Cooksongold has announced a new industrial division, Cookson Industrial, which will provide services to precious metal additive manufacturers using a range of applications.
The services will include consultancy, research and development (R&D), new product development (NPD) and production including conventional, subtractive and additive manufacturing.
Cookson Industrial will be managed from HM Precious Metals’s head office and manufacturing site in Birmingham.
It will help companies to de-risk their development, simplify their supply chains and shorten time to market.
Cookson has also partnered with the University of Birmingham to ‘explore the development of precious metal alloys for additive manufacturing applications across the aerospace, healthcare and glass fibre manufacturing industries.’
The organisations received a joint £750k Early-stage Prosperity Partnership funding from the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council.
Precious metals are used for additive manufacturing in extreme environments where traditional alloys cannot meet the required thermal and material applications.
Cookson Industrial manufactures a range of gas atomised precious powders onsite, including gold, silver platinum and palladium, all from recycled sources where possible.
These powders are available for purchase in batches up to 15kg or for use in Cookson Industrial’s site, which currently contains seven additive manufacturing machines.
Cookson is also working with Bentley Motors to manufacture components for its Batur by Mulliner line.
In the aerospace market, Cookson is exploring developments in satellite thruster design to help de-weight parts and reduce the volume of hazardous materials used in the manufacturing process compared to chemical thruster design.
Head of Cookson Industrial Nikesh Patel said “For extreme environments such as aerospace, where there is no room for compromise, the performance characteristics of precious metals can offer a whole new world of design parameters compared to traditional alloys.”
