New Titanium Fabrication Protocol

 Without question, titanium needs new completely innovativefabrication technologies. All of its superb characteristics workwonderfully against successful machining and losses during machiningwhich mostly consists of mucking out a piece anyway is typicallycommon. Thus a system like this will have a ready market.
At least the metal is readily available and I am sure the day willcome when we become much more adept at working with it.
I would like to see sheets of different elements produced that areone atom thick as a fabrication feed stock. We can now do it withcarbon and a few others and I suspect that this will turn out to be agold mine for producing complex alloys and oddly structuredmaterials. For example let us imagine a laminated sheet ofalternating layers of graphene and single atomic titanium or evenseveral atom thick titanium. Is someone working on this problem?
In the meantime, we now can use an titanium extrusion to cast upforms and structures.
Revolutionised production oftitanium components may revamp industry
Norwegiantitanium companies have been granted funding to develop a brand-newproduction technology, which may mark the beginning of a revolutionin industry worth billions.
http://www.forskningsradet.no/en/Newsarticle/Revolutionised_production_of_titanium_components_may_revamp_industry
Withfunding from the User-driven Research based Innovation (BIA)programme at the Research Council of Norway, Norsk TitaniumComponents (NTiC) has developed an entirely new method of producingtitanium components, making it cheaper and easier to capitalise onthis material of tomorrow.
Titaniumis a material that is in high demand in the oil and gas, aerospaceand defence industries. Norway has large reserves of this rawmaterial, but producing end-products made of titanium is currentlyboth expensive and difficult.

Minimalwaste – fast production

Thetraditional method of producing components of titanium involves usingforged plates, blocks or rods depending on the productspecifications. These are then shaped into the desired componentsthrough machining.
Thisproduction method has two significant drawbacks:
First,machining can lead to as much as 70 per cent of the material beinglost as waste. This loss is very costly, as titanium is moredifficult to recycle than other materials and the price of titaniumplates is NOK 1 000 per kilo.
Second,the production process is very lengthy. NTiC expects their newproduction technology to reduce delivery times by many months.
Inaddition, the company forecasts that material waste can be limited to10-20 per cent and that their prices will be 30-50 per cent lowerthan those of their competitors. NTiC will also be able to producetitanium components of a much higher quality than what the industrycan offer today.

Proprietarytechnology

Thepremium results are the outcome of a production technology developedentirely by NTiC. The basic method involves feeding wire-shapedpieces of titanium into a machine for smelting. But firstspecifications are entered into a computer program in the machinewhich determines the resulting shape of the components. Theprocess produces components that can range from five centimetres tonearly two metres in length.
Theprocess can be compared with making a pot by layering coils of clayon top of one another until the pot is finished. This alsoenables the creation of products in nearly final form.

Seekingto become world leaders in titanium

Theproduction method gives rise to hopes that new applications can bediscovered for titanium – the metal of the future. If it provessuccessful, Norway could become a world leader in the production ofboth raw titanium and titanium components.
NTiCis working towards becoming a qualified supplier of components vitalto the aerospace industry. Over 300 000 new airplanes will be builtworldwide by 2030, so the qualification process is a big potentialsuccess factor for the company.
Titaniummay also become a key raw material in one of the hottest innovationsin the energy sector: wind turbines at sea. The properties oftitanium are optimal for this purpose: it is as strong as steel, 45per cent lighter and highly resistant to corrosion.