Ampliforge is a tweak of die-forging or combinations of rolling, extrusion, and die-forging that's optimized for: turbine blades, engine containment rings (I suppose jet engine) that's naturally generalized to ballistic shielding, and engine parts. Of the later I don't know if they mean internal combustion or not. Every part I've seen mentioned is not terribly complex in the way that there are no voids in the geometry that could be affected by the processes above. I cannot imagine, for example, how they would use Ampliforge processes to manufacture hollow super-alloy turbine blades without some welding or additional printing afterwards, this makes my head swim and eyes spin, but, by God, where there's a will there might be a way here that gets FAA approval for civilian plane parts.
That patent application is filled with detail upon detail and specified temperatures in a process. It's Alcoa and patent attorneys doing their work with contributions from engineers and all the unmentioned machinists and lab assistants. It's lots of incremental developments not an innovation of a new kind. It's a cigar butt company doing conservative work that differentiates themselves from everyone else doing Arcam or EOS plus HIP work. Not bad work though.
I don't believe I'm incorrect in saying that HIP is a proven process though I'm sure it would be unwieldy or impossible for a large part such as an engine containment ring. So, I'm not going to sweat this for now as Arcam produced parts and HIP work well together.
I can't say for sure but those Widmanstätten like patterns in the pictures sure look like Widmanstätten microstructure. Widmanstätten microstructure is desirable. I don't remember seeing that result in laser printed Ti-Al builds but I could be proven wrong.
Charlie, thanks for pointing my eyes in that direction.
