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Absolutely - The costs/complexity associated with CNC machining Ti is good news for metal AM - you can cut take an existing design and deliver a commercial benefit and then add further technical benefits on top of that.
It's a similar story with Inconel which is relatively straightforward to print but a pain to machine.Without a cost advantage, it's harder to sell the 'unlimited potential' of AM to someone who already has a cheaper solution that works - why take the risk?
Rik_Van_Looy
@Jonny69
^ The simple fact is it's wasteful and time consuming cutting parts like those out of solid titanium. In a lot of cases it makes much more sense to 3D print. An example in F1 are those tiny Nessie separators on the the front wing (centre left of image). They are sometimes one piece and are hogged out of a solid chunk of Ti the size of a house brick! The fatigue was too much for components like those, but the loading is far lower on a dropout.
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