Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-10940479-20130616194325/@comment-5627887-20130617204743

Well yeah, it's no good for if you need it right now, but if you have some working stock first, a row of Crystallizers plugged into an ME network will make your ore go much further. Technically it smelts 5 into 6 in 20 minutes, on average, though I've had as many as 8 from 5.

If you want to skip the longest and most annoying parts though (the mixer is to be avoided mostly, you can do the same thing in a crafting table, so can automate it with pipes etc or just set it to autocraft in an ME network), you can do Ore into Grinder, then smelt the dirty gravel in a Slag Furnace (has to be that particular one). You get something like 280% yield on average from that, pretty damn good.