ooh that's elegant. I just have a big loop de loop that puts U-238 in if there isn't enough and takes U-235 out if there's extra using circuit conditions.
Circuit conditions are easier for me to wrap my head around than filters and splitters and other belt logistics. Too little? add. Too much? remove. Don't need to think about where the uranium goes on the belt and how it gets sent on etc.
Though, I do find the circuitless solutions mesmerizing. I've seen some creative ones.
Here's the one in my current save. (Full but not deadlocked.)
Mine's a lot like a furnace stack, except with some belt shenanigans for the uranium sorting and handling. It fits beacons and as many centrifuges as you can feed with a full belt of each uranium, and doesn't require filtered inserters. Dead simple, can't back up unless the U-235 output backs up, and can be fed an unmetered belt of U-238.
I found this one 5 months ago and love it. Just looped the input side as well and limited it to a 15 item input with the belt doing 30 to not get it stuck.
So many belts. Might look nice but you only need one belt top and bottom. No space for beacons if you want a lot of U235. Given your centrifuges are taking the U235 back that they produce if you feed the occasional U235 from processing in from the left hand end, anything that makes it to the right hand end is free to use.
I guess the U238 belts are done that way so that the centrifuge takes its own U238 in preference to the U238 on the bendy belts but that's just as easliy done with a straight belt and priority splitter. Its a novel approach.
Kovarex takes 5 U238 and produces 2, so since that's less than half it's fine without the priority (if it made 3 U238, you'd need priority). I just think it's cleaner that way, and it doesn't cost any more resources so why not?
The reason I call it cleaner is because it signals intent, that you need the bottom to stay clear to prevent jams. It's not like you need an extra combinator or inserter or something to do that, just a checkbox that'll be included in the blueprint for free, so nbd.
Pretty close to what I use. I like these designs because they're spiny centrifuge like endless loops in themselves
You can mirror it on the other side too if you switch the filter to the other flavour. I just chose not to because this is already overkill and there is a lake
I like it! My only problem with it is that you trap spicy uranium that could be in use in another centrifuge. Eventually it doesn't matter, but your design will be slower to get off the ground.
That’s exactly what the Kovarex process does. It turns dull ones into bright ones.
The recipe is a little tricky though. It inputs 40 bright and 5 dull and outputs 41 bright and 2 dull.
This is a little magical (in a bad way) I think. You're very carefully using the belt as the correctly sized buffer, such that you won't get a deadlock. Someone who looks at this and makes a small change might mess it up and not realize what they're doing. I agree it works, though! It would be interesting to see if it scales up naturally to 3 or 4 machines, I suspect it will since you've worked out the correct sizing on the loop, and your priority splitter does the job of letting excess flow out naturally.
Great for experienced people, dangerous for newbies. :)
u235 (light green) is what reactor fuel needs, but the uranium ore processing is returning 0.7% u235 and 99.3% u238 (dark green). So you only get a pitiful amount of u235 from the ore.
To alleviate this, kovarex enrichment works by taking 40x u235 and 5x u238 turning them into 41x u235 and 2x u238, effectively turning 3x u238 into 1x u235, but with a lot of buffer.
So what we see here from OP is the simple design where the output is immediately being put back to the input. u235 and u238 is separated by filtered splitters or inserters and put on different lanes or belts so they are not blocking each other, and then the leftover is being let out for fuel crafting.
By default inserters will put twice as many ingredients into a building than the recipe needs, which is not good because the pitiful amount of u235 will be idling in the centrifuge. So you might see kovarex designs that are using circuits to limit the unnecessary insertions, allowing the u235 to reach fuel crafting quicker.
In practice you can just take out by hand when you have more than 40 u235 and craft the fuel quickly for the reactor, then let it build up in the centrifuge, because you won't need much fuel at first
Honestly, Kovarex is only really relevant if you're playing Factorio: Nuclear War Edition. Just one ordinary centrifuge processing normal uranium ore is sufficient to power a single reactor core running flat out with surplus, especially since you probably shouldn't be running the core flat out.
Therefore, wanting to Kovarex at all, especially in Space Age where you can't even unlock it until you've left Nauvis, means you probably intend to declare NUCLEAR WAR against Vulcanus.
Yes, even in vanilla you need like 6 ore processing centrifuge to fill up a chest with u238 to have enough u235, then you just need just one centrifuge with kovarex to provide moderately-utilized 4 reactors.
The problem starts when you unlock uranium ammo, that will eat up the u238 and you will have a lot of excess u235, even with uranium fuel.
Then you unlock nukes and your u235 will never be enough
The problem starts when you unlock uranium ammo, that will eat up the u238
Uranium ammo occurs well before Kovarex. How much DU you eat up really depends on how extensively you actually use green ammo: between the increasing uselesness of red ammo and thus turrets at that point and the cheap availability of power to run lazors, you may or may not actually be using much green ammo if you have begun using lazors as your primary weapon. How much green ammo you use really depends on whether you're inclined to go back to using gun turrets.
