Plasman 2

The turbo-charger market continues to grow at a CAGR of 10% as manufacturers design leaner and more fuel efficient engines. This technology will be the largest contributor to reducing CO2 emissions in vehicles (worldwide) for at least the next decade. This project will boost the productivity of production equipment for this market, an important export market for Aquasium Technologies (AQ) that will be worth \>£15m per year in 2022\.

The PlasMan2 project will build on a previous feasibility study to adopt a novel electron beam (EB) welding gun technology for the production of turbo-chargers. The project will build and test a system and provide the necessary bridge to allow integration of the technology. The operational data collected will be used to quantify the benefits of adopting the technology and will be used to promote sales of the equipment against more conventional competitors, and emerging laser welding machines.

We will also investigate and assess the potential for using the technology in new emerging markets of additive manufacturing (various markets), thick-section welding (for off-shore wind and nuclear energy) and vacuum melting (precious metal recycling). The technical capability of being able to rapidly pulse the electron beam and much higher consistency output are particularly suited to these markets.

The additional work planned is that equipment at TWI will be upgraded to allow demonstration of the Plasman2 smart machine technology to industries other than the original target (automotive), such as aerospace, power and medical sectors. This will involve additional hardware and software developments by ATS.
TWI will be carrying out the demonstration work package requiring machine operators, application engineers and weld/AM quality engineers. TWI will also host an industry demonstration day. These activities will promote the Plasman2 technology developments to a wider industrial base than was previously planned.