I agree with Jay Cee it can indeed be done but here are some other things to consider before you quote:
First; make sure you have a REALLY GOOD dam inside the pipe.
Siphoning all your dielectric oil through the pipe and onto the floor is considered bad form.
Water from a wire EDM; perhaps not quite so bad but still not fun.
The best kind of dam has Orings in it...nice big soft squishy orings to seal really really well. especially if the pipe is not DOM and has a weld seam in it!!
As Jay Cee says, make a mini tank inside the main tank.
Use a cheap plastic bucket and cut a hole in the side of it you can shove the pipe through.
Make the fit of the hole good enough that your inflow from the flushing wands is bigger than the outflow from the leaks around the hole.
As long as you can keep the bucket full, leaks won't matter because they'll all go back into the main tank.
The full bucket is what makes the fire hazard go down.
Resist the temptation to plug the leaks with plasticene...it'll dissolve in the expensive dielectric and wreck it along with the filters and maybe the pumps too.
(Rustlick 250 dissolves plasticene: I don't know about other brands)
Resist also, the temptation to just point a couple of flushing wands at the burn zone and call it good.
Again as Jay Cee points out, it's a pretty severe fire hazard if you get too cocky with this.
You can get away with it for a 2 amp burn, but for an 8 amp burn maybe not so much, and for a 20 amp burn...forget it.
You'll probably need to bypass the float switch and maybe a door interlock to make this work.
Make sure OSHA and your insurance company are nowhere near when you do this and don't run the burn unattended.
Also watch the loads on the machine; if you hang a gazillion tons of steel several feet out from the edge of the machine your ballscrews and linear rails will never be the same again.
Ditto if you just park a sawhorse out on the outboard end of a heavy workpiece and expect the machine servos to drag it around in X and Y.
So no orbiting unless your machine has a ram mounted orbiter or the part is really light and needs no outboard support.
That's about it...oh yeah; don't forget to charge through the nose for all the extra risk and hassle!!
Cheers
Marcus
Implant Mechanix – Design & Innovation - home
Vancouver Wire EDM -- Wire EDM Machining