Page 25 - Australian Defence Magazine March-April 2022

MARCH-APRIL 2022 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
DEFENCE BUSINESS MANUFACTURING 25
ABOVE: Titomic’s TKF1000 additive manufacturing system in operation at the company’s Melbourne Production Bureau
LEFT: The world’s largest metal 3D printer, the TKF9000 demonstrates its spraying process
TIMELINE
Titomic is currently at the stage of proving the green titanium technology, for which it is working with partners including Boeing, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Or- ganisation (ANSTO) and Swinburne University. Next will be demonstrating it through the MMI integration stream, which Boeing expects will have an outcome in Q4 of this year.
“We’re at the material validation stage at the moment,” Wall said. “We want to get to proving out a repeatable and reliable process.”
When asked where they anticipate the main challenges for green titanium, both companies said that these would be at the commercialisation step.
“I think one of the things we can’t understate is how valuable the federal government and state government’s processes are right now – their MMI system, their National Manufacturing Priority System, Defence’s Sovereign Indus- trial Capability Priorities (SICPs) – and then them bringing in the funding to get the technology across that commer- cialisation bridge,” Watson said. “This kind of relationship wouldn’t have occurred, for example, unless Titomic was funded to reach out to Boeing.
"So, really, I think the main challenge there is to contin-
ue to develop the technology to the point that you can get specific demonstrations and then get those specific dem- onstrations in front of the people who have access to the opportunities.
“The federal government have got a good model here with the MMI system, though, and so that’s probably the main mitigation for that risk.”
Koeck spoke about the resistance he expects from cus- tomers who might have had existing manufacturing pro- cesses established for decades.
“Especially when you talk to manufacturing managers, first of all they are averse to any risk, and second, in some cases, they are also challenged because they think we’re going to replace everything they have right now,” he said.
“But different tools co-exist next to each other and so from our side, we are not here to replace existing manufac- turing processes, we are here to provide another tool in the toolbox. That’s the way we approach it.
“We feel that we are really driving something at the forefront of technology, especially with all the innovation around aerospace, defence and space flight, and also at the same time that space flight is commercialising. In the past there were tens of thousands of things flown into space, and all very high-tech, specialised stuff. In the future there will be hundreds of thousands, millions in fact, and more and more often we are bringing ‘normal technology’ into space.
"But this means prices for those components have to come down significantly, which creates a lot of challenges for the way things are produced, the way they’re shielded, and the way they’re launched – and here is the huge oppor- tunity for Titomic and our partners.” ■
TITOMIC