Best Reinforced Iron Plates Factory Layout in Satisfactory

Reinforced Iron Plate is the first item you encounter in Satisfactory, requiring two items to make it. This means, unlike the Iron Plates, Iron Rods, and Screws that you were producing for the prior milestones via Constructor, you need the Assembler for the first time to automate its production.

Reinforced Iron Plates are needed to build machines like Constructors and Assemblers, but they’ll be used most for Mk.2 Conveyor Belts. So, the way to go is to automate their production as soon as possible.

I’ll be going over multiple layouts for Reinforced Iron Plate production, from a beginner setup with base recipes to an advanced setup for the mid-game with alternate recipes. The layouts will use the manifold system, so you can scale up as you see fit.

Reinforced Iron Plates basic layout in Satisfactory

With this setup, you can produce five Reinforced Iron Plates per minute, which means it’ll be an Assembler producing RIP at 100 percent clock speed. We also ensured that you can achieve this with Mk.1 Miner and Conveyor Belts, so you can lay this out as soon as you unlock the base Reinforced Iron Plate recipe in your Satisfactory playthrough.

• Required Machines
  • One Miner Mk. 1
  • Two Smelters
  • Five Constructors
  • One Assembler
• Required Power
  • 43.2 MW (including Miner)

Factory input

For this, you need 60 Iron Ores per minute. So, you’d want a Miner Mk.1 on a normal node or two of those on two impure nodes into a merged line.

Smelter line

The Iron Ore input line will feed two Smelters. As mentioned, you’ll feed Smelters and all the other later machines with manifold lines. This will make scaling up much easier compared to a load-balanced setup.

Constructor line

The merged output of 60 Iron Ingots from the Smelters will feed an array of Constructors, two producing Iron Plates and another producing Iron Rods. We’ll take the output from the Iron Rod Constructor and feed it into another Constructor to produce Screws.

Assembler

Finally, you’ll be feeding two merged outputs of Iron Plates and Screws into an Assembler to make Reinforced Iron Plate. If you have that research unlocked in the MAM, you can take the Assembler’s output to a Storage Container and hook up a Dimensional Depot to it.

Reinforced Iron Plates advanced layout in Satisfactory

This layout is for producing Reinforced Iron Plate en masse in the early to mid-game. We’ll use two alternate recipes—Iron Wire and Stitched Iron Plate—to maximize an input line of 120 Iron Ores per minute and produce 13.787 Reinforced Iron Plates per minute. Naturally, you’d need Mk.2 Conveyor Belt (part of Logistics Mk. 2 milestone in Tier 2) unlocked for this to work.

• Required Machines
  • One Miner Mk. 1
  • Four Smelters
  • Eight Constructors
  • Three Assemblers
• Required Power
  • 81.197 MW (including Miner)

Factory input

For the factory, we’d need 120 Iron Ores per minute. You can do this by dropping a Mk.1 Miner (at 100 percent clock speed) on a Pure Iron node. If you don’t have a Pure node nearby, you can always use a normal node and overclock the Miner to 200 percent.

Smelter line

The incoming belt carrying 120 Iron Ores per minute will be split into four Smelters. This will net you 120 Iron Ingots per minute in total, which we’ll merge and send further down the production line.

Constructor line

We’ll set eight Constructors feeding from the 120 Iron Ingots manifold line coming out of the Smelter array. The first five Constructors will make Wires with the Iron Wire alt recipe (91.915 Wires per minute in total), and the last three will produce Iron Plates (45.957 Plates per minute in total).

Assembler line

The two merged lines of Wire and Iron Plate will be fed into three Assemblers, resulting in a cumulative production of 13.787 Reinforced Iron Plates per minute.

You can attach an Industrial Storage Container to the merged output and a Dimensional Depot crate on top.

With almost 14 Reinforced Iron Plates per minute and an Industrial Storage worth of buffer, you’re likely never running out of RIPs in the remainder of your Satisfactory playthrough.