Not so many years ago almost all electrodes for the EDM machine were made in a Bridgeport type mill or on a manual surface grinder. These days, nearly all are made on the high speed milling machine. I have yet to hear any toolmaker complain about this development!
With the old way of doing things there was the constant problem of needing a good industrial dust collection system. The graphite dust would get all over the mold maker and the nearby equipment as well. Not only was this bad for health, but it was also bad for the machinery.
The newer, more efficient high speed machining centers come complete with a highly effective dust collector. This keeps everything clean and also helps to prolong the life of the carbide cutters and inserts. The precision tooling, such as System 3R or Erowa, as well as the tool holders for the cutters also last much longer with the dust removed.
The Bridgeport milling machine was a fantastic machine tool in it’s time. It is unimaginable how many injection molds, stamping dies and precision tools were made on these machines. The same holds true for the manual surface grinder.
Now, however, the high speed milling process simply cuts circles around these old methods. The elaborate setups of the past are now a thing of the past, thankfully! Plus, with the advent of CAD/CAM programs, the designs have become quite sophisticated and the machining would be nearly impossible to do the old way.
Randy Hough has a website: http://completeedm.com that talks about high speed milling