MANUFACTURE OF TITANIUM

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27642, 26 April 1955, Page 13

MANUFACTURE OF TITANIUM

New Activity For Krupps

(Rec. 9 p.m.) HANOVER, April 23. The giant Ruhr heavy industrial firm of Krupps forbidden by the Allies to make steel, announced at the Hanover Industry Fair today that it was now making titanium, the new metal indispensable for jet engines and supersonic rockets.

Krupps has thus become the first Western firm outside Canada and the United States to make titanium, which combines the lightness of aluminium with the resistance qualities of the best stainless steel.

A British firm is understood to be starting titanium production later this year.

Titanium is used principally to make turbine blades for jet engines, since it is best suited for high strains under great heat.

It is also used for the tips and leading edges of supersonic rockets. At present, the metal costs 15 times as much as the best stainless steel. The combined production of Canada and the United States is only 3000 tons a year.

Krupps, once the arsenal of Germany, was largely dismantled by the British after the war, and Alfried Krupp, the present proprietor, has signed an undertaking never to make steel in Germany again.