all U235 will be produced by Kovarex enrichment. In fact, some U235 will be produced by ore processing, and that reduces the resource cost a little. By my calculations, the cost of running one reactor for one second is not 0.08 uranium ore per second as stated, but 40/507 ≈ 0.0789 uranium ore per second. I did not correct the calculations because I believe adding this level of detail is more likely to confuse than clarify. However, for correctness, I think it is necessary to document that the 0.08 ore per second is an approximation, so I added a note to that effect.

== How is the power/distance table for heat pipes calculated? ==

I built a setup with a 70 tile long heat pipe outgoing from a 80 MW reactor and one heat exchanger at the last pipe. There were still 857°C incoming. How is your table calculated? It is not clear how heat exchangers act there. Is it necessary to change all of the reactors heat performance into steam and then the last exchangers should be placed at most at the given distance?

--[[User:DRY411S|DRY411S]] ([[User talk:DRY411S|talk]]) 16:15, 10 January 2023 (UTC) I really don't understand this table either.

== Always On with steam tank storage ==

Right now the section describes inserting a fuel cell when the temperature is below 650.
However, with steam tanks, it's more efficient to only insert a fuel cell when the steam levels are below a threshold, meaning the steam in the tanks is being used up (instead of excess heat from the reactor, above 500 C)
Is this correct? Should this be added?

Edit: this is just for fun because in normal gameplay uranium is ridiculously abundant.
https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/a4yrxt/comment/ebiunmf says a full steam tank holds 2.4 GJ, which is 485 accumulators. But the reactor itself stores 5 GJ and each heat pipe 0.5 GJ. So there is already a buffer.

[[User:Qwr|Qwr]] ([[User talk:Qwr|talk]]) 03:35, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

: More "efficient" in what way? Remember: it takes time for the heat from a reactor to be generated, flow to the exchangers and be converted into steam. And the only time you lose energy from a fuel cell is if the temperature of the reactor hits 1000 C. So the temperature method could only be less efficient if the reactor could hit 1000 C. Why do you think it will hit that temperature? [[User:Alfonse|Alfonse]] ([[User talk:Alfonse|talk]]) 03:30, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

:: Frequently in my world, the temperature of the reactor is frequently at 1000 C. But I probably set things up wrong. Does the reactor temperature only go down if there is no steam left? The steam says it's at 500 C but maybe the reactor doesn't use heat to heat up steam if there is already steam in the tanks. [[User:Qwr|Qwr]] ([[User talk:Qwr|talk]]) 03:58, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

:: I was under the impression from old tutorials that you only wanted to insert cells when the steam in the tanks was getting used up. But I did some more testing and one fuel cell in one reactor can't heat all the way from 650 to 1000 C, so I can just leave the steam tanks full as a backup of sorts, or remove them completely? But with 2 reactors, my factory only uses ~ 40 / 160 total MW, so the reactors will heat up to 1000 C. [[User:Qwr|Qwr]] ([[User talk:Qwr|talk]]) 04:11, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

== Error in neighbour bonus section ==

First, in the table, the values for the 2xN reactor do not take the end section that has a lower neighbour bonus into account. For example, the heat exchanger count is listed as 32 · N, but in reality it's 32 · N - 16. The same goes for the other values. Is the 2xN section for general calculation of a reactor setup with a static length value, or is it for expandable designs? If the first, I think the correction for the end sections should be added. If the latter, then I think it needs to be make clear that those numbers are for extendable designs. Maybe even add a separate row for 2xN static, and have the current 2xN be the 2xN extendable.

Second, in the same table the turbine count is listed as 55.2 · N, but the actual count is 54.98 · N (minus 27.49 for the end sections, but that's irrelevant to this point). Each middle pair is producing 320MW worth of steam, and each trubine is consuming 5.82MW worth of steam. 320 / 5.82 = 54.9828. The 55.2 figure is when using the 5.8MW figure for the steam turbine, which is not accurate. The 54.98 figure is also accurate when calculating from steam / s produced and consumed. IMO it'd be better to just round it to 55 in the table.

PS.: I did not want to edit in the changes without some sort of note accompanying the edit, to provide a short explanation (like commit comments for Git), but I did not see where I could do that on the edit page. Is there a way I can add comments to changes that only other editors can see?

: You may use the code <code><nowiki></nowiki></code>, just replace "*" with your notes, they will not be displayed on the page, but other editors will see them when editing the page (as a part of source code). BTW, some of the information on this page is outdated, and you may need to check the context and revise and update multiple sections on the page. -- [[User:Cardinal|Cardinal]] ([[User talk:Cardinal|talk]]) 20:46, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

:: Thanks! I read through the page, and a lot of the information seems to have already been updated [[User:Zijkhal|Zijkhal]] ([[User talk:Zijkhal|talk]]) 15:27, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

Tutorial talk:Nuclear power

2025-10-31T18:15:07Z

Zijkhal: /* Error in neighbour bonus section */ new section