Metals Processing

Our Additive Manufacturing technologies hold the potential to displace existing technologies with reduced material waste and increased part complexity.

Melt Spinning casts a thin ribbon of rapidly quenched amorphous material in 100g batches, suitable for Al, Fe, Ni, and Cu alloys.

HIP compresses a volume of metal powder at high temperature and pressure, causing deformation, creep, and diffusion to create a homogenous annealed microstructure (compact solid) with minimal or no impurities. Meanwhile our research CIP is used to form powders into a green body, prior to sintering, through the pressing of various shapes, including discs, bars, and tubes.

Field Assisted Sintering Technology/Spark Plasma Sintering (FAST/SPS) uses electrical currents to heat a mould and/or sample. This method allows high heating rates and low processing cycle times. FAST/SPS offers new possibilities to manufacture numerous materials with potentially extraordinary characteristics.

The Fenn Hot Rolling Mill has been designed specifically for the University of Sheffield to roll steels, titanium alloys, and nickel-based alloys from a maximum starting thickness of 80mm to a finished thickness of 3mm.

The Conform extruder can take former wastes, such as powder from near-net-shape production or swarf from machined components, and produce useful wire.

These processes offer new, unique pathways in the processing of novel alloys, or valorisation of waste streams for new recycling and sustainability models in metal manufacturing.