Low-Cost Titanium Alloy Ingot Preparation Technology
Aug 11, 2025
Titanium and titanium alloys, due to their excellent comprehensive properties, including low density, high specific strength, good toughness, non-magnetic properties, and excellent corrosion resistance, are widely used in key fields such as aviation, aerospace, shipbuilding, and nuclear power, as well as in civilian markets such as petroleum, metallurgy, chemicals, electricity, and biomedicine. However, their high cost has limited their further popularization in civilian applications. New titanium alloy ingot preparation technologies have emerged that can effectively address this issue.
1. Development of Low-Cost Titanium Alloys
Through alloy design, by adding inexpensive alloying elements (such as Fe) to replace expensive alloying elements (such as V), low-cost titanium alloys are being developed to expand their applications. This approach is highly feasible and utilizes low-cost alloying elements to reduce costs.
Timet, a US company, has developed low-cost, high-strength titanium alloys, Ti-1.5Al-6.8Mo-4.5Fe, and automotive-grade titanium, Ti-6Al-1.7Fe-0.1Si, using Fe as an alloying element. The former boasts alloy properties comparable to Ti-1023, yet costs only 78% of Ti-6Al-4V; the latter offers superior performance and a 15%-20% cost reduction.
2. Additive Recycling Technology
During the titanium alloy production process, a certain amount of scrap is generated during melting, forging, hot rolling, cold rolling, and tube extrusion. By cleaning and sorting the scrap by grade, the blocks and scrap can be recycled using bundled electrodes in vacuum consumable arc furnaces (VARs), electron beam cooling hearth furnaces (EBCHMs), and plasma cooling hearth furnaces (PACHMs). This allows for a scrap recycling rate of up to 100%. The price of titanium scrap is only 20% to 30% of the original titanium sponge. By adding recycled scrap, the production cost of some titanium alloy grades is significantly reduced, meeting market and customer needs, and providing an effective secondary utilization method for scrap.
3. New Melting Methods
Currently, international methods for producing large, high-quality titanium alloy billets include the use of new electron beam cold hearth furnaces, plasma cold hearth furnace melting technologies, and single cold hearth furnace melting and direct rolling technologies.
These new melting methods can partially replace vacuum consumable arc furnace melting, achieving a shortened manufacturing process. They eliminate the traditional vacuum consumable arc furnace melting steps, such as hydraulic press electrode pressing and vacuum welding, while also allowing for significant scrap recycling. The application of cold hearth furnace melting technology not only improves the quality of titanium and titanium alloy ingots but also reduces costs. In particular, using a single cold hearth furnace to melt titanium alloys and directly cast flat ingots can reduce processing costs by 10% to 20%.
The company boasts leading domestic titanium processing production lines, including:
German-imported precision titanium tube production line (annual production capacity: 30,000 tons);
Japanese-technology titanium foil rolling line (thinnest to 6μm);
Fully automated titanium rod continuous extrusion line;
Intelligent titanium plate and strip finishing mill;
The MES system enables digital control and management of the entire production process, achieving product dimensional accuracy of ±0.01μm.
