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I'm trying to harvest the maximum amount of uranium possible from a small patch. Unfortunately, there is a bordering coal patch nearby as well, and two of my electric mining drills are within range of this coal, and as such, mine some of it:

Drills

I put a chest in front of each of their outputs with a filter inserter to take only the uranium out. But when I first fired up these drills, they mined coal, which is now sitting in their chests. After a while, they switched to uranium. Is it possible to control what ore it harvests? I want it to focus only on uranium.

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    Not to my knowledge, other than shifting them down a space so they're not in range of the coal...
    – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft
    Commented Aug 30, 2017 at 22:25
  • I've just quickly googled to see if any mods provide this functionality, but didn't find anything. Maybe I missed something, maybe there's a mod that'll do this.
    – steenbergh
    Commented Aug 31, 2017 at 8:55
  • @Timmy Jim Google "splitter sorting" or ask me if you need the resources: i.imgur.com/pbXyRuR.gifv (with back-up protection) Eight-lane variant: i.imgur.com/8sBmW0S.gifv Note:* You have to prime each of the key splitters (explained in the designers' threads) with item type for it to memorize. Just drop an item on the half you want with Z.
    – Mark C
    Commented Sep 10, 2017 at 2:41
  • Why Marc, do you suggest this big crazy opposite K.I.S.S. solution? Fast filter inserters exists early on anyway. I'm pretty sure you could easily avoid this problem in the early stages, if its a missing tech thing.
    – Christian
    Commented Mar 23, 2018 at 12:12

3 Answers 3

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No, you cannot.

Two ways of dealing with the fact that some coal will be included with the uranium are:

  • Placing the uranium drill in such a manner that it does not touch coal. Note that, when you place down the miner, it shows a square around it, indicating what area will be mined. Hovering over the miner shows what resources it covers.
  • Feeding the output to a belt and having a filter inserter on it, or somesuch (feeding it into a provider chest and make the robots deal with it, feed it into a chest and have a filter inserter extract only the uranium ...)

Alternatively, you could fix this problem not at the start, but at the end: feed the entire belt into your centrifuges, and have a filter inserter pick out all the coal at the end. The centrifuges will only pick out the uranium.

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It is now (0.16.17) also possible to set an output filter for one output lane of a splitter. This will put only items of that type on that belt, everything else on the other. Left click on the splitter to control its settings.

This is similar to the filter insert approach except that it achieves maximum throughput with a single splitter. With a filter inserter you might need multiple inserts to get the same throughput.

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An alternative solution: use mining drills (electric and/or burners) to mine the coal first, then place the drills on the uranium once the offending coal has been removed. This may or may not be feasible, depending on the richness of the patch.

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    I think it's very rich - it would take a while to do that, but it would work. I think the best solution atm is the filter inserter method
    – Timmy Jim ♦
    Commented Aug 31, 2017 at 16:03

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