Cold Spray Additive Manufacture (CSAM)

Implementation of an advanced cold spray additive manufacturing (CSAM) capability to develop the technology, support supply chain development, and facilitate end user adoption.

This project has successfully established a first-of-its-kind advanced cold spray additive manufacturing (CSAM) capability in the UK available for the development of the technology. This provides aerospace organisations with the opportunity to develop use cases while limiting investment costs and reducing risk. The establishment of this capability helps to support both large organisations and SMEs in their efforts to achieve Net Zero targets and reduce operating costs.

This project has allowed for collaboration between key stakeholders in cold spray technology to facilitate advancement of standardisation activities and improve the quality of CSAM systems available for purchase today.

The project involved a CSAM system being successfully procured, installed and commissioned at TWI’s Cambridge site. This facility was commissioned and used to produce demonstrator components composed of titanium, invar and multi-material functionally graded compositions in order to highlight the significant opportunities that CSAM offers.

These demonstrators included a Cu-Ni tube with graded composition, an Invar36 mould tool, a 316L stainless steel heat exchanger with in-built cooling channels, Ti-6Al-4V seamless tubes and PM2000 ODS plates. This series of demonstrators established the range of challenging materials that can be deposited by cold spray as well as the novel component designs, which are enabled by CSAM.

Adoption of this technology presents opportunities for wide benefit including reductions in materials wastage in the move to Net Zero goals, reductions in critical/strategic materials usage for improved supply chain resilience and enabling the design and manufacture of novel components with enhanced capability such as light weighting, thermal management, etc. Further benefits include reductions in maintenance costs, increases in asset lifetimes, and increases in asset availability through reduced maintenance and on-site repair.