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LOW-COST-TITANIUM produced by directpowder-consolidation processing technology, as proposed herein, is an emerging field of innovative, and substantially reduced-cost, titanium product form technology, which could replace the current ingot-based, state-of-the-art, labor-intensive, and very costly methods of thermomechanical processing of ingot-based titanium alloy product forms. The currently used multiple-arc-remelt ingot-based technology uses the costly state-of-the-art fabrication processing routes starting with the extraction processes known as the Kroll’s and/or Hunter processes.[1] With the development of direct consolidation of powderbased titanium alloys, substantial cost reduction will be achieved through bypassing the extremely laborious SAMI M. EL-SOUDANI, Associate Technical Fellow, with the Boeing Company, Huntington Beach, CA. Contact e-mail: [email protected] KUANG-O. YU, Senior Director, ERNIE M. CRIST, Director, and FUSHENG SUN, Senior Technical Specialist, are with the RTI International Metals, Inc., 1000 Warren Avenue, Niles, OH 44446. MICHAEL B. CAMPBELL, Process Engineer, TONY S. ESPOSITO, Product Development Manager, and JOSHUA J. PHILLIPS, Aerospace Program Manager, are with the Plymouth Engineered Shapes, Inc., 201 Commerce Court, Hopkinsville, KY 42240. VLADIMIR MOXSON, President, and VLAD A. DUZ, Director, are with the Advance Materials, Inc., 1890 Georgetown Road, Hudson, OH 44236. Manuscript submitted January 13, 2012. Article published online September 26, 2012 METALLURGICAL AND MATERIALS TRANSACTIONS A

titanium sponge mechanical breakdown with saws and drills into sponge fines, which are subsequently reconsolidated into electrodes for multiple-arc re-melting for ingot refinement, HIP’ing, cutting of large ingots into billets, and/or forging them into suitable preforms for thermomechanical processing by extrusion, rolling, and/or forging. With the direct powder consolidation product form technology development, the titanium product form fabricators will be enabled to use much closer to near-net thickness preforms and/or billets (i.e., reduced thicknesses, diameters, etc.) for extrusion, rolling, and/or forging with just enough thermo-mechanical processing to meet the aerospace material specification requirements. This in turn will reduce the overall processing cost of the required processing steps, besides diminishing the buy-to-fly ratios to bare minima by eliminating, or considerably reducing wasted scrap titanium, not to mention the concomitant much reduced cost of machining titanium. With this in mind, the specific objectives of this Boeing-led project were to develop low-cost, titanium-powder technology for canless extrusion processing aiming at replacing the presently costly ingot-based extruded product processing. In addition, our recommended canless method herein will eliminate the need for titanium powder preform canning. This in turn will further remove yet another significant fabrication cost driver, namely, titanium powder canning within steel enclosures before