'FAST-Forge' process developed at Royce at the University of Sheffield could revolutionise production of titanium goods

Titanium is considered ideal for all sorts of highly specialised applications, but it’s highly expensive, inhibiting many industries and businesses from being able to utilise it. Plus, in the manufacturing of highly specialised parts, it’s not uncommon for up to 90% of the material to be machined away as swarf.

This is where the work of Sheffield Titanium Alloy Research (STAR) has been able to offer up a revolutionary new process; FAST-Forge, that can take swarf and use it to re-form usable raw material pieces. This has been tested at various forging factories with much success; David Lunn of W. H. Tildesley reports that using FAST-Forged titanium versus traditional titanium extends the use of their moulds from 200-300 uses to in excess of 1000, in other words, increasing the part life by at least 300%. This increase in machining life, the ease of forging, and reduced need for heating makes the forging dramatically cheaper and more energy efficient. Combine this with the fact the production process is now a closed-loop, continually reusing waste by-products to create new, high spec items, FAST-Forge makes titanium products far more sustainable as well as economically viable.

The research team have worked very closely with local manufacturers of hand tools, Footprint Tools, which is home to the Henry Royce Institute’s linear forging hammer (the only one of its kind in the U.K.). With the support and guidance of the Advanced Forming Research Centre (AFRC) who maintain the hammer, all three teams have been able to collaborate to prove that both the material and the method have the potential to revolutionise how we go about manufacturing in the future.
Industry-standard and scalable equipment on factory floors yields significantly more data and information than in a purely research-based setup. This has enabled a relatively small Sheffield business to benefit from state-of-the-art equipment to develop their own more effective and efficient manufacturing processes.