The UK Technical Lab in Witton, Birmingham, UK, is our European center for alloy and product development, located adjacent to our melting, forging and finishing facility.
It is staffed by nine engineers under the direction of manager Roger Thomas, plus a Chemical Lab staff and a Mechanical Testing Lab staff.
Our development workshop, staffed by five engineers, provides a range of facilities for the production of small quantities of titanium and alloys.
We offer 'button' melting up to 250g, extensive small scale forging and rolling facilities, rod and sheet fabrication, heat treating, machining, finishing, chemical analysis and mechanical testing.
Extruding and forging are performed on a 226 ton press (up to 1400oC), while compacting and extruding can be accomplished on a separate 206 ton press. We perform hot rolling (up to 16" wide, 1.5" to .06" thick, up to 1200oC); cold rolling (up to 16" wide, 1.5" to .08" thick, +/- .002"); and strip/foil rolling (up to 6" wide, .25" to .004" thick, +/- .0002"). Levelling and flattening are available for cut mill products up to 16" wide, .125" thick.
The Department also has light machine shop facilities, welding facilities (TIG, MIG, ARC, GAS and Spot), pickling/de-greasing capabilities and wire/rod swaging and drawing facilities.
Additional capabilities include optical microscopy, quantitative image analysis, scanning
electron microscopy with analysis, and failure analysis. We can provide assistance in material
selection and we have a large database of information on titanium and its alloys.