Norsk Titanium wins recurring Northrop Grumman contract for aircraft parts

Norsk Titanium just crossed the line that matters most in aerospace: a recurring production contract, not a demo. The Plattsburgh, New York company said on May 27 that Northrop Grumman had tapped it for aircraft components, and the award landed after a multi-year qualification and specification process that turned Rapid Plasma Deposition from a clever process into a supplier-qualified one.

That is the part 3D printing people should pay attention to, even if they will never see a Northrop airframe or a Norsk machine. Aerospace buyers do not hand out serial work lightly. Northrop Grumman said it has been flying additive-manufactured parts since 2005 and has around 5,000 3D-printed parts in its air vehicles, so this was not a company taking its first sip of AM Kool-Aid. Norsk had already been approved as an additive manufacturing special processor in April 2023, and Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems had begun evaluating RPD for U.S. Department of Defense applications.

The payoff is a manufacturing process that tries to win on the things that always matter once prototyping is over: speed, material efficiency, and repeatability. Norsk says RPD uses less raw material, less energy, and less time than conventional forming methods. Company materials also describe the MERKE IV machine as 50 to 100 times faster than powder-based systems while using 25% to 50% less titanium than traditional forging. Norsk says it now has about 700 metric tons of annual production capacity across its U.S. and Norway facilities.

That capacity story has been building for years in Plattsburgh. Norsk said back in 2016 that the New York-backed project was designed for 20 MERKE IV machines and 400 metric tons per year, with room to scale to 40 machines and 800 metric tons. A facility overview puts the site at 80,000 square feet of manufacturing and office space, plus another 70,000 square feet at the Plattsburgh Development & Qualification Center. Norsk also said in January 2024 that its lease with the State of New York ran at $1 annually until 2030, and its investor materials listed 191 patents and a $2.5 billion annual directly addressable commercial aerospace opportunity.

The timing sharpened the message. On May 29, Norsk also said its Plattsburgh operations earned Nadcap accreditation for additive manufacturing, adding another aerospace credential to the stack. Taken together, the Northrop contract, the Nadcap stamp, and the old Airbus qualification and serial-production deal from June 2019 show where wire-based metal AM is headed: not just into the lab, but into the supply chain, where speed and part strength finally have to justify themselves in production.