Thanks for the update. Yeah, I was worried a bit but hoped all is well.
I do think a mix of manual and automated would be nice, like for instance making ingots and metal sheets automatically but any products out of these manually. Or tell them how many times you want something to be produced to not waste materials later on when you can make alloys (if those are not made from ingots).
Tool production should be manual only unless they'll break later down the road.