Even better, produce pins directly on the Shape Miner. My guide, Pin Production, explains it all and gives a blueprint for the Shape Miner version. It requires four Shape Miners, with 3 extensions each, to produce 12 belts of pins. Much more efficient. My guide:

https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3511195417

Good job. I hope you had fun building it :)

Putting a balancer or unjammer right on the platform is a good idea, too.

Thanks to your insight I made my design in the same format. Also I noticed that in case of uneven usage of pins the whole may jam and stop. So I put belt unjammers onto the same platform.

https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3429588310

So recyclable "pin towers". Thank you for explanation! I will try to make my own design now based on this information.

Soon I'll update my Prime Platforms guide so it has the blueprints for this pin factory and two other new ones.

it uses a shape with 4 layers of pins which I call "pin towers". I feed some in to get it started and then it recycles them infinitely.

This has 12 modules for 1x12 out (it'll fit 16). Each module turns one belt of pin towers into 4 belts of solo pin towers and gets 4 belts of whole shapes to pin-push and stack on a pin tower. Then swappers join the towers and recycle them.

So, the 75% efficiency is from the pin tower taking up one quarter and it getting pins on the other three quarters.

The most efficient pin factories are right on a Shape Miner platform. I made one which fits 3 of these modules so it makes 2 and 1/4 belts of pins from a Shape Miner with two extensions. I keep trying to fit a fourth module in there to get 3 belts of pins from it, but, haven't managed it yet. My guide's old Shape Miner based version has two modules for 1 and 1/2 belts.

I've tried to make my own pin factory, but so far only managed to achieve 1x12in to 1x4out. So 33% efficiency. What is the concept behind 75% efficiency? Do you recirculate one corner of stacked pins?