Pure gain

A new processing technique could reduce the cost and the amount of energy required to make titanium parts from powders by up to 50 per cent claim its developers.

This means titanium alloys could be made more cheaply for applications such as brake rotors, artificial joint replacements and armour for military vehicles.

Bill Peter, one of the developers of the process at the

(ORNL) in the US, said instead of using conventional melt processing to produce products from titanium powder, his group and several industry partners have developed a method that allows powders to remain in their solid form during the entire process.

'This saves a tremendous amount of energy, greatly reduces the amount of scrap and allows for new alloys and engineered composites,' he said.

The powder metallurgy process has been used to produce components for many years. However, titanium products have not widely been fabricated using these methods because of the high cost of conventional titanium powders.