Titanium Technology:Creating Porous Materials from Powdered Titanium

Photo credits: mush

The Titanium Technologies Platform in New Zealand is getting some attention around the world for their work with new ways to use titanium. This is exciting news for a lot of people involved with businesses that use the material for one reason or another. Specifically, the group has developed a way to make porous materials from powdered titanium. This is going to open up a lot of applications in the aerospace industry not to mention marine engineering and possible biomedical uses.

According to initial research and results, some are saying that new titanium based products are going to open up a huge market in New Zealand in the coming years. This brings up an interesting point – whether or not other countries around the world will try to duplicate the technology on their own in order to find even newer ways to use titanium in an industrial sense.

Marine Engineering Possibilities

Titanium alloy structures have been created in the past, but thanks to the  Titanium Technologies Platform group and all of their advances, the technology is advancing rapidly. One of the first successful uses of the new material is in boat building. Team New Zealand has been able to use the material process in order to make their boat lighter while not giving up any strength or durability.

Another product created by GNS Science for Team New Zealand was a knife made out of the new material. It was strong enough to cut through ropes in cases of entanglement, but it’s super light and doesn’t add any weight to the vessel. When in a competitive race, every single pound counts considerably. The knives are actually brought into existence thanks to a 3D printer. Many other possibilities exist for titanium now that new ways of using it are known about.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment in New Zealand hasn’t been in operation long, but they’ve already been able to do quite a bit with powdered metal technology. The future is very bright when it comes to other new processes and technologies they may be able to create using titanium and other metals. This is something that will put New Zealand on the map in a good way.

In the long run, this may affect other industries and companies. The Synthetic Grass Warehouse, for example, might be able to use knowledge about titanium in order to produce better astroturf. That’s just one example of how titanium technology may impact other industries. And this is why so many people in New Zealand and around the world are excited about the possibilities in the future.

Using 3D printers and powdered titanium, the possibilities are virtually limitless. The next few years are going to prove very interesting for anyone in the metals industry. While a lot of work has been done in New Zealand up to this point, the technology is likely to quickly spread around the world – to the benefit of people from many different countries.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 6th, 2013 at 6:01 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.