CHARLOTTE, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--IperionX Limited (ASX: IPX) (“IperionX” or “Company”) is pleased to announce that it has entered into an agreement with Ohio-based aerospace additive manufacturing company Materials Resources, LLC (“MRL”) to qualify and demonstrate the performance of IperionX’s high quality titanium alloy powders for additively manufactured aerospace parts under an MRL project with the U.S. Navy to test titanium flight critical metal replacement components for the U.S. Department of Defense (“DoD”).
IperionX has supplied MRL with titanium alloy (Ti-6Al-4V) powders from the Company’s fully operational pilot facility in Utah, which will be used to produce flight critical components via metallic additive manufacturing to reduce production lead times and cost while achieving the demanding requirements of aerospace.
The U.S. has no commercial domestic production of primary titanium metal (titanium sponge) and is now 100% import reliant after Timet’s plant in Nevada closed in 2020. The world’s largest producers of primary titanium metal are China, Japan and Russia. Given the lack of domestic production capacity, and that the U.S. no longer maintains titanium sponge in the National Defense Stockpile, downstream titanium producers, including producers of goods such as ingot, billet, sheet, coil, and tube, are almost all entirely dependent on non-U.S. sources of titanium.
This presents the possibility that in a national emergency, U.S. production of titanium components would be curtailed as a result of being denied access to imports of titanium sponge, limiting the ability to serve customers requirements, including the defense sector.
Further, currently only Japan, Russia and Kazakhstan have titanium sponge plants certified to produce aerospace rotating-quality sponge that can be used for aerospace engine parts and other sensitive aerospace applications, with Russian company VSMPO-AVISMA being the largest titanium supplier for Boeing commercial production for parts used on Boeing 737, 767, 787, 777 and 777X airplanes.
Ayman Salem, MRL’s Founder and CEO said: “Having a domestic supplier of titanium alloys for additive manufacturing can address a major challenge in the supply chain. Demonstrating the repeatability and reproducibility of properties in flight critical components will close the loop from powder to fatigue performance. The planned use of MRL’s integrated computational adaptive additive manufacturing (iCAAM) tools, machine learning, and in-situ NDE sensors will produce crucial information on the behavior of the material while keeping records of the pedigree for use in the qualification process.”
Anastasios (Taso) Arima, IperionX’s Managing Director and CEO said: “We are very pleased to be working with MRL to produce and test parts for the U.S. Department of Defense utilizing U.S. sourced titanium alloy powders. The U.S. has no commercial domestic production of primary titanium metal and is 100% import reliant, presenting the possibility that in a national emergency U.S. production of titanium components would be curtailed as a result of being denied access to imports of titanium sponge, limiting the ability to serve customers requirements, including the defense sector.
We see this partnership with MRL as an important step in the reshoring of a 100% U.S. sourced titanium supply chain for military components.”
Full details can be found here.
