I find the Copper Alloy Ingot recipe to be the best approach. They're somewhat less resource-efficient than Pure ingots, but the infrastructure is much more manageable, both because there's no dealing with fluids and because Foundries are so much smaller than Refineries.

edit: and I mean way smaller. My Nuclear Pasta factory produces 3,600 Copper Ingots per minute using 36 Foundries at 100% clock rate. To produce the same amount using the Pure recipe, I'd need 96 Refineries.

96 Refineries take up 21,120 m² of space, ignoring pipes and belts. The Foundries take up just 3,240 m².