Patent — available for licensing
Economical, On-Demand GRCop Alloy Production
A NASA invention available to explore as a licensing opportunity.
About this technology
Overview
Researchers at NASA Glenn Research Center have developed a new method to make high-performance GRCop alloys. This technology enables in-situ alloying of GRCop, a copper-chromium-niobium alloy, during additive manufacturing using only elemental metal powders instead of expensive pre-alloyed powders. The key advancement leverages the laser melting process step to react chromium and niobium directly within the pure copper matrix to form the Cr2Nb strengthening precipitate. This in situ processing enables significant advantages over conventional gas atomization methods including on-demand production, lower manufacturing costs, shorter lead times, and less impurity contamination. This innovative approach unlocks new design freedoms and alloy compositional flexibility for this high-performance copper alloy. The images above show that the new, patented, alloying process (in situ alloying of GRCop) produces strengthening phases (in left image) similar in size and shape to the conventional process of gas atomization of GRCop (on the right). The similarity suggests that NASA's new alloying process has the potential to perform as well as the conventional method that NASA has used to produce additively manufactured GRCop hardware.