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Electric inserters

Electric inserters apply the same logic as burner inserters. The main difference is that they cannot refuel themselves and stop working when power cuts out, which makes them risky to use when feeding boilers for steam power. However, at low power, they continue to work very slowly. The recipes for all inserters begin with crafting a regular inserter.

Regular inserter

The most commonly used inserters are the regular electric inserter (yellow). They are adequate for the majority of use cases and they are an ingredient for making any other electric inserter. They are faster than burner inserters and also they use far less electric energy than burner inserters use fuel energy. Regular inserters are fast enough to keep up with fast transport belts and most assembling machine recipes in the early game.

Long handed inserter

Long handed inserters are inserters at regular speed with long reach. Instead of picking up from the tile in front and placing on the tile behind, long handed inserters uniquely pick up from the second tile in front and place on the second tile behind, without interacting with any objects on the nearest two tiles. This makes them very useful for feeding machines that are surrounded by several belts with different ingredients on them. While long handed inserters benefit from the base inserter capacity bonuses, they have no special variants.

Fast inserter

When faster transport belts and assembling machines or demanding recipes start getting involved, regular inserters may not be fast enough to supply your machines or even to pick up items from fast-moving belts. In such cases, you may prefer switching to pairs of regular inserters side by side or just using fast inserters (blue) which are unlocked using automation science. Fast inserters can grab from any transport belts and can resupply most machines quickly enough.

Stack inserter

For highly demanding inserter applications such as loading trains, fast inserters may not be enough. In such cases, you can switch to stack inserters (green), which are both fast and have extra hand capacity by default. Stack inserters are unlocked with logistics science with a capacity of two items and their capacity can be increased up to twelve items via subsequent research upgrades.

Filter inserter and stack filter inserter

If you want to make an inserter pick up only specific items that you define, then you can use a filter inserter (purple), which is a special type of fast inserter. The default mode for inserter filtering is whitelisting, where you can define up to five filter slots to specify items that the inserter will pick up when encountered. If you switch to blacklisting, then the inserter will move to pick up any items except for the ones set in filter slots. If you want filter inserters with higher capacity, there is the stack filter inserter (white) which is limited to a single filter slot while having the same capacity as a stack inserter.

Next page: "Chapter 10 - Transport belts part 2 - Underground belts and splitters"