Spanish Coating Firm Adds Hot Isostatic Pressing to Boost Aerospace and AM Parts

TTT Group, a Spanish surface coatings and heat treatment subcontractor, is installing a Hiperbaric HIP 107 Hot Isostatic Press at its facility in Spain. The press will be the largest investment in the company's 65-year history and marks a meaningful entry into high-performance metal densification for aerospace and oil and gas customers. With operating pressures up to 2,000 bar and temperatures as high as 1,400 degrees Celsius, the HIP 107 is designed to eliminate internal porosity in metal components and dramatically improve their mechanical performance.

What HIP Does

Hot Isostatic Pressing works by subjecting a metal part to simultaneous high pressure and high temperature in an inert gas atmosphere. Argon is the standard pressurizing medium. Under those conditions, internal pores in the metal exert a surface tension force that drives the free surface to contract. The result is a part with no voids, a fine-grained microstructure, and substantially better fatigue resistance than the as-printed or as-cast equivalent.

That second point, fatigue resistance, is the one that sells HIP to aerospace buyers. A 3D printed titanium bracket may have the right tensile strength on a test coupon, but if it has a subsurface void, it will fail at a stress well below the design limit in cyclic loading. HIP removes that uncertainty, which is why aerospace OEMs began qualifying HIP'd AM parts on engine pylons, landing gear fittings, and satellite brackets several years ago.

Why TTT Group Is Moving Now

CEO Xabier Berasategi said the investment is part of a deliberate strategy to improve the company's positioning in aerospace and open access to new markets such as additive manufacturing and Powder Metal HIP. Heat treatments and HIP densification under one roof gives TTT Group a commercial lever it did not have before. Clients can send a fresh 3D printed part in and pick up a fully densified, stress-relieved part out without coordinating across two suppliers.

Hiperbaric's Fast Cooling technology is also in the system. That feature allows the heat treatment cycle and material consolidation to be integrated into a single step, reducing the processing time per part. In a job shop running aerospace hardware against tight schedule requirements, that compression of processing steps translates directly into lower cost per part and higher throughput.

The Larger HIP Story

Hiperbaric has been selling HIP systems into additive manufacturing users since it formally entered that channel in 2019. The company previously supplied a Hiperbaric HIP 93 to Taiwanese manufacturer Plus Metal in 2025 for high-value aerospace components. The HIP 107 at TTT Group is a larger capacity system, and the installation in Spain is the first of its kind in the country for Hiperbaric.

The trend line for HIP demand is tied directly to metal AM adoption. LPBF and binder jetting systems are producing parts at increasingly complex geometries, and the post-processing requirement for HIP has gone from an optional step to a certification expectation on many programs. If TTT Group can position itself as the HIP and heat treatment shop for European AM job shops and aerospace OEMs, this machine will pay for itself faster than a comparable press in a less specialized market.