The more advanced recipe should have a better yield. I think it's copper that's broken. Why bother casting copper coils when you get the same output by casting plates? That's not really true when considering production speed. A casting machine produces (base) 1 plate per second. A strand caster pro...

It depends on whether you allow Bob's smelting and/or hybrid Angel/Bob smelting.

If you use "strict" Angel smelting as enforced by some mods then the plate is not needed. In other cases it is used in the original Bob's recipes.

That is true. However the combinator mod also acts as a chest. So you can robot lift it out, or empty it unto a belt and carry it back to the chest/warehouse you run your automated facility on. As long as you don't make your recipe switching too twitchy Although i'm not an expert on building digital...

the Crafting Combinator mod uses an external module to make it possible, it doesn't actually allow wires directly to the equipment.

However, with this caveat it DOES work. I use it to craft bob modules and jewels from a single line