I recently was trying to put elemental shards from ElementalCraft into a compacting drawer. 9 raw shards can combine into 1 powerful one, and the reverse is true too. It didn't work. Also have an issue with not being able to do coal <-> mini coal. My idea is to add a crafting window to the compacting drawer interface. In it you can demonstrate how one object can be combined to for another one.
Maybe even could have an upgrade that uses power to "press" like a compactor (thinking about blaze rods and blaze powder here). It would reduce the need to support other mods and allow the player to be able to set it up.
One limit that should be in place would be that the object can be crafted both directions (unless a mod is made to change that). So you could not do Rib Bones - Bones cause you can't combine 6 bones to make a rib, but you can make a rib into 6 bones.