August 2026 Volume 8

MATERIALS

planning. At the 2026 Farnborough International Airshow, nearly two dozen Chinese titanium suppliers sought to build relationships with Western aerospace customers. Their presence reflected both strong competition within China and continued tightness in global titanium supplies. U.S. tariffs and qualification requirements may limit access to some sources, but constrained domestic production creates continued pressure to identify, qualify and maintain alternative supply channels. 6 Companies are responding in several ways. One strategy is to lock in material through long-term agreements. ATI expanded its long term titanium supply relationship with Boeing in 2025, covering titanium ingots, billets, rectangles, bars, plate, sheet and coil for commercial aircraft programs. 7 ATI also entered a multi-year agreement to supply Airbus with titanium plate, sheet and billet. These arrangements are more than sales contracts. They provide capacity assurance, demand visibility and greater justification for suppliers to invest in specialized equipment and processes. 8 Another strategy is domestic circularity. Titanium scrap, revert management and new recycling technologies are increasingly being treated as elements of industrial security rather than simply cost-recovery programs. In January 2026, IperionX announced that the U.S. government had obligated the final $4.6 million under a previously announced $47.1 million award and transferred approximately 290 metric tons of Ti-6Al-4V scrap to the company at no cost. The funding supports plans to scale production to 1,400 metric tons per year at IperionX’s Virginia Titanium Manufacturing Campus. The company said the effort is intended to reduce import dependence and establish a more resilient domestic source of titanium for the defense industrial base. 9 Material availability, however, is only one part of producing a very large aerospace forging. Tooling strategy must also change with the size, value and production rate of the component. Weber Metals said nickel dies can provide a strong return on investment for titanium forgings when volumes are high enough. For the largest components, however, a single die block may not deliver the necessary strength and hardness. “Very large forgings sometimes need multi-piece dies,” the company said. Designing and assembling those tools requires close collaboration and creativity from design and operations engineers. Simply scaling up a traditional monolithic die design can create metallurgical and sourcing problems of its own. In very thick steel die blocks, alloying elements can segregate and reduce uniformity. Forgers also have fewer practical options for exotic tool steels at extreme sizes because of the cost and difficulty of procuring large pieces. Weber Metals said materials such as Inconel are generally not viable at that scale, although weld cladding can improve die performance with a comparatively modest increase in cost. Large tools also create logistical challenges long before the first forging is made. Shipping can require special permits, adding cost and potentially creating delays. Die sinking requires extensive spindle time, and prolonged machining of an impression in a monolithic block can create calibration concerns at the die shop. Once the tools arrive at the forging plant, handling, assembly and cleaning equipment must be capable of accommodating their size and weight. Segmented tooling can address many of those issues. Individual sections are easier to machine, may offer better chemistry and dimensional stability, and are more manageable to transport and handle. The trade-off is added engineering complexity. Designers must account for tolerance stack-up among the segments, and

plant teams need a reliable process for assembling the complete tool on-site. Larger forgings often demand individualized tooling solutions rather than a scaled-up version of a conventional die. Press capability and process control are equally important. “Larger finished parts need presses with minimal deflection to avoid size differential from the center to the outer edges of the forging,” Weber Metals said. Higher-tonnage presses can provide more even thermomechanical working through the full depth of a cross section, supporting more consistent properties. Safran’s planned 30,000-ton press illustrates the level of capital required to increase output and control the production of highly critical forged components. The press is expected to begin operating in 2029 and approximately double the forging capacity of Safran’s Gennevilliers facility. 2 Digital process control is becoming another lever for repeatability. Weber Metals said artificial intelligence is already improving process control and could eventually enable stronger predictive performance as customer expectations rise. The opportunity is not to replace sound metallurgical and process engineering. It is to use better data to identify drift earlier, refine process windows and more reliably reproduce the conditions that deliver the required properties. Customer pressure is not limited to technical performance. Aerospace OEMs continue to push suppliers for additional capacity through regularly scheduled rate-readiness workshops. Price and speed remain important, but quality, delivery performance and lead time shape the overall value proposition. Risk reduction increasingly means redundancy. OEMs want backup equipment and additional tool sets in case a critical asset fails. That may be practical for some programs, but it is not necessarily realistic for a 60,000-ton press and its associated tooling. Duplicating that level of capability can be economically— and sometimes physically—impossible. Buyers can also underestimate the difference between cast and forged products and the development work required for each process. Customers are sometimes surprised by how difficult it is to source the large monolithic die blocks needed for the work they are requesting. The cost is not limited to the steel itself. It includes specialized engineering, machining, die sinking, transportation, assembly and the production risk carried by the forger. Those costs become even more pronounced when tooling weighs tens of thousands of pounds and only a small number of suppliers can handle it. The same capacity dynamic is playing out in defense steel. By the first quarter of 2026, Metallus reported receiving $91.5 million in government funding for its capacity-expansion project supporting increased U.S. Army munitions production. The company expected to receive additional funding during 2026 as final milestones were completed. Its continued investment shows that critical material and conversion capacity must be developed before demand reaches an emergency level—not after supply is already constrained. 10 Looking ahead, Weber Metals sees large-tooling capacity as an issue the industry should watch closely. The supply chain has lost some capability to sink forging dies, particularly at the weights required for the largest structural aerospace components. Many shops can handle a roughly 7,000-pound tool, but only a few can accommodate die sets weighing more than 100,000 pounds. “We have not seen any new tool shops open in many years,” the company said, adding that existing shops increasingly need

FIA MAGAZINE | AUGUST 2026 37