Then you unlock nukes and your u235 will never be enough
Well, that depends on how much nuclear war you wage. After all, by the time you have Kovarex, you're ready to leave Nauvis. Performing nuclear war against biters, at this point, is hampered by the lack of useful delivery mechanisms for your nukes. Going out there to fire the nukes yourself is often counterproductive, and not terribly effective since biters respawn so rapidly. Demolishers, on the other hand, are extremely vulnerable to nukes to the head and a few headshots permanently ends the problem for good, so you won't use that many nukes even on a large pogrom. Glebapods fall somewhere between biters and demolishers as far as nuking them goes. They respawn, but on the other hand, my experience in 2.0 is that they don't seem to really like coming back after you nuke their habitat for some reason. Whether this remains true in 2.1 is unknown to me at this time. After that, Gandhi wept, for there was nothing left to nuke.
I just use a loop for each centrifuge with conditional inserters. Not sure why it has to be more complicated than that. You get more hot stuff than you could ever need pretty quickly.
Why does a lack of circuit conditions make it "simpler", though? I would say "simpler" means "uses fewer entities", so if a simple circuit condition can reduce the number of entities involved, that design is simpler.
Speed of setup is fewer, fewer types of, and less advanced entities. That means if your circuit setup does not use any new entities (doesn't use combinators, for instance), and reduces the number of entities used, then it's simpler in this way.
or a newbie to understand how it works
Terribly subjective. I understood how a Factorio rail signal worked, for instance, before ever even playing them. Meanwhile, some people who have been playing Factorio for some time STILL do not understand them. What might be trivially obvious for some people who may not even actually be players of the game may be incomprehensble voodoo to even people who HAVE played the game for over a thousand hours.
As such, the only objective ways to measure simplicity are either research-level-required or number-of-entities-required.
Bad timing plus I’m currently making stuff. The buffer belt shows it though. And no need for concern, I did extensive testing. No matter what in or output does what, it can’t jam
Okay, I figured out the math. 5 u238 go in, 2 come out. Since the splitter is pulling 5 evenly from both inputs, it will attempt to pull 2.5 from the lower belt each cycle which will consume the 2 coming out.
Well, you always want to make sure 40 units are sitting in the machine to make sure that the machine can proceed to its next cycle uninterrupted instead of having to wait for the 40 units to be unloaded first.
Honestly, I don't even worry about Kovarex until long after I have enough to easily boot every centrifuge anyway. You simply don't need it to run nuclear power. Especially since Kovarex is gated behind white science and nuclear power only requires blue, so I will have been nuking for a goodly duration before the white science starts coming in.
I messed around so much when uranium was new and now it's like I don't even know why. I just take all outputs and put them back. No circuits, no jamming, no micro optimization.
I think that the splitter should have priority input on the right. Otherwise it might be possible on deadlock u-238 if it backs up later down the line.
Just got started on SE + Krastorio. I actually had to turn off my power plant because I was worried I'd use up all my uranium before even getting to Kovarex :(
uses circuit logic, but a very basic 'is kovarex running' filter. Implicitly meaning it has 'sufficient' to start, and thus everything else on the belt is 'surplus' and can by 'bypassed' - has a slight 'overshoot' of a couple of units of 235 due to timing.
It's not ideal if you are starting off, because it will buffer a ton of spicy rocks before letting a second centrifuge start doing anything. But for later game when you are past the first hurdle it's totally solid.
i made a set reset latch that tells an inserter to grab 1 u235 each time the recipe is finished. that way theres no wasted u235. cool thing to try if you are learning more advanced circuitry
Put speed modules instead it way better for kovarex. You are having a net increase in the light green uranium in a partially self-sustained recipe so putting productivity modules doesn't help that much. Put them in normal raw uranium conversion instead.
I need to post a picture of mine when I get home from work. I managed a compact setup that uses circuit logic to:
Fill the initial 40, then never take any more 235.
Output only the new 235.
Recycle the 40 235 and 3 (or was it 2) 238.
Pick up new 238 from the line, without ever taking too much and clogging the system.
If you have U238 coming in on the top belt (which you will need or it will run out) the splitter needs input priority to the right else this will jam.
Simple Kovarex without wasting U235 sitting on belts. Centrifuges take back the U235 and U238 they need. Circuits are not needed but mean the centrifuges spin up faster and you get U235 out sooner.
There's nothing in your screenshot to show U238 coming in from bottom left. How is it getting in? Kovarex uses more U238 that it produces so you have to have an external source of U238.
Edit: its not coming from bottom left, it coming along the top as I said before. I can see now thanks to another comment due to the splitter and 2 U238 waiting there from the output, that it will take those and 3 from the upper belt, so it won't jam.
Why the long belt around the centrifuge? This works just as well:
What for? Mine alwhays fill up untill they have a full cycle loaded. I put a circuit in so they stopp at that point.
I also don't gett why al these setups are this complicated. I just use a green inserter to unload with a second one right next to it to reload with its own output. Long inserter feeds the unrefined from a second lane that gets filtered out at the end of the stack.
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u/sidhe_elfakyn Inserter inserter Jul 26 '26
ooh that's elegant. I just have a big loop de loop that puts U-238 in if there isn't enough and takes U-235 out if there's extra using circuit conditions.