The high cost of titanium currently limits its use to value-added application, primarily in the aerospace and defense industries. Due to the excellent strength-to-weight ratio and corrosion properties of titanium, there is significant interest in lowering the cost of titanium to make it accessible to other markets such as the automotive, transportation and chemical processing industries. The recently developed Armstrong process has created a low cost source of commercially pure and alloyed titanium powders, but current production techniques are inadequate for utilizing these powders to create components at an industrial scale.
In many applications, HSR forming techniques have been used to achieve formability beyond that which can be done by Quasistatic forming techniques. This study was performed to explore the use HSR forming techniques in the consolidation of titanium powders and the production of titanium PM components, in an effort to lower the cost of titanium components and open their availability to other industries. The primary methods utilized in this study were Electromagnetic forming techniques, involving the discharge of a capacitor bank through a driving coil to induce current in a closely coupled workpiece resulting in a strong opposing Lorentz force between them.
For the consolidation of titanium powders, copper tubes were filled with titanium powder and compacted by both solid and disposable coils. Roll compacted sheets were compacted utilizing a Uniform Pressure Actuator, Electromagnetic Press and an Electronically Driven Expanding Plasma. The UPA uses a driving coil to launch a copper sheet in a planar manner to push a titanium sheet sample on to a flat die. The EM Press involves repeatedly striking a sample with an electromagnetically repelled aluminum flyer with a flat tool steel impactor attached. EDEP involves discharging a capacitor bank through an aluminum foil, causing it to burst into a plasma that expands and compacts the sheet.
The UPA was also shown to be capable of simultaneously forming and consolidating roll compacted sheet, both to densities that have not been achieved in green consolidated sheets and shapes which have not yet been attained in green or sintered material by any available Quasistatic technique. Milled titanium powder was also consolidated, showing increased density upon sintering relative to Quasistatic consolidated materials with the same green density.