China's titanium printing technology surpasses Europe and the United States: already able to print full titanium 3D 20

Of all the aerospace materials in the world, titanium alloy is a material of very high status. This material has almost all the advantages of light weight, wear resistance, corrosion resistance, high strength, flexibility and ductility. Of course, good performance is naturally expensive. Titanium, the natural content of this metal is not low, but its collection and smelting has always been a problem. This is a direct result of the high price of titanium alloys. Titanium alloy performance is too much stronger than aluminum, the metal once in the high-end vehicles directly seize the market, whether it is weapons-grade black technology test is well known, all the airliners are a large number of titanium alloys used as raw materials.

Extreme examples in the United States in the 1960s, the last century by the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works production of the SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft is the ultra-high-speed titanium alloy utility model. This crazy airplane in pursuit of the ultimate speed of Mach 3, desperately using 97% metal titanium alloy, can not help but let us marvel at the wealth of strange thick. The more modern the fighter, the more titanium alloy is used. To F-4 "phantom" as the first generation of the average titanium alloy parts accounted for 4%, this figure reaches the third generation of the machine like F-15 to more than 10% (except for the MiG-25, perverted) to the F-22 fourth generation of the machine, in order to the whole body contact and high combat capability, titanium alloy parts accounted for as high as 40% or even more.

Titanium alloys are actually widely used, or is it the industrially powerful Russians? Whether using titanium alloy as a pressure-resistant shell, all kinds of titanium alloy combat submarines, or the KGB and the Federal Security Service to use all kinds of "welded helmets", Algin helmets, are using titanium alloy as the main material. Even during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the 6B-1 series of body armor is made of 12 pieces of titanium armor.

In the 1970s, China realized the development and utilization of domestically produced titanium alloy weapons through the efforts of all parties and technical support from western countries. China's earliest use of titanium alloys and aluminum alloys as its main weapon was the Type 80 100mm mortar used by airborne troops. While conventional mortars of the same caliber already weigh more than 75 kilograms, the Type 80 mortar has a combat weight of only 52 kilograms, which can be carried by three people after decomposition.

In recent years, with the breakthrough of 3D technology, China has made rapid progress in the field of 3D printing technology, especially in the metal powder laser molding technology, China is at the forefront of the world.In 2013, China successfully broke through the aircraft titanium alloy large and complex components laser molding technology, that is, 3D printing of titanium alloy parts. The technology was successfully industrialized in 2015, completing more than 15 square meters of planarized 3D printing. This level of complex parts printing has been successfully applied to the manufacture of large aircraft components such as J-20, J-31, and destroyers. Meanwhile, only the United States has equivalent printing technology globally, and it is not as good as China's in terms of scale.