If your hay lines keep clogging and you’re tired of babysitting jammed machines, this guide walks through the fix I settled on: running your hay through a scanner before it ever reaches processing equipment or generators. It’s aimed at anyone who’s built a decent grabber-to-machine setup and started noticing stoppages that force manual clearing.
I put this together because I hit the same wall myself — the grabber keeps scooping up whatever’s in the pile, and hidden metal rides along with the hay straight into your machines. Once I understood that the scanner has a second outlet most people never touch, the whole problem turned into a layout question instead of a maintenance chore.
The Actual Problem With Hay Collection
Here’s what’s happening. When your grabber collects hay, it can also pick up hidden metal objects mixed into the pile. If those objects reach your processing machines, they cause jams that require you to step in and clear things by hand. Constantly unblocking machines gets old fast, and the smarter move is to stop the unwanted material before it arrives — prevention over cleanup, every time.
Your Scanner Separates More Than Needles
Most players think of scanners as needle detectors and nothing else. That’s a narrow view of what they do. A scanner also separates scrap metal from the hay passing through it, and it handles the two outputs through different collection mechanisms:
- Needles — collected in the scanner’s own drawer.
- Scrap metal — ejected through a separate outlet.
That separate outlet is the key detail. It gives you a clean way to pull unwanted metal off your main hay line without stopping anything.
Order Matters: Scanner Before the Machines
The whole trick is placement. Get the sequence right and the rest falls into place:
Grabber → Conveyor Belt → Scanner → Hay Processing Machines
Your hay needs to pass through the scanner before it ever reaches a machine that could jam on scrap metal. Once you’ve got that ordering, you can route the separated scrap through its own collection or processing path on the side.
Don’t Just Dump the Scrap — It’s Worth Something
It’s easy to treat recovered metal as garbage, but it’s a resource. Depending on where you are in your progression, you can sell it outright or process it into ingots for further manufacturing. Filtering metal out of the hay stream pulls double duty: fewer production jams, plus a steady supply of usable material for your factory. I like when a fix pays for itself like that.
Adjust the Layout Until It Fits Your Factory
I ran into the exact jamming problem described above. Clearing machines manually over and over wasn’t sustainable, so I started experimenting with the scanner’s extra outlet and reworking my conveyor layout. What I ended up with separates the metal before hay reaches the machines — but please don’t feel obligated to copy my exact arrangement. The principle is what matters: put the separation step ahead of whatever machinery you’re trying to protect. Work within whatever footprint your factory already has.
Your Power Generators Need Protection Too
This is the part I got wrong for a while. The same logic that protects your production machines applies to your hay-powered generators — they should receive hay that has already gone through a scanner. Keep in mind that grabbers pull hay directly from the pile, and that pile can hide both needles and scrap metal.
What you want looks like this:
Grabber → Conveyor Belt → Scanner → Hay Generators
The scanner strips out the metal objects before the hay reaches your generators. Needles land in the scanner’s drawer, and scrap metal exits through the separate outlet. Now you’re shielding your production lines and checking the fuel going into your power system at the same time.
I overlooked this in my own build and had five unfiltered conveyor lines feeding my generators. As soon as I spotted it, I tore down and reorganized my entire power generation area, putting scanners ahead of every generator. The result is a far cleaner layout with controlled hay delivery and a dedicated zone just for power.
So take the lesson I learned the hard way: don’t confine your scanners to your main production lines. Walk every route that carries raw hay, including the ones feeding your generators. Scan first, then process or burn. Happy building.