Northrop Grumman & Titomic Achieve Successful Hot Fire Test with 3D Printed Thrust Chamber

Back in April, leading Australian cold spray additive manufacturing (CSAM) original equipment manufacturer (OEM) Titomic announced that the company was partnering with defense giant Northrop Grumman to test the use of CSAM for pressure vessels used in the aerospace sector. Thanks to a recent announcement the two companies have just made, we now know what at least one example of those pressure vessels are: thrust chambers for solid rocket motors (SRMs).

Northrop achieved a successful hot fire test of a thrust chamber made with the Titomic system, part of the prime’s Solid Motor Annual Rocket Technology (SMART) Demonstrator program. Northrop Grumman’s first successful SMART test took place in December 2023, with the company leveraging laser metal deposition — wire (LMD-w) technology from GKN Aerospace to help develop a new method for producing SRM components in less than a year.

As Vanesa Listek reported in November 2022, Northrop Grumman used 3D printing to produce solid rocket boosters for NASA’s first Artemis Lunar mission. The company has also worked with SWISSTO12 to 3D print RF antenna feed chains for satellites, among other AM activity that the contractor has been involved in over the years.

As demonstrated most notably by Colorado startup Ursa Major, SRMs have over the last several years emerged as one of the use cases most responsible for driving the Pentagon’s mounting interest in metal AM. According to Titomic, the OEM is also currently working with “another major U.S. prime contractor” to explore using CSAM to repair rocket engines.

In a press release about Northrop Grumman’s successful hot fire test of a thrust chamber made with Titomic’s CSAM technology, the CEO of Titomic, Jim Simpson, said, “This successful tests validates the strength and performance of Titomic’s technology in one of the most challenging environments imaginable. It represents not only a technical achievement but further affirms cold spray as a critical [AM] capability for advanced aerospace and defense solutions. Titomic delivered the components to its customer within weeks of receiving the order, demonstrating our ability to rapidly deliver — from prototype to production — critical missile components which today have significant lead times.”

As much hubbub as there’s been about 3D printed SRMs, I think this is the first I’ve heard of CSAM being used for the application, but maybe this is something that SPEE3D has quietly been up to. In any case, it’s intriguing because the combination of precision and complexity required for propulsion applications isn’t typically something one associates with cold spray, which is known more for its rapidity and amenability to ruggedization.

It’s also noteworthy insofar as CSAM is ideally suited for repairs, and that’s all the more significant given that, as mentioned, Titomic is working with another prime on rocket engine repair. One reason why that matters is because the latest generation of technologies in the launch industry is defined by reusability, meaning that if CSAM is indeed suited for that purpose, there will be no shortage of work for which the technology can be used.

Meanwhile, with the Army’s full-throated endorsement of right-to-repair, the Pentagon also has plenty of other areas where cold spray could quickly make an MRO impact. In that regard, it helps that this is one of the technologies that the organization’s deep-tech activities have tested most thoroughly thus far in the 2020s. Conditions certainly seem optimal for a CSAM boom.

The final piece of the puzzle there is geopolitical: two of the world’s largest (or the two largest?) CSAM companies originated in Australia, and the U.S. government just pledged to work with Australia on critical minerals supply chains. Along with the heightened collaboration between the U.S. and Australia on military affairs, the U.S. government has a real opportunity to advance a bunch of goals simultaneously by boosting the military’s CSAM use. That’s not a rationale in itself for building up the technology, but it’s certainly a huge point in cold spray’s favor.

Featured image courtesy of Northrop Grumman