I know there are other issues saying the forge hammer is broken, but I don't think this is quite the same. any unified plates instead of properly using a hammer above an ingot will just use a full durability hammer to craft a plate for free:

this is how it's supposed to be:

Unidict 2.9.3
WanionLib 2.4
Ic2c extras 1.4.4.12 or gtc expansion 0.0.6
I don't have any idea whether it would happen with ic2 experimental as I don't tend to use that.