You realize that X-rays using promethium decay can be used to detect subtle imperfections in ingredients and machinery. The next obvious step is thinking of a way to automate fixing them...

This mod adds a new machine to the end-game, the Refinery. You unlock it after researching promethium science, alongside research productivity.

It has a base quality effect of +100%. Out of the box, it directly upgrades an item to at least the next quality level, with no resource loss.

• Speed module effects break the upgrade guarantee.
• Even though most items can be refined - even science packs - their refining time also depends on all the ingredients of the production chain.
• 1 promethium chunk satsifies 1 Refinery for 10 minutes of constant operation.

More details

• Science packs have hard-coded refining times. You may use this to your advantage.
• Refining end products is faster than it should actually be. Speed module 3 with crafting speed 1 still takes an eternity though!
• Refining uranium-235 is not possible. You can't bang radiation with radiation. You're forced to setup quality Kovarex enrichment process instead. As such, any end products that need uranium-235 - Portable fission reactor, Spidertron and Biolab - are not directly refinable.
• Refining ammo and explosives in general is slow due to their, well, explosive nature, and so that you can't cheese your way out of military research for space platforms.
• Organic items can be refined, but living beings - eggs and fish - don't play well, they are way slower.
• Things that gain no perks from quality - tiles, transport belts and similar - can't be refined.

Credits

• Hurricane (Discord @hurricane046), for the gorgeous Refinery graphics & animation. Used with CC BY license
• Wube, for related icons, reference in autogenerating recipes, and this amazing game
• Many people active in #mod-dev-help over on the Factorio Discord