Industry

Commercial Space Achieves 'Tai'an Speed': Tai'an Deep Blue Aerospace Lands Production Capacity, Clusters Supply Chain, and Drives Industry

2026-11-03

Tai'an Deep Blue Aerospace was incorporated in February 2025, and its Phase I plant was put into operation within one year. It currently has 18 additive manufacturing machines and nearly 100 employees, using laser-based layer-by-layer metal powder additive manufacturing to build complex rocket engine components. Once fully completed, it will reach an annual production capacity of 160 engines.

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This article was translated from a Chinese source.

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商業航天跑出「泰安速度」：泰安深藍航天產能落地聚鏈興產

泰安深蓝航天2025年2月注册成立，一期厂区一年内投产，现有18台增材制造设备、近100人，金属粉末激光逐层堆叠成型火箭发动机复杂零部件，完全建成后达160台发动机年产能。

🧪 Related Material Grades

Metal powder grades mentioned in this article — specs, live prices & verified suppliers

316L Stainless Steel Powder

15-45 µm / 15-53 µm

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17-4PH Stainless Steel Powder

15-45 µm / 15-53 µm

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Ti-6Al-4V (Grade 5) Titanium Powder

15-45 µm / 15-53 µm / 45-105 µm

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AlSi10Mg Aluminum Alloy Powder

15-45 µm / 20-63 µm

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Inconel 718 Nickel Superalloy Powder

15-45 µm / 15-53 µm

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18Ni300 Maraging Steel Powder

15-53 µm

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Related News

Metal 3D Printing Poised to Enter the Value Chain

Saba Steel & Rolling Company and the MSTID Fund announced a partnership on November 4, 2026, to advance the localization of additive manufacturing technology. Arash Hajipour, Technical Manager at Saba Steel & Rolling Company, said at an "Additive Manufacturing" roundtable hosted by IRASIN that the two parties have launched joint research and evaluation in this field. Mohammadreza Momtaz, Deputy for Investment and Corporate Governance at the MSTID Fund, also attended the meeting, which examined additive manufacturing technology and the opportunities facing Iran's steel industry from technical, economic, and investment perspectives. Hajipour said Saba Steel & Rolling Company launched a product portfolio expansion plan about seven years ago and has expanded its manufacturing grades from 5 to more than 100. He noted that the superalloys, stainless steels, and metal powders required for 3D printing face multiple constraints, including availability, pricing, and import lead times; in some cases, procuring the powder needed for 3D printing equipment takes about six months and is costly. Traditional manufacturing methods, especially for complex parts, require multiple production and finishing steps and often generate substantial raw material waste. By contrast, 3D printing enables high-precision, fast production of complex parts fully to end-customer specifications and supports single-unit or small-batch production without the need to reach a specific output volume to spread mold design and manufacturing costs. Hajipour said the global technology trend is shifting from producing raw materials in plate or billet form and then processing them through multiple forming and finishing steps to directly manufacturing final products through 3D printing. Against this backdrop, combining steel companies' capabilities with venture capital and technology development capabilities can lay the foundation for building a local additive manufacturing value chain. Metal powder, as the raw material for 3D printing, is a key link in the development of local additive manufacturing.

2026-11-05

Metal Powder Works Signs First Multi-Year Contract, Reports A$1.3m Backlog in Q1 FY27

Australian metal powder company Metal Powder Works has signed its first multi-year contract, reporting an order backlog of A$1.3 million in the first quarter of fiscal year 2027.

2026-11-04

Building Cars in a "Super Printing Factory"

The China FAW Additive Manufacturing Innovation Center was officially inaugurated in August 2026, becoming China's first additive technology platform focused on automotive applications. The center is equipped with 43 machines operating 24 hours a day, covering metal printing and stereolithography processes, and can produce 19,000 parts per year in batches, spanning the full business chain from design styling reviews and R&D validation prototypes to small-batch part production, tooling and auxiliary fixtures, and personalized custom products. FAW's additive manufacturing efforts began in 2019 with the introduction of its first machine, and by 2022 the equipment fleet had expanded from 4 to more than 20 machines. The center's team has mastered 8 processes, with members specializing in materials, mechanical engineering, vehicles, design, and other fields, all of whom must gain hands-on proficiency through job rotation. Issues encountered in print trials, such as microcracks, material porosity, and shrinkage cavities, are being avoided by predicting crack locations through structural stress simulation and process forming simulation at the data design stage. The team also collaborates with Jilin University, Harbin Institute of Technology, and Xi'an Jiaotong University on technology cooperation and talent development. In terms of production applications, FAW applied additive manufacturing processes to volume vehicle production as early as 2020, and Hongqi is one of the few domestic automotive brands to achieve mass-production implementation of this technology. In practice, the team consolidated 52 parts of the front cabin and subframe into 4 parts, reducing total part weight from 74 kg to 57.7 kg while increasing system stiffness to 1.16 times its original value. The 13 categories and 64 full-color parts used in the restoration of two classic Hongqi models, the CA770JH and CA771, are produced by the center; the Hongqi Golden Sunflower series interior solution combines additive printing with leather wrapping, cutting overall production costs by 50% compared with traditional tooling-based production.

2026-11-04

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