Spirit Aerosystems (www.spiritaero.com) of the USA and Norway’s Norsk Titanium AS (www.norsktitanium.com) have entered into a commercial agreement to produce 3-D printed structural titanium components for the commercial aerospace industry.

Norsk Titanium’s proprietary plasma arc Rapid Plasma Deposition (RPD) technology will be used to build parts to near-net shape, reducing waste, using less energy and reducing product costs by up to 30%.

Spirit currently builds thousands of titanium parts for multiple customers around the globe, and it expects that at least 30% of them could be candidates for the RPD process.

Norsk Titanium CEO Warren Boley said: “We recently announced becoming the world’s first FAA-approved provider of 3-D printed structural titanium components, and Spirit is the ideal Tier One aerostructures partner to use this capability.”