>>527294917
>>527305058
Oh yeah, and for more general cases: use insertion transport pipes whenever possible, that will attempt to put the items into the attached storage (chest, machine, etc), and if it can't fit in then it will continue in the next direction (but not go backwards).

So here is the back of the overflow section of my storage system, items come in from the right, then hits the purple (insertion) pipe, it attempts to put the item into the chest, and if the chest is full then it goes to the left, tries to put it in that chest, then the next chest, then round the corner where there's more chests. So unless everything is completely full then items will never pop out onto the ground. I do the same with machines: anything that requests items will have an overflow path where it gets sent back to my storage system, so worst case scenario I just end up with items looping around until I notice them, rather than getting dumped somewhere.