Current titanium alloys used in additive manufacturing often cool and bond together in column-shaped crystals during the 3D printing process, making them prone to cracking or distortion.
And unlike aluminium or other commonly used metals, there is no commercial grain refiner for titanium that manufacturers can use to effectively refine the microstructure to avoid these issues. But now a new titanium alloy with copper, appears to have solved this problem.
In this work, Laser metal deposition is used to develop new Ti-Cu alloys which display promising mechanical properties, such as high yield strength and uniform elongation, compared to conventional alloys under similar processing conditions.
Zhang, D., Qiu, D., Gibson, M.A. et al. Additive manufacturing of ultrafine-grained high-strength titanium alloys. Nature 576, 91–95 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1783-1
For more information:
https://www.rmit.edu.au/news/all-news/2019/dec/3dprinting-titanium-copper
