Patent ID: 7566415

Claim:
A method for manufacturing fully dense sheets, strips and layered composites from reactive alloys comprising the following steps: (a) forming a porous preform of a reactive powder alloy or a porous multi-layer composite preform consisting of reactive powder metals and alloys by consolidation using at least one method selected from low-temperature loose sintering in vacuum, high-temperature loose sintering in vacuum, low-pressure sintering in an inert gas, cold pressing, direct powder rolling, isostatic or die pressing, and other means of room temperature and warm temperature consolidation, and/or combination thereof, to provide a density not less than 25% from theoretical density of said reactive alloy; (b) hot consolidating by hot pressing, hot rolling, hot isostatic pressing, or hot extrusion of said preform to obtain a density of 98-100% from the theoretical density of said reactive alloy; (c) hot isostatic pressing (HIP) carried out after hot pressing to eliminate a density gradient and to obtain the a uniform density along a resulting metal sheet; (d) annealing at the a temperature being at least 900° C. to decrease residual porosity, control microstructure, and improve ductility, plasticity or other mechanical properties of the resulting metal sheets or layered composites.