Sorting Machine Help

[VictusBcb]

I've spent over an hour scouring the internet now for answers as to why my sorting machine might not be working properly, so I'm finally going to post this thread up and see if the community can help me out. I have three sorting machines in my system, and two of them work properly (the third however, does not). The third sorting machine (the one on the right) is set up exactly like the other two, just with different items obviously being sorted. Power looks good on it, pipes hooked up proper. Help? D:

http://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m226/AuronTheUnsent/2013-02-18_200802.png
http://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m226/AuronTheUnsent/2013-02-18_200811.png
http://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m226/AuronTheUnsent/2013-02-18_200816.png

 

[Abdiel]

The machine is jammed, as evidenced by the red signal light. One of the outputs stuck in there has nowhere to go. Check if your chests are full, or if your pipes aren't colored wrong, etc. It is also possible that an item not intended somehow got into the sorter while you were configuring it has nowhere to go - in that case break the sorting machine or temporarily attach a chest to the tube to get the stuck item out.

[edit] Looking at the picture closer, you're sending items to barrels. Barrels will only accept the items they're set to, so if anything that you don't have a barrel for enters the sorter, it will get jammed.

 

[VictusBcb]

If it is jammed, that's odd. None of my barrels are anywhere near full. Each item in the sorter is properly assigned to a barrel of the corresponding color. I'll go ahead and break the sorting machine and see if that helps. Hopefully that'll fix this malfunction.

Edit
Took everything out of the sorting machine's filter, and it started working properly. Since I'm using barrels, I'll just go that route

Edit Edit
Seems that doing it that way means now I have random items going into the overflow chest. I'll try working on a solution to that, maybe add a sorting machine only for a chest. I'm not sure.

 

[VictusBcb]

Blah, taking the chest and the items out of the system just made it where everything went to whatever sorting machine it felt like, and got stuck inside of them until I broke them. Why can't stuff just work when it's programmed to move stuff?

 

[lolpierandom]

Why bother with sorting machines, even, if you're using barrels?

Or rather, the filters they come with. You should just prefill the barrels with an item that you want in it (so no others can go in), then just set the sorting machines to pull and leave it be- they'll automatically go where they can. Then just put a restriction tube leading to a few chests somewhere for overflow stuff that you haven't added to your system.

 

[VictusBcb]

Yeah, I just got rid of the color filters, and just put the items in the filters of the sorting machines that I wanted them to pass through, no colors anymore. Seems to be working fine now, except that they don't draw items all the time. Is there some sort of delay in the automatic option for the sorting machine for sending pulses of items? I've got all my filters set to 1 of each item, so as long as they're in the ender chest, they should be taking them out.