Without question, titanium needs new completely innovative
fabrication technologies. All of its superb characteristics work
wonderfully against successful machining and losses during machining
which mostly consists of mucking out a piece anyway is typically
common. Thus a system like this will have a ready market.
At least the metal is readily available and I am sure the day will
come when we become much more adept at working with it.
I would like to see sheets of different elements produced that are
one atom thick as a fabrication feed stock. We can now do it with
carbon and a few others and I suspect that this will turn out to be a
gold mine for producing complex alloys and oddly structured
materials. For example let us imagine a laminated sheet of
alternating layers of graphene and single atomic titanium or even
several atom thick titanium. Is someone working on this problem?
In the meantime, we now can use an titanium extrusion to cast up
forms and structures.
Revolutionised production of
titanium components may revamp industry
Norwegian
titanium companies have been granted funding to develop a brand-new
production technology, which may mark the beginning of a revolution
in industry worth billions.
With
funding from the User-driven Research based Innovation (BIA)
programme at the Research Council of Norway, Norsk Titanium
Components (NTiC) has developed an entirely new method of producing
titanium components, making it cheaper and easier to capitalise on
this material of tomorrow.
Titanium
is a material that is in high demand in the oil and gas, aerospace
and defence industries. Norway has large reserves of this raw
material, but producing end-products made of titanium is currently
both expensive and difficult.
Minimal waste – fast production
The
traditional method of producing components of titanium involves using
forged plates, blocks or rods depending on the product
specifications. These are then shaped into the desired components
through machining.
This
production method has two significant drawbacks:
First,
machining can lead to as much as 70 per cent of the material being
lost as waste. This loss is very costly, as titanium is more
difficult to recycle than other materials and the price of titanium
plates is NOK 1 000 per kilo.
Second,
the production process is very lengthy. NTiC expects their new
production technology to reduce delivery times by many months.
In
addition, the company forecasts that material waste can be limited to
10-20 per cent and that their prices will be 30-50 per cent lower
than those of their competitors. NTiC will also be able to produce
titanium components of a much higher quality than what the industry
can offer today.
Proprietary technology
The
premium results are the outcome of a production technology developed
entirely by NTiC. The basic method involves feeding wire-shaped
pieces of titanium into a machine for smelting. But first
specifications are entered into a computer program in the machine
which determines the resulting shape of the components. The
process produces components that can range from five centimetres to
nearly two metres in length.
The
process can be compared with making a pot by layering coils of clay
on top of one another until the pot is finished. This also
enables the creation of products in nearly final form.
Seeking to become world leaders in titanium
The
production method gives rise to hopes that new applications can be
discovered for titanium – the metal of the future. If it proves
successful, Norway could become a world leader in the production of
both raw titanium and titanium components.
NTiC
is working towards becoming a qualified supplier of components vital
to the aerospace industry. Over 300 000 new airplanes will be built
worldwide by 2030, so the qualification process is a big potential
success factor for the company.
Titanium
may also become a key raw material in one of the hottest innovations
in the energy sector: wind turbines at sea. The properties of
titanium are optimal for this purpose: it is as strong as steel, 45
per cent lighter and highly resistant to corrosion.
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