Factorio – Controlling Ore Harvests from a Drill Over Multiple Ores

factorio

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.

Best Answer

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.
  • 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.