Norsk Titanium already has something many additive-manufacturing companies spend years trying to build: industrial-scale capacity and a process aimed directly at replacing forged titanium structures. The next question is whether that capacity can move through qualification fast enough to become strategically relevant to U.S. defense production.
In July 2026, Norsk Titanium was selected for the Joint Additive Qualification for Sustainment – Supplier Qualification program, or JAQS-SQ. The 12-month project is intended to support qualification pathways for the company’s Rapid Plasma Deposition (RPD) process and, according to Norsk Titanium, would result in qualified supplier status for Ti-6Al-4V products across U.S. defense services upon successful completion.
Capacity is not the scarce asset if customers cannot use it
Norsk says it has roughly 700 metric tonnes of production capacity. That number sounds large in additive manufacturing, but unused capacity does not automatically create an industrial moat. In aerospace and defense, the scarce asset is often qualified capacity: machines, procedures, materials, inspection routes and suppliers accepted into a controlled production system.
The JAQS-SQ program is designed around exactly that problem. America Makes says the broader 2026 effort is standardizing training and audits, aligning suppliers with acquisition requirements and verifying their ability to execute performance qualification. Norsk Titanium is one of the suppliers selected for the program.
Why RPD is strategically interesting
RPD is a wire-fed directed-energy-deposition approach designed for near-net-shape titanium structures. Its value proposition is different from laser powder-bed fusion. It is not primarily about intricate internal geometries. It is about replacing high-waste and potentially long-lead forming routes for structural titanium parts.
That puts RPD closer to the forging bottleneck than to the traditional “3D printer” market. If a customer can start with a near-net-shape titanium preform and remove less material during final machining, the economic comparison shifts toward raw-material utilization, lead time, tooling avoidance and availability of qualified upstream capacity.
The evidence is becoming more relevant than the demo
Norsk Titanium says its RPD Ti-6Al-4V material has been accepted into the MMPDS handbook and that printed parts are already flying on commercial aircraft. It also received a separate $4.2 million U.S. defense award to advance the process for submarine and maritime applications.
Those milestones matter because they move the story away from “can the process make titanium?” toward “can the process be embedded in repeatable procurement and qualification pathways?” That is the transition that has historically separated promising AM processes from durable production businesses.
What to watch
- Completion of JAQS-SQ supplier qualification
- Conversion of defense development awards into recurring production
- Expansion from material/process approval into specific part families
- Utilization of the company’s installed RPD capacity
- Evidence that RPD competes economically with forged-and-machined titanium on total delivered cost
Addithive view
Norsk Titanium’s bottleneck is no longer simply deposition rate or factory capacity. It is qualification throughput and customer adoption. If JAQS-SQ shortens the distance between an approved process and repeatable defense procurement, the value of its existing capacity could change materially.
In industrial AM, the most important inflection point often arrives when capacity becomes qualified capacity.
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