3D printer and market darling Titomic is sailing ahead with a plan to print ship parts for Fincantieri — one of the biggest naval vessel producers on the planet.

Melbourne-based Titomic (ASX:TTT) — which is up around 1125 per cent on last year’s IPO price — is in the “metal additive manufacturing” game.

Its 3D printing technique, Titomic Kinetic Fusion, can build metal parts to customisable shapes for use in a whole range of sectors, from aerospace to sporting goods.

The technology, which was co-developed at CSIRO, can produce parts up to 30 times faster than conventional hardware and can join dissimilar metals together to produce one structure, without the need for welding or joining.

Titomic first announced in May it would work with Fincantieri Australia on a roadmap for how its printing technology could be used in ship production.

Today the company told investors it had been granted permission to run tests on a Fincantieri specified alloy, including the hardness, strength and porosity of the metal when Titomic Kinetic Vision is applied.

The testing agreement should provide evidence of the performance, strength and cost efficiencies produced should Titomic work on manufacturing components of the ships.

Titomic CTO Jeff Lang told investors it was another on a path to into the ship-building business.

titomic share price
Titomic (ASX:TTT) share price since listing on the ASX in September 2017.

“We will be producing test samples at our new state of the art facility in Melbourne in order to conduct the stringent tests required. This is the first step towards manufacturing large marine parts on our metal 3D printers of limitless scale,” he said.

It’s been a month since Titomic opened its Melbourne printing facility, the largest and fastest of its kind on Earth.

In the March quarter, Titomic received $28,000 in customer receipts and burned $700,000, with $1.6 million in the bank.

This morning, shares were sitting up 0.8 per cent at $2.44, a 369 per cent increase on where it finished its first day on the market.