The $23.1 billion turnover global metals giant will produce materials designed specifically for a range of additive technologies to meet increasing demand for complex, high performance 3D-printed parts for aerospace and other high growth markets, such as automotive, medical and building and construction.
The $60 million expansion is under construction at the Alcoa Technical Center, the world’s largest light metals research centre, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Alongside the announcement about the R&D centre, Alcoa has also unveiled its Ampliforge process, a technique combining advanced materials, designs and additive and traditional manufacturing processes. Using the Ampliforge, Alcoa designs and 3D-prints a near-complete part, then treats it using a traditional manufacturing process, such as forging.
The company has shown that the process can enhance the properties of 3D-printed parts in the areas of toughness and strength, versus parts made solely by additive manufacturing. Further, the Ampliforge process significantly reduces material input and simplifies production relative to traditional forging processes. Alcoa is piloting the technique at its Pittsburgh and Cleveland, Ohio, locations.
In its 2014 annual report, Alcoa highlighted that by using additive manufacturing (3D printing), it can already model complex jet engine parts in half the time, 52 weeks instead of 25, increasing speed to market and reducing costs by approximately 25%, although this was not linked with Ampliforge specifically.