Ugh, this approach is better but there's lots of waste management.
Idk why I'm complaining.  This is a type of puzzle that I'll enjoy.

This takes so much more work to save 1 (or maybe 2) amarms.

When you're about to pull the 18th input you have pulled 17 air and 51 qs.  You have outputted 15 air and 5 qs.  That means 2 air and 46 qs exist on the board.  At max you can pack 45 of these qs into 9 golds, meaning there's 9 gold, 2 air, and 1 qs, for a total of 12 atoms.  The input has 4 more, for a total of 16 atoms.  An easy way to get the reagent off the input is sliding, which takes 2 spaces (although this could be reduced with amarms nonsense).  So, 18 is possible naively, 17 is even crazier, and 16 is true min.

Wait, to actually process things you (might) need to pull another lead to stuff qs into, which would mean 17 is true min.  That is, unless you don't bother processing any extra qs on the last pull, but that would mean truly no extra space (which requires very fancy construction constraints).

Let me go for 17.

Wait, I forgot about the horrors of waste with a bonder.  Idk.  I'll do something.

The bonder isn't actually that bad because in many output constructions it's covered by the partial output.