The nitinol melt: Fort Wayne learns to make the metal itself

1991 — 2026

From drawing wire to melting ingot: Nitinol — the nickel-titanium alloy that remembers shapes and flexes without kinking, on which stents, heart valve frames and modern guidewires run — was for decades melted by a handful of sources worldwide, a narrow neck in the device industry's supply. Fort Wayne Metals began working with nitinol in 1991, drawing wire from others' ingot. The advancement of the 2010s was vertical: the company established a dedicated melt facility — dated 2012 in ASM International's account, with the company's timeline placing its first nitinol melt in 2013 at its Advanced Materials Development facility in Columbia City — and learned to melt the alloy itself, by vacuum arc remelting and then by plasma arc melting, the premium process that holds the ingot's internal cleanliness to the standard fatigue-critical implants demand. The documented trajectory since: production of melted nitinol doubled between 2022 and 2024; a second vacuum arc furnace came online in early 2025, positioning the company, in ASM's account, to double output again; melted nitinol now represents 74 percent of all nitinol products the company sells, and its technical paper projects annual melting capacity above 800,000 pounds by the end of 2026. The validation was collaborative and published: in the PRIME project, Fort Wayne's ingot was carried through tube-making by Euroflex and Vascotube and into finished devices — 87 peripheral stents, and heart valve frames — by Admedes and MeKo, each using its own standard processes, and met every acceptance criterion the manufacturers apply. In 2025 Medtronic gave the company its Supplier Innovation Excellence Award for the nitinol melt program, recognized, in ASM's summary, for strengthening global supply-chain resilience. A Fort Wayne firm thus sits at the first step of the device chain for much of the world's nitinol — it makes the metal the devices are made of.

Sources:

1. ASM International, Equipment Archives (2025) — Medtronic's 2025 Supplier Innovation Excellence Award for the nitinol melt program; nitinol work begun in 1991; dedicated melt facility established in 2012; melted-nitinol production doubled 2022–2024; second VAR furnace online early 2025; melted nitinol at 74 percent of nitinol products sold.
2. Fort Wayne Metals, technical article (COMPAMED 2026, rev. 04/2026) — the Advanced Materials Development facility in Columbia City opened in 2013 with a VAR furnace, a second VAR and a PAM furnace following; the AMD facility supports more than 75 percent of the company's nitinol sales to the medical industry; projected melting capacity above 800,000 pounds by the end of 2026; the PRIME project and its partners (Euroflex, Vascotube, Admedes, MeKo), 87 peripheral stents and the heart valve frames, every acceptance criterion met; the two melt datings carried in the entry as given.
3. Fort Wayne Metals, company history — the first nitinol melt performed in 2013 at the Columbia City facility; 35N LT® (2003), SLT® (2006), DPS™ (2011) and 4TiTUDE™ titanium (2014) process introductions.