Norwegian additive manufacturing (AM) pioneer Norsk Titanium (Hall 1 Stand H299) has announced it has entered into a collaboration agreement with Spirit Aerosystems to provide the U.S. company with 3D-printed structural titanium components for the commercial aerospace industry. The two companies have been co-developing the technology for aerospace application since 2008.
The new commercial agreement solidifies and extends the partnership, and identifies specific parts that can be immediately produced using Norsk’s proprietary plasma arc Rapid Plasma Deposition (RPD) technology. Spirit currently builds thousands of titanium parts for customers worldwide, and believes at least 30 percent could be made via RPD, an economical, clean production technology, with an estimated reduction in product costs of up to 30 percent each.
“Reducing our material cost and our environmental impact is a win-win for Spirit, our customers and the communities where we do business,” said Spirit president and CEO Tom Gentile.