Titomic in disruptive aerospace partnership

Large-scale additive manufacturing company Titomic has announced a new partnership with Ascent Aerospace which it believes could disrupt the global tooling industry.

Ascent is the largest aerospace tooling supplier in the world and utilises advanced techniques to provide very large, high-quality tool solutions.

It also supplies the commercial, defense, and space industries.

In a two stage process Titomic will first validate the use of its Titomic kinetic fusion (TKF) additive manufacturing process to produce a customer-approved invar tool.

Titomic will manufacture the tool on its TKF9000 metal additive manufacturing machine.

Invar comes from the word invariable and is a nickel–iron alloy notable for its low coefficient of thermal expansion.

A second phase will establish a joint Titomic-Ascent sales strategy to supply aerospace tooling taking advantage of reduced production lead times possible with the TKF process.

Titomic managing director Jeff Lang said the global tooling market was expanding because of demand for the production of composite parts.

Lang said: “Titomic’s partnership with Ascent Aerospace makes strategic sense to further validate the commercial opportunities for industrial scale metal additive manufacturing using Titomic’s TKF systems.

“Ascent Aerospace’s notable achievements in producing the largest invar molds ever made provides both companies with an inflection point to disrupt the traditional tooling industry.”

Ascent Aerospace CEO Michael Mahfet said the company looked forward to working with Titomic to advance metal 3D printing for aerospace tooling.

Picture: Ascent Aerospace

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