Land Forces 2022 - Cold spray AM continues to progress alongside defence

Today @AuManufacturing’s special editorial series, Land Forces 2022, looks at some uses of cold spray additive manufacturing in an interview with Titomic’s Dominic Parsonson.

Satellite radiation shielding. Gun barrel manufacturing. Ballistic protection. Pressure vessels.

To speak to Dominic Parsonson, Head of Sales at Titomic, is to hear a person discernibly excited about the potential – only a tiny, tiny fraction of it realised so far – of what their company’s technology offers.

He is quick to acknowledge that cold spray additive manufacturing isn’t exactly new, as anybody who is introduced to it quickly learns. But it’s taken two Australian companies to bring it beyond coating and repair applications. (The defence sector in the US was an early adopter of cold spray repairs, for helicopter gearbox housings.)

Titomic – whose high-pressure TKF method of supersonically depositing and fusing metal particles has its origins at CSIRO – and its rival SPEE3D have been leaders in moving cold spray into manufacturing.

“I think we both do a great job of promoting Australian innovation and Australian capability, and at the same time growing the cold spray additive manufacturing market,” he told @AuManufacturing Conversations, while giving his take on what the two companies do differently.

In episode 23 of the podcast Parsonson shared a little about what cold spray AM can offer now and will offer in the future.

As we spoke during Land Forces 2022 last week, there is plenty about how that applies to defence users, as well as a few mentions of other frontier applications of the technology.

Tomorrow we will publish another conversation from last week’s expo with Steve Camilleri, co-founder and CTO of SPEE3D, which used the event to launch its expeditionary 3D printer.

Episode guide

1:30 – A “friendly rivalry” with SPEE3D, and the points of difference between each company’s offering.

3:10 – What cold spray additive manufacturing (CSAM) can offer defence users.

5:40 – Narrowing the company’s focus down to 11 key areas. Three examples in ballistic shielding, weapons barrels, and radiation shielding, and what they say about the strengths of cold spray.

7:50 – How CSAM will change maintenance for defence.

9:10 – The differences across low, medium and high-pressure applications.