Description of the issue:

I have a pair of Metal Presses situated side-by-side. Currently one is set to produce metal plate and the other produces wire. Each press is fed by a Chest+Hopper+Covered Conveyor Belt and the output from each feeds into separate wooden crates. I'm using vanilla and trapped-chests in order to isolate the pair at the feed end.

If I feed more than ten Ingots into either Hopper, Ingots will jump to the adjacent Conveyor Belt and feed into the adjacent Press. I can't rely on a successful production run and end up spending more time managing the feed-end conveyor belts than I would if I used a crafting station, hammer and wire cutters.

Would incorporating Covered Conveyor Belts as the feed and / or output ends of the multi-block construction prevent this unwanted "belt-hopping"?

Here's a picture of the setup, focused on the problem area. The belt-hopping happens across the Metal Press input conveyor belts.
https://imgur.com/a/NzdEiK5

This issue does not cause a Crash.

Thanks for your time. This is my first time opening an issue and I did my best to search for previous examples of this issue. Open and not-Open. If I missed something, I apologise for any hassle.

Versions & Modlist
Forge: 14.23.4.2705
IE: 0.12-82

You can feed the Metal Press directly from hopper - just move it one block down (and make it face the metal press). This will fix the issue - hopper is going to wait for Metal Press to have empty input slot.

Having covered conveyor belts wouldn't fix the issue - even then the items would pop up on contact with full Metal press.

Conveyor Belts are poping the items out when there is not enough space in target inventory - and metal press is processing intems with a slower rate then conveyor belt is moving them.

Disclaimer - I'm not a developer of this mod, just a fan :)

Corwin, thanks for your input. Unfortunately I can't get the Press to feed via a directly positioned Hopper.

I tried this approach when first setting up the Presses and tried it again today with no change in behaviour. The Hopper inventory will not unload into the Press.

Food for thought: Have you considerd not putting them directly next to eachother?

Sure, but that's a compromise. I have been trying to keep movement around the 'shop floor' efficient and the side-by-side placement works well in that regard. Looks good too.

More to the point, if a hopper feeds the press too quickly and causes inventory to spill, won't that still happen when I do a production run?

Yeah hoppers can't insert into the metal press because it only accepts the exact quantity needed. If you have a gear that requires 4 ingots, you need to put in 4 ingots, but hoppers would only insert 1, so the press doesn't allow for that in order to avoid getting "stuck" on an incomplete recipe.