Preparation technology of low-cost titanium alloy ingots

Preparation technology of low-cost titanium alloy ingots
Titanium and titanium alloy materials have a wide range of applications in important fields such as aviation, aerospace, ships, nuclear power, as well as civil markets such as petroleum, metallurgy, chemical, power, biomedical, etc., due to their excellent comprehensive properties such as low density, high specific strength, good toughness, non-magnetic, and good corrosion resistance. But due to its high cost, it limits its further civilian promotion and popularization. There have been some new technologies for preparing titanium alloy ingots that can effectively solve this problem, mainly:

1. Development of low-cost titanium alloys
By designing alloys and adding inexpensive alloying elements (such as Fe) instead of expensive alloying elements (such as V), low-cost titanium alloys can be developed to expand their applications. This method is highly feasible and uses low-cost alloy elements to achieve the goal of reducing costs.
The low-cost high-strength titanium alloy Ti-1.5Al-6.8Mo-4.5Fe developed by Timet in the United States, which uses Fe as an alloying element, and the titanium alloy Ti-6Al-1.7Fe-0.1Si for automotive use, have comparable alloy properties to Ti-1023 and cost only 78% of Ti-6Al-4V; The latter has better performance than Ti-6Al-4V and can reduce costs by 15% to 20%.

2. Add and return residual material preparation technology
In the production process of titanium alloys, a certain amount of residual materials are generated during the melting, forging, hot rolling, cold rolling, and pipe extrusion processes. By cleaning the residual materials and classifying them according to their grades, block and chip materials can be melted and reused by bundling electrodes in vacuum consumable arc furnaces (VAR), electron beam cooled bed furnaces (EBCHM), and plasma cooled bed furnaces (PACHM). The maximum recovery rate of residual materials can reach 100%.
The price of titanium scrap is only 20% to 30% of the price of raw material sponge titanium. By adding and returning scrap, not only does it greatly reduce the production cost of some grades of titanium alloys, meet the needs of the market and customers, but it also provides an effective way for the secondary utilization of scrap.

3. New melting method
At present, the methods used internationally to produce large-scale high-quality titanium alloy billets include the application of new electron beam cold bed furnace, plasma cold bed furnace melting technology, and single cold bed furnace melting direct rolling technology.
The new melting method can partially replace vacuum consumable arc furnace melting, realizing short process manufacturing technology from the process flow, eliminating the traditional processes of oil pressure press electrode pressing and vacuum welding in vacuum consumable arc furnace melting, and can also recycle a large amount of residual materials. The application of cold bed furnace melting technology not only improves the quality of titanium and titanium alloy ingots, but also reduces costs, especially if a single cold bed furnace technology is used to melt titanium alloys and directly melt flat ingots, the processing cost can be saved by 10% to 20%.