I'm only starting down this road but my sense is that ACT and Diffusion Policy both make it pretty feasible to start on real data only. LeRobot also makes it easier to train these. But that's the next step that I'm working on, so I don't know yet.

On attachments: during this project I really wanted a 3D printer several times. So that's probably next on the shopping list.

The Ufactory arm is actually quite extensible: it exposes digital input/output and you have a standard wrist mount where you can mount different end effectors or attachments.