"Machining techniques and procedures for uranium, graphite, titanium, zirconium, thorium, tantalum, beryllium, bismuth, lithium, and stellite"
Come for the uranium horror stories, stay for the useful tips on milling graphite!
osti.gov/servlets/purl/
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Dunno!
If you're taking guesses, loading and unloading work from a sealed chamber is a pain, and this was published 1952 so it's all manual machining, which seems more annoying to seal up than CNC.
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Nitrogen was also much more expensive then. Some metals also form nitrogenous ceramics (eg Ti) which impede machining.
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