Net Shaped Extrusions in Titanium

Extruded shapes provide significant savings in raw material and the machining costs, by reducing the buy-to-fly ratio. They are ideal for the fabrication of long members of the aircraft that require constant cross sections. Most common aerospace extrusions include seat tracks that are produced using the work horse titanium alloy, Ti-6Al-4V (Ti-64). The advantages of the near-to-net shaped extrusion technology over the traditional methods such as machining from plate/bar and standard extrusion process, was presented at an earlier AeroMat conference by the R&D division of Plymouth Engineered Shapes (PES). The buy-to-fly ratio ranging from 8.33~9.46 was reduced to ~2.68 when utilizing the near-to-net shaped extruded products, depending on the shape geometry and the extrusion ratio. As a part of an ongoing effort to further reduce the overall manufacturing costs, PES has produced net shaped Ti-64 products of varying shapes on a production scale (multiple shapes, in excess of 200ft of total linear footage). This paper will present the different net shaped extruded parts and discusses the benefit of the mechanical properties and microstructure compared to the standard extrusions. It will also provide the advantages realized in terms of cost savings and machining time utilizing the net shaped extrusions.