In June 2011, surgeons at the Biomedical Research Institute at Hasselt University in Belgium implanted a titanium lower jaw into an 83-year-old patient in what was thought to be the first operation of its kind.
On March 30, airplane giant Airbus flew an A380 passenger jet with a titanium spoiler actuator, a part critical to flight, that was 35 percent lighter than the previous titanium model.
In 2015, doctors at Salamanca University Hospital in Spain implanted a titanium sternum and rib cage into a patient whose own bones had been ravaged by cancer.
The common denominator in all three cases was that the titanium parts, with their complex, free-form geometry, were made with stunning precision on a 3-D printer, a high-tech machine that, at its core, is not much different from the average home inkjet printer.
These events were hailed as technological milestones in the field of additive manufacturing, early moonshots in medical and aerospace engineering that one day could lead to widescale production of everything from custom-made, patient-specific, orthopedic replacement parts to critical flight components.
Carpenter Technology Corp., a specialty metals manufacturer with deep roots in Berks County, is banking on it.
In March, the Philadelphia-headquartered company, with a sprawling plant in Reading and Muhlenberg Township, spent $35 million to acquire Puris, a titanium powder manufacturer in Bruceton Mills, W.Va.
New to the market
The move instantly thrust Carpenter into the growing global titanium powder market that could help fuel a new, industrial revolution.
“There is no doubt there is a radical manufacturing revolution going on,” said Carpenter Vice President of Corporate Development Stephen Peskosky. “There is no doubt that (additive manufacturing and 3-D titanium printing) is starting to commercialize.”
“Puris is part of a larger story taking shape in American manufacturing today around the advent of 3-D printing,” said former Puris CEO Craig Kirsch in a December 2014 interview with 3Dprint.com.
“Ultimately, this technology will empower engineers in such industries as aerospace, automotive, medical and oil and gas to reimagine how parts are designed by alleviating the time and cost constraints of tool-and-die manufacturing.”
Companies such as Lockheed Martin, General Electric, Alcoa, Boeing, Airbus and others have invested billions of dollars in additive manufacturing processes and facilities.
The Puris story
The company that eventually became Puris began its life as FMW Rubber Products in 1992. It made refueling systems for the Army’s M1A1 Abrams tanks. It later changed its name to FMW Composite Systems and, in 2002, acquired a company called Titanium Matrix Composite, a division of Atlantic Research Corp.
FMW Composite did well, with $37.6 million in federal government contracts from 2007 to 2013, according to Inside.gov. Most of those contracts were with the Department of Defense and NASA. FMW made parts for the Global Hawk, an unmanned aerial vehicle for military reconnaissance, as well as parts for the F-15, F-16 and F-22 fighter jets.
When defense funding dried up, FMW declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August 2013.
That’s when investors from Summit Materials jumped in.
They acquired the assets of the former FMW Composite Systems Inc. in March 2014, including a 50,000-square-foot manufacturing facility and what was at the time the only refractory-free gas atomization system in the U.S.: the main tool in the production of pure titanium powder.
The rebranded company proved attractive to Carpenter.
Aerospace is Carpenter’s largest division.
“It’s about half of what we do, and we’re a $2 billion company, so that’s a pretty big number,” Peskosky said.
Titanium powder is not a huge part of the equation right now, Peskosky said.
“But (production at) that West Virginia facility has the potential to triple in the next two years,” he said. “(The titanium powder facility) gives us a stronger portfolio for our offerings to the market.”
Stronger and better
3-D printing, or additive manufacturing, is not new.
Airplane giant Boeing, for example, has been conducting research and development into additive manufacturing since 1997, all in an effort to make airplanes lighter.
Boeing first flew 3-D printed titanium and load-bearing parts on an aircraft in 2003. Some 50,000 3-D printed parts currently are flying on 10 different military and commercial aircraft production programs, including the F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet and commercial jets such as the Boeing 777 and 787.
Similarly, metal powder production is not new to Carpenter.
It has been producing powders for tool and die making for 40 years. Those powders are for coatings by companies that fabricate tools, drill bits and cutting instruments to make them harder, sharper and more durable.
And titanium isn’t new.
Extremely strong, lightweight and resistant to corrosion, it has been a mainstay in the aerospace industry.
The new twist is the mainstream use of titanium powder for creating ever-more sensitive and critical 3-D-printed parts.
“Fantastically clean’
With titanium powder, as with other alloys, purity is strength.
It was impurities in some of the ocean liner Titanic’s 3 million wrought-iron rivets that some experts believe were partly responsible for that ship’s sinking in 1912.
