>>508749465
No, that's how the process goes. I do CNC programming for ram EDM electrodes as my main job. Lathe inserts are made using carbide-faced tooling and the negative for the surface features you want to end up in the final parts during axial pressing is added using RAM edm electrodes. The electrode is a softer and electrically conductive material, so machining it is fast and easy to do with a perfect surface finish. You then use the electrode to burn the face of the carbide which you wouldn't be able to machine using any other method aside from maybe CNC grinding. But that has a lot of limitation on the minimum sizes of the features you can end up with.