Application of titanium powder metallurgy in China

As Chinese titanium powder production process being perfected and improved quality, it makes high volume apply titanium powder being possible. Titanium powder is first used in manufacturing titanium powder metallurgy dense piece and porous piece, such as use the excellent corrosion resistance and high strength of titanium and titanium alloy, to manufacture aircraft engine components and petrochemical industries wear and corrosion parts. In order to make titanium powder metallurgy parts used for the aerospace, automotive and other industries, international has developed a variety of process equipment for preparing high quality titanium powder, such as arc rotating electrode, plasma rotating electrode, electron beam rotating disk method, method of arc rotating vortices and recent developed increased high frequency induction melting of vortex air atomization method, etc.China uses the plasma rotating electrode method and gas atomization method also produced the titanium powder that containing less than 0.15% of oxygen, but never widely used in the aerospace and automotive industries.

Titanium powder metallurgy development in China for 30 years, into practical use powder metallurgy was limited in valve, wear and corrosion axis and cellular components. In contrast, Titanium is very active in other areas, a lot of product performance due to the application of titanium powder has improved significantly, titanium powder used in diamond tools can greatly improve the wettability and bond strength of diamond; for fireworks production, can improve the burn rate of the powder, and pattern color has a unique effect, used for carbide key head can greatly increase its service life.

In the 1880s, China large-scale introduced advanced technologies play a large promoting role on the application of titanium powder, also put forward higher requirements on titanium powder performance. After introduced fluorescent lamp production line from Italy, China has successively developed titanium amalgam and aluminum getter, not only improved the quality of fluorescent lamp, but also improved the environment. Information from metal powder exporter show that the high pure titanium powder in the titanium Amalgam was original imported from Japan, impurities and air content are very low, China produced titanium powder has already reached the application requirements, and exported to Japan and the United States, particularly worth mentioning is the application of titanium powder in alloy additives. Containing titanium powder of aluminum alloy additives join in aluminum alloy can effectively refine grain, improving products apparent, improved processability and mechanical properties. In the late 80s, China introduced titanium boron additive, only a few years time, titanium boron additives became China's biggest user, the used amount was up to hundreds of tons per year.

In other aspects, the former Soviet Union and other countries were extensively used the titanium powder for epoxy coating and friction in the 1960s, China began to engage in researching and developing this area from the 1970s, until the late 1990s with the development of industrial technology and the production cost decreased, it finally out of the lab and started batch applications.

Due to the titanium’s unique physical and chemical properties and mechanical properties, make titanium powder has a broad application prospect, and the titanium powder application level will be continuously improved. Development and application of titanium-containing coatings will have greater success in recent years. With the development of the Chinese auto industry, titanium-containing friction materials are very promising. In 3-5 years, cars titanium powder metallurgy parts will receive a wide range of application become a large field of titanium after aerospace, also a considerable area of titanium powder’s application.

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