I suppose seasoned machinists will look at this and say "so what's the big deal?" but I surprised my customer and made my job easier by coming up with this idea. The customer furnished a 36" long bar, 1/2" in dia of Haynes 230 which they claimed cost $300 a pound. They needed 1/8" pins made from it one inch long, thirty of them. After I slowly turned the 1/2" stock down to .125" for an inch and parted one off, I figured there must be a better way. Here's what I came up with, using a piece of graphite I drilled approx. .135" dia. holes in it and put it on a simple sinker EDM and made an electrode. When I gave the customer their thirty parts and almost two feet of their stock back they were a little puzzled until I explained how I did it.
