Scientists develop new titanium power parts process

By Tom Stundza -- Purchasing, 5/21/2008 10:37:00 AM

A new processing technique being developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory and industry partners could reduce the amount of energy required and the cost to make titanium parts from powders by up to 50%, according to ScienceDaily.com.

While powder metallurgy has been used to produce steel and other nonferrous metals components for many years, titanium powders have not widely been fabricated because of the high cost of processing. Researchers say the new non-melt approach—which includes roll compaction for directly fabricating sheets from powder and press-and-sinter techniques to produce net shape components and extrusions—offers many advantages over traditional hot-melt processing.

“Instead of using conventional melt processing to produce products from titanium powder, with the new method the powders remain in their solid form during the entire procedure,” says Bill Peter, a researcher in the national research laboratory’s Materials Science and Technology Division in Oak Ridge, Tenn. “This saves a tremendous amount of energy required for processing, greatly reduces the amount of scrap and allows for new alloys and engineered composites.”