Here how:
have higher quality and and tier 1 quality item in your inventory, for example tier 1 and 3 power pole,
place blueprint of higher quality power pole(or other placeable),
the drone would take tier one item and place them into high quality ghost and convert them into high quality without using up actual higher quality item, only tier 1 get use up.

I been accidentally been converting tier 1 quality power pole into higher quality power pole. I tested this with assembling machine and and I got high quality machine without placing any quality machine in my inventory. I am going to assume it will work with any placeable.

Do note, if I only have high quality placeable without any tier 1, the drone would just refuse to build it.

I did little bit of experimenting with this,
First: you must have both tier 1 and higher tier placeable for this bug to work. If you just have tier 1, higher quality won't get place. however if you have only tier 3, then tier 3 won't get place unless you also have tier 1.

Secondly: I also test module and I discover other bug. tier 1 module will get place just fine but any higher quality won't get place no matter what.

Edit: I test it again with only this mod and item giver gui cheat mod on and this bug still present.

Are you on the latest version?
Quality issues should have been resolved in 0.0.6

The mod is on 0.1.5

Ok. I'll try to look into it at some point.
Haven't really gotten into using quality in my own game yet.
I'll test blueprints and see how they behave.

Issue is fixed