Australian researchers have found that copper is the best choice for significantly improving
titanium 3D printing.
Titanium has excellent corrosion resistance and the highest strength - density ratio among all metal elements. It can be used in combination with other elements to produce strong, lightweight alloys for many high-performance applications in technology, manufacturing and medicine.
In these fields, 3D printing is becoming increasingly important as an effective manufacturing method. However, titanium alloys currently used in additive manufacturing usually form cylindrical crystals and are held together during the printing process.
The resulting adverse grain structure makes them prone to fracture or deformation and thus material failure. The result is that the titanium 3d-printed components are completely unusable without additional processing.
Now, a collaboration between researchers at the royal Melbourne institute of technology (RMIT), the commonwealth scientific and industrial research organisation (CSIRO), the university of Queensland and Ohio state university reports that a new cupr-titanium alloy appears to have solved the problem.
