Spray Forming - History

History

Professor Singer at the Swansea University first developed the idea of gas atomised spray forming in the 1970s in which a high pressure gas jet impinges on a stable melt stream to cause atomisation. The resulting droplets are then collected on a target, which can be manipulated within the spray and used to form a near-dense billet of near-net shape. Spray forming has found applications in specialist industries such as: stainless steel cladding of incinerator tubes; nickel superalloy discs and rings for aerospace-engines; aluminium-titanium, aluminium-neodymium and aluminium-silver sputter targets; aluminium-silicon alloys for cylinder liners; and high speed steels. The history of spray forming of how spray forming then developed is an example of how the creative contributions of many researchers were necessary over a number of years to produce the innovation of a now widely-used industrial process.