As for your second query, I actually had to overcome this problem playing yesterday. I had to unload 8 types of Robot Brain (playing Bob's Mods) into a single chest. There is a reasonably simple solution actually, connect the chest to the input of an Arithmetic Combinator with a circuit and set it ...

Some things that have grinded my gears as I have been playing.

1. Ability to "undo" items. Obviously not everything is salvagable, but in some cases you could for instance pluck out the chips from an item and then melt the remaining stuff into slag again, and send it back to the iron/copper ...