Flowforming Offers Cost Savings for Titanium Components

Titanium alloys continue to be vital for many important defense and aerospace systems but high cost and long delivery times are major factors limiting titanium alloy usage.  Offering substantial economical benefits, flowforming is becoming more widely embraced as the manufacturing process of choice in the fabrication of difficult-to-produce thin wall, cylindrical components.  Flowforming is often used as a net-shape process, requiring less material to make a part and reducing the costs associated with secondary machining operations.  Advanced materials such as titanium alloys are often solely available in forged bar or billet and now can be successfully flowformed into precision tubular parts.  Seamless components with high length to diameter ratios, up to 50 to 1, realize the greatest cost savings through the flowforming manufacturing process.  To read the full article, click here.

“Flowforming:  An Emerging Forming and Fabricating Process” will be the topic of Matthew Fonte’s presentation at the FABTECH International & AWS Welding Show, October 31 – November 2, 2006 in Atlanta, Georgia.  For more information, click on “North America’s Largest Metal Forming, Fabricating and Welding Event”.

Matthew Fonte, Director of Business Development for Dynamic Flowform Corp., will present Flowforming:  An Emerging Technology at the Titanium 2006 Conference, October 1-3, 2006 in San Diego, California.  For more information, click on Titanium Conference.

Dynamic Flowform is pleased to announce that we will once again be exhibiting at the AeroMat Conference & Exposition. For a free exhibit pass or more information on our exhibit, click here.

Dynamic Flowform is exhibiting at the Waste Management Symposium in Tucson, Arizona.  Paul Gearing and Matt Fonte, from Dynamic’s Business Development team, are explaining how flowforming can be used to create SEAMLESS waste containers.  Click here to see the flyer. 

Recently, the special metals department of an oil exploration company contacted Dynamic Flowform.  They needed an open-ended, instrument housing made out of a high strength, corrosion resistant material.  Traditionally, the piece was manufactured by gun drilling, machining and honing.  The customer learned that flowforming is a cold work process and that by flowforming their piece, they could reach the material’s peak mechanical properties.  After comparing the previous method of manufacturing and flowforming, they were eager to start flowforming their component.  Additionally, flowforming offered the customer the following benefits:

• The starting preform material requirement is one-fifth the length of the existing housing, saving material.
• The component has refined grain sizes from the flowform process.
• Extremely tight tolerances on concentricity, straightness and diameter are achievable through flowforming.

Having now received their finished components, our customer is pleased with the quality of the flowformed part, the cost-savings and the fact that Dynamic Flowform was able to meet their tight deadline. 

Matthew Fonte was the keynote speaker at this monthly dinner.  Engineers learned about the advanced form of metal forming called flowforming.  In addition to the basic flowforming process, Fonte covered how flowforming changes the grain structure and crystallographic texture of the metal.  Attendees also saw a photographic journey of the flowforming process from preform to finished component.  For more information or to invite Fonte to be a guest speaker at your meeting, please contact him.  For information on AKRON AMSE/ASM, click here.

Synopsis: We are facing the rising costs of materials. In the last 18 months alone, titanium and nickel prices have tripled. Making the problem worse, these materials are not readily available in tubular form. Therefore, when cylindrical components are needed in Titanium or Inconel more often than not, they are machined from solid bar with expensive operations and costly material wastes. By flowforming these expensive materials, customers keeps their components’ costs down in two significant ways. First, flowforming begins with a short preform, usually a fourth of the overall finished component’s length. Hence, there is minimal material waste when machining the short preform. Second, because the piece is flowformed to either net shape or near net shape, there is the elimination of costly machining operations that are conventionally employed to produce cylindrical components such as trepanning, gun drilling and boring. Design engineers, metallurgists, and procurement groups who are seeking ways to save metal and money are now turning to flowforming. Those who always appreciated the dimensional, mechanical, and metallurgical benefits of this manufacturing process are now strategically taking advantage of the economics of flowforming. Click here for entire article.

Dynamic Flowform Corp. announces that it has added another piece to the Company’s worldwide business by forming an International Business Development Team.

“It’s time,” says Matthew Fonte, Director of Business Development for Dynamic Flowform Corp. “We continuously get sales inquiries from around the world. It’s time to start serving these people well.” In response to the growing demands for service, Matthew has brought together a very qualified, global business development team. These men have vast experience in the niche-manufacturing processes specific to the defense, aerospace and oil industries.

Companies from around the world are turning to Dynamic Flowform for their flowforming needs for two main reasons. First, they know of Dynamic Flowform’s reputation as an international leader in the field, continuously producing quality parts with new metals and tighter tolerances. Secondly, with the US dollar being weak, it is economically prudent for intercontinental companies to take advantage of the exchange rate and have Dynamic Flowform produce their precise, seamless parts. To contact one of our new international business development team members, please click here.

Matthew Fonte, of Dynamic Flowform Corp., co-authored an article entitled “Flow Forming” which was published in the ASM Handbook.