Eh, to reproduce, you place a pipe and chest next to each other. Use a wrench to make the connection extract. Then you're able to hold right click, with an upgrade in hand, and move your mouse over the pipe that's in the same block as the part that's exporting, and it will put an upgrade in it. You're able to place a separate upgrade in the center, and the other 5 off-shooting pipes, if there's an adjacent storage/pipe in that direction.

Breaking the pipe does return all of the upgrades, but still a nuisance when you're trying to quickly put upgrades in a few dozen exporting pipes in a row, especially with the relatively high cost of the better upgrades in some modpacks.

I'm playing ATM8, 1.0.9.