I have an accumulating conveyor where sometimes there's gaps. And sometimes there aren't when flowitems are right next to each other on the conveyor but still moving along in a train of items.
An upper conveyor then "drops" flowitems onto this lower conveyor whenever it sees a gap available in the lower conveyor. The upper conveyor must naturally wait until space frees-up below, before it can drop anything. Exit and Entry transfers are used to connect the upper to lower conveyor.
Since the lower conveyor has implicit priority, the upper conveyor must wait until a gap shows up below, which can cause the upper conveyor to back-up.
Thinking of using a Merge Controller to force the lower conveyor to stop briefly thus allowing a gap to form when a flow item is ready to drop from above onto the lower conveyor.
Very much like cars merging at an accident scene - cars effectively "zipper together" in flip-flop alternating fashion if both lanes are bumper-to-bumper (it's the courteous thing to do).
When there are no flowitems to drop from the upper conveyor, the bottom one simply continues uninterrrupted as usual.
There may be an elegant, simple way to do this but I couldn't quite find it on FlexSim Answers. Betting a Merge Controller can be fitted to do it?
Thank you.
