Spark triggers titanium extrusion discovery

Outokumpu Holton benefits from research conducted as part of the Spark awards programme, run by the Powdermatrix Faraday Partnership.

Outokumpu Holton has benefited from research conducted as part of the Spark awards programme, run by the Powdermatrix Faraday Partnership.

Spark awards are given to fund problem solving, proof-of-concept, technology demonstration and other development activities for companies that are members of Powdermatrix, the Faraday Partnership based at Ceram that is responsible for promoting advanced ceramics and powder technology.

Thanks to research made possible by the Spark award, Outokumpu Holton established that Conform, one of its processes for the continuous extrusion of non-ferrous materials, could be used for the extrusion of titanium.

This discovery has implications for the future of alloy manufacture.

The investigation was carried out with the Department of Materials at Imperial College in London, and involved identifying suitable particulate materials as well as examining process set-up.

To use the Conform process, the grooved extrusion wheel requires coating with a tyre of the material to be extruded, in this case titanium.

Initial trials using pure titanium failed.

However, it was established that by using a copper-titanium mix, the machine could be started successfully.

The investigation also revealed that modifications to the tooling were required to raise the temperature within the wheel groove to create the correct environment for successful extrusion.

Conform tooling is being redesigned according to the findings and further trials are planned using titanium and other high strength materials.

A Case PhD is also to be carried out on the back of these initial investigations, again with Imperial College.

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