Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmm, I thought ECM and tap-disintegrating EDM (which is not very precise and does use a huge amount of power, unlike, say, wire EDM) had pretty astonishingly huge MRRs? I think the density ratio for tungsten and steel (19:8, just over 2:1) is actually more even than the atomic mass ratio (23:7, just over 3:1). So I'd think that even on a volume-per-coulomb basis ECM would cut tungsten faster, assuming comparable fara…
No, but if I had a machine like that here I'd definitely give that a work out because this is an interesting question that I normally would not have considered. That's a question worth settling, from memory the speed is not so much a function of the material as it is of the current density that you can achieve with the gear you have. Thousands of Amps will get you some pretty good speeds, on the order of a cubic cm o…
Electrolytic processes are really interesting and complicated, and 200+ years after Davy used them to revolutionize chemistry, I think they're still underused. I'm preetty sure you can produce Fresnel reflectors for a given wavelength, for example, by anodizing aluminum foil to about a quarter-wavelength depth, and across a wide range of visible wavelengths by anodizing it to about 3 microns depth, with the electropolishing effect inherently eliminating the small asperities that make it so slow to produce lenses and mirrors by grinding.
Plasma cutting should work, but should be slower on W than on iron; WP says that at room temperature its specific heat is 24.27 J/mol/K, but at 183.84 g/mol, that's only 0.13 J/g/K. For iron the same figures are 25.10 J/mol/K and 55.845 g/mol, so 0.45 J/g/K. So tungsten should heat up three times as fast with the same power output at room temperature; but tungsten's heat of fusion is four times higher, and I think that's actually the dominant component of plasma-cutting energy consumption. But I think you have roughly four orders of magnitude more knowledge about plasma cutting than I do.