Metalysis’ Materials Discovery Centre
Metalysis’ Materials Discovery Centre
Metal powder technology company, Metalysis has announced it will co-develop a high value aluminium-scandium alloy as part of a partnership with an unnamed international partner.
Contributing to a joint research and development programme, Metalysis will leverage its electrochemical technology to provide a scandium-rich feedstock addition, supporting master alloy production. The two companies are targeting higher scandium content than current market offerings at lower manufacturing costs with this new alloy.
Aluminium-scandium alloys boasts unique strength and lightweighting characteristics and as such are of increasing demand among high specification manufacturing applications in the aerospace and automotive industries, for example. The drawback of scandium alloys has been the cost. In some cases it is said to triple the cost of a manufacturing process.
Typically, it is mined as a by-product, with little surety of supply. Metalysis’ process, however, brings greater accessibility and lower cost.
“We are very pleased to welcome another international partner to our R&D project portfolio, and look forward to commencing a particularly exciting work programme together,” said Dion Vaughan, CEO of Metalysis. “Aluminium-scandium alloys are a huge subject of interest to Metalysis, and while their cost implications are well-known, so are their highly beneficial characteristics. The ‘unknown’ element of this picture is how disruptive technologies will traverse historic barriers to manufacturing these alloys, and this is exactly what we address.
“We will use Metalysis’ process to explore opportunities to materially improve their cost setting and deliver a high-demand, high-spec product. Achieving this would pose truly revolutionary results and create an important area of potential growth for both parties.”
The R&D Programme will operate from Metalysis’ Materials Discovery Centre within South Yorkshire’s Advanced Manufacturing Park Innovation District. It marks the second R&D programme to be conducted in the centre since it opened in March 2017. The Materials Discovery Centre hosts the company’s commercial R&D projects to produce exotic metal powders for high performance alloys of growing demand among additive manufacturing applications.