The powder used in making reliable, 3-D-printed titanium parts must be free from impurities, including oxygen.
“We all breath oxygen and think its pure,” Peskosky said.
“The titanium powder we make is so pure that we don’t want oxygen anywhere near it,” he said, adding that the manufacturing facility in Bruceton Mills is “fantastically clean.”
“A speck of dust and you have a problem,” he said. “That can’t happen.”
In May 2016, nearly a year before Carpenter acquired it, Puris filed a patent for Puris 5+, a proprietary, titanium powder believed to be among the purest on the market.
Medical applications
By some accounts, titanium 3-D printing is still in its infancy. But many signs indicate that there is massive potential for growth.
The 3-D-printed titanium jaw that was implanted into an 83-year-old woman in Belgium in 2012 showed the potential for 3-D-printed titanium parts in medicine. It was a highly complex, articulating joint with cavities built in to promote muscle attachment and grooves to direct regrowth of nerves and veins. Thanks to body-imaging techniques, the jaw was constructed to be a perfect fit.
The company that made it, 3D Systems Inc., Leuven, Belgium, also has produced a small, precise, 3-D-printed orthopedic implant for dogs called the TTA RAPID.
That orthopedic implant has been able to successfully and fully rehabilitate about 10,000 dogs, ranging in size from terriers to Great Danes, that were diagnosed with debilitating cruciate ligament problems in their hind legs.
3D Systems also manufactures a cervical spine implant for human patients with degenerative spinal conditions.
Designed by a German medical device manufacturer, Emerging Implant Technologies, the implant is a tiny, complex lattice structure that is roughly the size of a nickel. Like the canine implant, the spine implant’s porous construction, allows it to bond easily with muscles.
It would be nearly impossible to create such complex shapes with ordinary milling techniques, industry experts say.
Additionally, thanks to patient imaging techniques that can take precise skeletal measurements, these implants can be constructed to be a perfect fit.
Aerospace applications
Beginning in the early 1990s, General Electric’s aviation engineers were actively studying additive processes.
At first, they made prototypes of engine parts, but then began experimenting with production of actual parts.
Led by aviation engineer Mohammad Ehteshami, and with the help of a 3-D-printing company called Morris Technologies in Cincinnati, GE developed and printed a nozzle for use on its most powerful aircraft engine.
That nozzle combined what 20 assembled parts into one printed part that weighed 25 percent less than the original nozzle.
In 2012, Ehteshami, Morris and their engineering teams, working in a secret facility that GE management didn’t even know about, re-created a helicopter engine that reduced the number of assembled engine parts from 900 to 14 and reduced the overall weight of those parts by 40 percent.
In 2016, GE shelled out more than $1 billion and bought controlling interests in Arcam AB from Sweden, and Concept Laser from Germany, two leading makers of industrial 3-D printers.
Lockheed Martin has invested heavily in 3-D printing. It has more than 100 3-D printers in operation at facilities across the United States, and operates five additive manufacturing innovation centers. Its printers can produce items of various size from brackets the size of playing cards to parts that are 10 feet long and printed in room-sized machines, according to information on the company website.
Use of 3-D printing has decreased the amount of time it takes to create parts, such as fuel tanks used in spacecraft, by 80 percent. It has reduced weight of various components by 40 percent.
Titanium fuel for spacecraft operate in incredible internal pressure and need to survive 54 Gs, as well as other environmental stresses during launch.
Several parts on Lockheed Martin’s Juno spacecraft had traveled 1.76 billion miles before entering Jupiter’s orbit in July.
“The big thing with additive manufacturing is that it gives you freedom not only in the geometry, but freedom in the material itself,” said Tim Simpson, a professor in mechanical and nuclear engineering at Penn State.
Simpson also leads the Center for Innovative Manufacturing Processing-3D, a leader in the growing field of additive manufacturing.
Wave of future
“You can now create new parts that you weren’t able to make before with a complex lattice structure,” Simpson said. “Now you get strength-to-weight ratios you can only find in nature. A tree is not a solid thing. Nature doesn’t design big chunks of solid objects. Everything is lightweight and high performance.”
Traditionally, with subtractive processes, “you start with a big block of metal and remove what you don’t want,” he said.
Additive processes, including those with titanium powder, are going to have a huge impact, Simpson said.
Widespread use of additive manufacturing will impact supply chain issues as well, Simpson said.
Noting the transformative work by GE engineers on the helicopter engine, Simpson said, “they redesigned a helicopter engine from 900 parts to 14. Now you’re talking about eliminating 10 to 15 suppliers.
“If I can integrate and print parts,” he said, “I don’t have to chase low-cost labor anymore.”
