Boeing titanium part certification testing

Physical sample displayed by Tom. The Digital Alloys company is a quarter mile from MIT, makes titanium parts by high-speed rod deposition for Boeing qualification testing.

Today there's a company called Digital Alloys that has developed a high-speed process. [Tom holds up a titanium part.] This is a titanium part, and they're making these types of parts — just a rod of titanium. Be careful, it looks like the World Trade Center; if you're standing on it, it might collapse. They're making them for Boeing, and Boeing wants them to make a few thousand so they can qualify them for parts. Now they're going to machine it into a special part.

The hundred-parts Digital Alloys is making for Boeing are tensile specimens for FAA certification, not flight hardware yet.

So why are they making a hundred parts for Boeing? Tensile specimens. Boeing's going to do fatigue tests and tensile tests and impact tests, because Boeing has to certify to the Federal Aviation Administration before they put it on an airplane that it matches the properties that everybody else has measured for titanium 6 aluminum for the last eighty years. Where was titanium 6 aluminum developed? Anyone live in Watertown? Anyone been to the Watertown Arsenal Mall? The Arsenal Mall used to be the US Army's Watertown Arsenal when I was a student, and in 1945 that's where titanium 6 aluminum 4 vanadium was invented, developed. Titanium was a new material available after World War Two, and 6 aluminum 4 vanadium was the first commercial alloy. It's still the workhorse material for titanium alloys.