Recovery of Pressed Titanium Alloy Machining Chip via Vacuum Induction Melting

Abstract

Among many precious metals, titanium has been the first priorityin variousapplications such as aerospace, automotive, marine and medical sectors dueits superior mechanical, electrochemical, and biocompatible properties. In thisstudy, a new melting method withvacuum induction system for Ti6Al4V alloywas developed to recover titaniumscrapsthat were collected from medicalimplant machining industry. Prior to melting processing the recovered material wascleaned with ethyl alcohol and acetone (96% purity) to remove the coolantoil in the metal scraps.After the melting process, themicrostructure, phase and hardness properties of melted bulk specimen were investigatedbySEM, EDS, optical microscopy, XRDanalysisandRockwellhardnesstest.The results reveal that despite the high oxygen content, these molten bulk materials can be used in engineering applications other than biomaterials.