Is it possible to change the recipes for individual quality items, or maybe something you'd look into adding? The general idea is cutting out the intermediate quality ingredients and making the recipes just use base quality ingredients but at a 10x/100x/1000x/10000x/ Scale.
Ex:
Assembling Machine 1 (Uncommon): 10 Gears/10 Circuits/10 Iron Plates
Assembling Machine 1 (Legendary): 10000 Gears/10000 Circuits/10000 Iron Plates

Not with the recipe system as it is currently, no. That being said, a little birdie told me this becomes significantly easier to do in 2.1, so if you wanted to make a mod for it I'd wait for then.