Establishing a Domestic Tungsten-Rhenium Wire Supply

The DLA is seeking a domestic manufacturer to produce Tungsten 3% Rhenium wire from existing feedstock for use in Travelling Wave Tube Amplifiers.  Previous attempts to produce these wires, ranging in diameter from 0.004”to 0.030,” have resulted in substandard products.  Touchstone Research Lab (TRL) intends to team with sister company Touchstone Testing Lab (TTL) to review the existing ingots and devise a path to domestic production of the required wire. The Touchstone group of companies began almost 40 years ago in Wheeling, WV as a business focused solely on Quality Assurance (QA) for local steel mills.  Over time, Touchstone grew to encompass Research and Development into metal alloys as well as other materials and industries.  Now, TTL has been spun-out from TRL as a stand-alone, yet closely related, company.  TTL encompasses 30 employees and acts as the exclusive QA department for several advanced manufacturers in the alloy and aerospace industries.  Combined, Narsimhan Raghunathan and Bob Evert, key TTL personnel on this project, have over 60 years of experience in metallurgy.  TRL has extensive experience running multi-million-dollar research programs, culminating in new products, business spin-outs, and licensed technologies.  Together, TRL and TTL are poised to succeed in this endeavor. Under the Phase I effort, Touchstone intends to thoroughly review the previous work performed on producing Tungsten 3% Rhenium wire.  This involves researching literature, the Title III program, and reaching out to former and current manufacturers.  Another key portion of this program is to thoroughly understand the ingots currently owned by the DLA.  This understanding will flow from a variety of tests and analyses including microscopy, chemical composition, and mechanical testing.  Once the raw material is understood, Touchstone’s equipment and expertise can be implemented to plan the best path forward for developing a domestic producer of the required wire.  If possible, the Phase I effort will culminate in a trial run of wire using the equipment Touchstone has on-hand.  By the end of this program, Touchstone will understand the requirements to process this material and have a plan to refine these processes under a Phase II.