Manifold

Manifold, a.k.a. in-line splitting / merging refers to a type of building style where splitters or mergers are aligned in series (that is, one after another), usually parallel to the arrangement of buildings. This allows for compact building space and easier expansion.

It is the opposite fill method to the balancer.

Conveyor Belt manifold

 * Due to the mechanisms of Splitters, the machines closer to the source will fill up faster and start running, the machines at the end of the line will have to wait for the resource to fill up the preceding machines first before their input resource is prioritized. This also applies to mergers in the same configuration on the output side of the machines.
 * If one or more outputs of a splitter are saturated with items, all the remaining items will automatically overflow to the remaining connected outputs.
 * Given enough time, all machines in a manifold will run at 100%, provided the input and output item rates are sufficient and the item speed is not limited by conveyor throughput.
 * If conveyor throughput is a limiting factor, consider using an 'injected manifold', where supplementary supply belt/s are merged at places lacking feed throughput.

Pipe header
A pipeline manifold, a.k.a pipe header, is a kind of arrangement where a 'main' pipe is connected to a series of secondary pipes. It can serve either as a fluid distributor or a fluid collector. This can be constructed by chaining a series of Pipeline Junction Crosses connected with Pipelines.

A pipe header works with the following principles:
 * The total fluid input must be equal to the total fluid output (conservation of fluid flow).
 * No single segment of pipeline can exceed the flow rate of 300 (Mk.1) or 600  (Mk.2).
 * Pipelines are bidirectional, so any fluctuation in fluid amount or flow rate will be auto-balanced by themselves. That means you won't have to worry about the fluid direction in the individual pipe segment, only need to consider the overall flow.