Melbourne, Australia, 7th August 2018: Titomic Limited (ASX:TTT) (“Titomic” or “Company”) is excited to announce today its involvement as a core industry partner in a new $4.9 million Australian Research Council Training Centre (“ARC Training Centre”) for the Surface Engineering for Advanced Materials (“SEAM”) with Swinburne University of Technology (“Swinburne”).
This ARC funding will see the creation of a Titomic Kinetic Fusion R&D facility at Swinburne capable of incubating multiple additive manufacturing projects. Titomic will work in conjunction with fellow core partner the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), as well as Swinburne PhD students and post-doctorate researchers, to further the capabilities of the existing Titomic Kinetic Fusion systems.
Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies addressed by SEAM are considered as the most challenging since they involve fabricating net and near-net artefacts fashioned from difficult to process metals such as titanium alloys. Currently the two prime methods of AM are: Titomic Kinetic Fusion and laser technology. Both of these high technology AM variants will be subject to further R&D within SEAM.
Under the research grant, a Smart Factory designed to utilise advanced automated robotic systems will be built to integrate core principles of Industry 4.0 and create cyber-physical systems for commercial additive manufacturing of specialty bespoke metal alloy products using Titomic Kinetic Fusion as a commercial AM system. The research grant will also see the ARC Training Centre integrate world-leading industry-university cooperation in applied training and novel research outcomes and applications with a specific focus on surface engineering. The project team will be trained on aspects of the Titomic Kinetic Fusion process that are unique to AM technology.
Titomic CTO, and named SEAM core partner investigator Jeff Lang said; “The new ARC Training Centre will allow the creation of the Titomic Kinetic Fusion R&D facility at Swinburne University. This will result in the creation of cutting-edge material advancements and commercial manufacturing systems that are based on Industry 4.0 to enhance the Titomic Kinetic Fusion process as a viable commercial manufacturing integrated system.”
Commenting on the $4.9M research training centre grant Titomic CEO Gilbert Michaca said; “This federal government grant comes at an exciting time for Titomic and the entire metal additive manufacturing sector which is currently experiencing exponential growth worldwide. Titomic will invest $250,000 over a 5-year period as a core partner in the SEAM project to assist the creation of the ARC Training Centre whilst highlighting Titomic as the global leader of industrial scale additive manufacturing.
Professor Chris Berndt will lead the ARC Training Centre in Surface Engineering for Advanced Materials, of which Titomic is a core partner.
