Capacity increases to boost titanium marketshare

Apr 30, 2012 | 07:00 PM | AMM staff

Tags  Titanium Metals Corp., aerospace market, titanium powder, Allegheny Technologies Inc., RTI International Metals Inc.,

Titanium Metals Corp. (Timet) has commissioned a plasma cold-hearth melt furnace at its Morgantown, Pa., operations as it aims to boost its role in the aerospace market with new melting capacity, while also installing new titanium powder capabilities.

The addition of plasma-arc melting will increase Timet’s ability to meet a growing demand for "complex, high-temperature alloys" that will be used extensively in the newest generation of aircraft engines, Timet president and chief executive officer Bob O’Brien said.

Dallas-based Timet is already a major source of titanium produced by another cold-hearth technology—electron beam melting—via an existing furnace in Morgantown. The company said in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission last year that 46 percent of its total annual global melting capacity of 68,450 tonnes (about 150 million pounds) used electron-beam technology, with more-conventional vacuum-arc remelting accounting for nearly all of the balance.....