Link: https://old.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/1vgnjvk/a_faststarting_quality_module_3_upcycler/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/factorio by /u/minno on 2026-08-05 23:27:00+00:00.

The blueprint

A stack of them in action

In: 71.11/min r /b circuit, 56.89/min quality 2, 14.22/min superconductor

Out: 0.375/min (22.5/h) legendary QM3, if you process the legendary raw materials it outputs too.

Bootstraps in around 3 hours and doubles itself in 1.5 hours. Cleanly upgrades to legendary EMPs and recyclers for 2.5x production.

This setup is designed to get itself started and duplicate itself quickly by making efficient use of high-quality quality modules. The beacon in the middle with two legendary speed 1 modules brings the EMPs from 75% to 225% crafting speed while reducing their quality chance from 31.25% to 28.25%. Compared to a speed-less upcycling setup, this results in a 28% increase in the amount of common-quality raw materials needed to make one legendary QM3 but a >50% decrease in the number of legendary QM3s needed to make it.

If you place this down with common QM3s and upgrade them as higher-quality modules get produced, it takes around 3 hours to finish upgrading. You need to modify the condition on the splitter in the middle to ">= uncommon quality" to start, then ">= rare" once they're all uncommon, and so on. Once that's done and it is running at full capacity, it takes around 1.5 hours to make enough modules for another copy of itself. Then another 1.5 hours to make two more, another 1.5 hours to make four more, and it grows until you hit the limits of your ability to supply raw materials.

Blueprint: https://factoriobin.com/post/2j03jz