I still think a method for making wire faster would be a good thing. There are dedicated extruders in real life; why not in Minecraft?
Because you end up with a machine that does one thing and kind of feels redundant. The block cutting machine is very much far from a key machine, and if people want fast plates they don't even use it, they just make hammers. An extruder would fair little better.
Alternately, how many overclockers does it take to make a machine work 9x faster, and how many transformer upgrades would it take to power the machine at that level?
6 would make it work ~9x faster, and that'd take ~168 EU/t for the metal former, which considering it's tier 1, would mean you'd need 2. Not ideal as it ends up being just under 2x more expensive per plate/wire/whatever but it's going to do it a hell of a lot faster. You could even work around it with some energy storage upgrades, you could probably get away with it being tier 1 (ie no transformer upgrades) if you supplied it with multiple packets of energy per tick.
Alternately, do you have a bank of metal formers in your workshop in minecraft, and if so, do you find that level of repetition enjoyable?
A bank of machines is not a workshop at all but a factory, which I find a fun project to build. IC2 as a mod works well in factory type situations as slightly overclocking lots of machines is the best way to go about speeding up production without having insane energy costs.
Repetition is crafting it all by hand which is absolutely no fun at all, not least because of all the times you'd have to empty your inventory out. Advanced Machines did have an upgraded form of each mode of the metal former (like the induction furnace is to the electric furnace), and I'd say if you wanted any kind of upgraded form you'd want something like that rather than another slow, low tier machine.