Additive Manufacturing Solutions becomes exclusive UK production partner for HiperAl high-performance aluminium alloy

Additive Manufacturing Solutions (AMS) announced at TCT 3Sixty last week that it has become the exclusive UK production partner for HiperAl, a high-performance aluminium alloy specifically designed for additive manufacturing. The partnership with AM 4 AM aims to scale and industrialise the material, which delivers 525 MPa yield strength, 550 MPa ultimate tensile strength, and 4% elongation at break. AMS CEO Robert Higham stated the company is backing HiperAl as a material that can dominate lightweight applications across space, aeronautics, and automotive. The partnership creates a guaranteed European supply chain for the alloy, addressing a key bottleneck in UK metal AM production.

This move addresses a persistent gap in the metal AM materials landscape. Higham noted that high-performance aluminium options like HRL 7A77 are difficult to source and process, while mid-range aluminiums often carry material costs double that of titanium, pushing designers toward titanium for purely economic reasons. HiperAl is priced on par with bulk-produced titanium while matching or exceeding high-performance aluminium mechanical properties, and it avoids complex multi-step heat treatment and HIP cycles. For AMS, which has already secured an America Makes project with Lockheed Martin and ASTM for defence supply chain equivalency, and printed a world-first helicopter bracket from reclaimed titanium, this partnership extends its strategy of building production-ready, cost-justified metal AM capacity rather than chasing machine specifications.

The practical test for AMS is execution: the company plans to spend summer 2026 working with select launch customers to develop optimised applications. For buyers evaluating HiperAl, the key question is whether the material's processability and cost advantage hold at production scale across multiple machine platforms, and whether the European supply chain can deliver consistent powder quality. If successful, this could shift material selection logic in aerospace and motorsport, where aluminium has been economically marginalised in favour of titanium for many LPBF applications.