Lifetime Achievement Award Winner

Frank Caputo, a Titanium Industry Pioneer, Receives ITA’s Lifetime Achievement Award

Frank Caputo, a 50year veteran of the titanium industry and a former president and chief executive officer of Oremet (the Oregon Metallurgical Corp.), is the recipient of the International Titanium Association’s (ITA) 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award. Jennifer Simpson, the executive director of the ITA, made the announcement on Oct. 3.

Caputo, who resides in Albany, OR, was a key member of the U.S. Bureau of Mines team in the early 1950s. Steve Shelton, the Bureau of Mines regional director, enlisted 11 of his colleagues, including Caputo, to establish the pioneering titanium company Oremet. Oremet was incorporated on Dec. 1, 1955, and began operations in 1956. Kathleen L. Housley, in her book Black Sand, the History of Titanium, wrote that “the level of expertise at Oremet was high from the start as evidenced by the fact that, in 1957, less than two years after its founding, Oremet built the world’s first titanium casting facility under Caputo’s direction.”

He developed and led the titanium industry in the technical advancement of recycling bulk weldables and titanium chips. Caputo pioneered the world of recycling titanium scrap into the ingot melting process, which offered a solution to the growing industry scrap volume and allowed for a lower-cost input material. Serving as one of the early presidents of the Titanium Development Association (TDA), the precursor organization to the ITA, he worked with Boeing and major aerospace jet engine manufacturers in the promotion and acceptance of titanium as a material of choice for their applications.

Caputo admitted he was surprised when informed that he had received the ITA’s Lifetime Achievement Award. “I respect the honor, but I never expected it,” Caputo said, interviewed in early October. “I had a job to do (in the titanium industry) and I loved it.”

Born on March 2, 1928, in Portland, OR, Caputo served in the Marines during the final months of World War II. He attended the University of Portland and Lewis and Clark College, with the intention of becoming a dentist. Instead, he took a job in the metallurgy department of the Albany Research Center in Oregon—at the time part of the Bureau of Mines—working with titanium and zirconium. He praised

his mentors at the Bureau of Mines, especially Steve Shelton and Earl Hayes, for guiding him to a career in the metals industry. It was during that period he also met Dr. William J. Kroll at the Bureau of Mines, lauded as the father of the titanium industry for his development of the Kroll Process, which led to the production of titanium as an industrial metal. Greg Caputo, a sales executive with Elmet Technologies, Lewiston, ME, a producer of tungsten and molybdenum and the son of Frank Caputo, said his father, in the 1970s and early 1980s, was known throughout the industry as “Mr. Titanium.” Greg said that Frank’s background and experience in the Frank Caputo development of the commercial titanium manufacturing process, from his days at the Bureau of Mines, provided the insight for Frank’s leadership at Oremet and the TDA. “As one of the TDA’s original presidents, (my father) helped take titanium from its infancy to the product we see today. From golf clubs to eye glass frames to medical implants, Frank Caputo had an integral part in this growth.” He also worked with NASA to incorporate titanium as the material of choice for the moon rover tires and wheels assembly, and helped to get titanium approved for downhole applications in the oil and gas industry. n