Unless you need a fully automatic setup integrated with a storage system you only need a handful of blocks and minimal redstone to auto craft as much as you want of pretty much anything in the game. It doesn’t need to be any simpler than that. People asking for recipe locking are basically just asking for creative mode. The crafter is meant to decrease some of the grind, not make it effortless to get everything.
Unless you need a fully automatic setup integrated with a storage system you only need a handful of blocks and minimal redstone to auto craft as much as you want of pretty much anything in the game. It doesn’t need to be any simpler than that. People asking for recipe locking are basically just asking for creative mode. The crafter is meant to decrease some of the grind, not make it effortless to get everything.