Australian manufacturer Titomic will utilise its TKF metal additive manufacturing capability to manufacture tooling products for US-based Ascent Aerospace as part of an agreement announced this week.
Ascent, which employs more than 900 industry professionals across 11 locations globally, is a world-renowned, single-source provider of production and automated assembly systems for the aerospace, defence and space sectors.
The company produces a full suite of composite tooling, layup molds, mandrels, bond tools, and trim and drill fixtures, including the largest Invar molds ever made for aerospace.
Titomic said the partnership consist of two phases. Phase 1 will see Titomic deliver an Ascent customer approved Invar36 tool produced using the TKF9000 metal
additive manufacturing system to perform a test and production feasibility trial.
According to the company’s ASX release, Phase 2 envisions establishing a joint-sales strategy for the supply of aerospace tooling, using TKF’s metal additive manufacturing process, to reduce the current lengthy lead-times to meet the growing global demand.
Mr. Jeff Lang, Titomic Managing Director, said the company has conducted extensive research and development of metal tooling for the aerospace and defence industries, and is now ready to provide the industry with a new tooling option using TKF industrial scale metal additive manufacturing,.
“The significant increase in the global tooling market is being driven by the aerospace and defence industries’ compounding need for higher production rates of carbon fiber parts,” he continued.
“The increased use of carbon fiber parts in commercial aircraft has created a backlog in the supply of tooling that is not being resolved.
“Titomic’s partnership with Ascent Aerospace makes strategic sense to further validate the commercial opportunities for industrial scale metal additive manufacturing using Titomic’s TKF systems to resolve this current, and ongoing, backlog for tooling.”
Mr Michael Mahfet, CEO of Ascent Aerospace, added: “Our focused research & development activities in additive manufacturing technologies aligns with Ascent’s multi-year technology roadmap and realization of expansive efforts studying the benefits of these technologies within the aerospace tooling market.”
“Staying at the forefront of additive manufacturing positions us to remain the leader in new and innovative tooling solutions, supporting strong collaboration with our customers and supplementing our in-house, vertically integrated design and fabrication capabilities.
“We look forward to working with Titomic in the advancement of metallic 3D printing for the aerospace tooling industry,” Mr Mahfet concluded.
