By my math, pulling one extra fire to catalyze a second pipeline sets a theory min cycles at 55.

This solve creates elemental half-flares and metal pairs with perfect latency, but loses 1 cycle during assembly because of geometry.  Perfect 55 seems plausible, but the forced geometry of the last swing added too much sprawl for me to manage.

Despite the name and appearance, this machine is actually quite orderly by my standards.  This characteristic is visible in the more aesthetic and symmetrical version at 266a, which predated my jamming arms into the workspace.