Currently in the UK aerospace manufacturing industry, buy-to-fly ratios can be as high as 9:1 for titanium alloy components. The industry produces considerable amounts of machining swarf and there are increasing amounts of out-of-specification additive manufacturing powder that are now being stockpiled. In this talk, disruptive technology that uses field-assisted sintering technology (FAST) to create near net shape billets or final components will be presented.
With emerging UK supply chain partners, it is expected that a sustainable circular economy of aerospace waste can be used across defence and automotive industries without any significant changes to current infrastructure. The solid-state FAST technology has been combined with downstream hot forging using standard hammer presses to create as-forged parts from waste in two simple steps (and termed as FAST-forge). In addition FAST titanium alloy billets are easier to close-die forge – showing superplastic forging characteristics.
The FAST technology is also being exploited to create chemically-graded billets (termed FAST-DB) where site specific alloy chemistries can be engineered. The diffusion bonded regions show excellent structural integrity and provides a new approach for the recycling of different titanium alloy powders and machining waste.