The Specialty Metals Processing Consortium (SMPC) was established in 1990 with the goal of advancing the technology of melting and remelting of nickel and titanium alloys. In recent years, with primary funding support from the US Federal Aviation Administration, the SMPC technical program has focussed on technology to improve control over the final ingot remelting and solidification processes to alleviate conditions that lead to the formation of inclusions and positive and negative segregation. These anomalies have been identified in the FAA disk lifing protocol as crack initiation sites. The SMPC program has included development of monitoring and control systems for ESR, VAR and hearth melting, finite element modeling of melt pool geometry and flow and characterization of solidification defects. In more recent work, dynamic remelting conditions such as arc constriction and its effect on turbulence, splatter and perturbation of the solidification front, and the trajectory and dissolution of metallic and non-metallic inclusions have been addressed. This paper will outline the current experimental program that applies innovative instrumentation and diagnostic techniques to understand the formation and ultimately reduce the frequency of defects.