I have a line of Inserter assemblers, and I need to feed them cogs, circuits, and iron plates. I decided to mix the cogs and circuits on one side of the belt, and have the iron plates on the other side:
This works well providing there aren't any shortages up the line. If one side of the cogs develops a shortage (so there are only cogs on one side of the belt feeding into the "combining splitter"), then the ratio of circuits:cogs gets messed up, and the ingredient loop in the bottom right gets plugged up with circuits. To get the system going again, I need to manually pick up the ingredients plugging it up, and let it continue on:
I tried using a filter arm to pick out circuits, but they're too fast, and end up taking way too many off, then I have the problem of cogs plugging everything up.
How can I reliably mix 3 to 4 ingredients on a single belt, and maintain the correct ratio (one cog per circuit in this case), even during shortages?