Feramic AG qualifies Hovadur CNCS copper alloy for LPBF, driven by rocket engine and tooling demand

Swiss service bureau Feramic AG has qualified the copper-nickel-silicon alloy Hovadur CNCS for industrial laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) production, following a development sprint triggered by a request from ETH Zurich’s Pegasus student rocketry team. CEO Martin Hofer and CTO Fabian Ruf led the effort, which involved printing over 300 test cubes over four weeks to establish a robust parameter set on the company’s four LPBF systems — three Colibrium M2 dual-laser machines and one M1 single-laser unit. The resulting material achieves a practical thermal conductivity of 190 W/mK and a tensile strength of at least 650 MPa after heat treatment, with the largest printed part to date measuring 220 mm in diameter at 150 mm build height. Feramic sourced the powder from Swiss producer Schmelzmetall and plans to qualify a second alloy, Hovadur CCZ, next.

This development fits a recurring pattern in metal AM where a niche application — here, a rotating detonation rocket engine (RDRE) combustion chamber — pulls a material into production readiness, only for the broader industrial base to become the primary commercial driver. Feramic reports that tooling customers were already inquiring about copper alloys for conformal cooling channels, a classic use case where LPBF’s design freedom directly improves thermal management in injection molds and die-casting inserts. The company explicitly positions Hovadur CNCS as a beryllium-free alternative to copper-beryllium (CuBe) alloys, which face increasing health and regulatory scrutiny in Europe. This aligns with the broader materials qualification discipline trend where qualification cost and safety compliance are becoming as important as raw performance specs. Feramic’s annual growth rate of over 20% suggests the service bureau model remains viable for mid-sized European shops that combine process development agility with production repeatability.

From a practical standpoint, Feramic has done the hard work of converting a known conventional alloy into a reliable LPBF process, but the material’s limitations are clearly stated: it does not match CuBe on peak thermal conductivity, hardness, or tensile strength. Buyers in tooling should evaluate Hovadur CNCS where beryllium is prohibited or where the 190 W/mK conductivity is sufficient for the cooling demand. The company’s next step is to scale part sizes and build repeatability for serial tooling orders, which will test whether the parameter set holds across production batches. This is a solid, incremental advance in copper AM capability, not a breakthrough — but for shops that need a beryllium-free option with documented process data, it fills a real gap.