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Titanium As Cheap As Aluminum?
ThesQuid writes: "I caught this article in The Economist the other week. If practical, the electrolytic process described could make the production of titanium as cheap as aluminum. Ridiculous? Just remember, aluminum used to be refined by a process somewhat similar to how titanium is refined nowadays, and when a practical electrolytic refining process was discovered the price of it went from more precious than gold to something, well, as cheap as aluminum is nowadays."
Any info on the respective tensile strength/mass ratios of any alloys of Ti, Fe or Al?
I got the Titanium alloy X-Metal sunglasses from Oakley...and what do I like best about them? Airport metal detectors ignore them!
About the only time I use burning coke is when I'm smoking my crack pipe!
Richard
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Deepthroat my submarine, swallow my seamen.
Yes, the weight probably was the biggest thing, but I'm sure the *resilience* of Titanium (see Materials Science geek posts above) caused some ringing -- of both helmet and head.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
saying less Ti than Al so cost of Ti greater than Al
Whoa there! Are you talking about whores? And there are more sluts named Al instead of Ti therefore, Al is cheaper? If so, send me Al
--
"Only men use whores. Who uses female sluts, men. Who use male whores, fags." -SomeOne
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303infinity Rocks, buy their CD's.
oh come on. why have something as lame as zinc or titanium when you can have the unlimited buying power of ...
PLUTOMIUM!!!
or at least Techentium.
yeah, i think techentium is cooler than titanium. it's the lighest radioactive element, wheee!!!
-PsychoI3oy
mmm freeBSDelicious.
The Discovery Channel had a show about the 747. It really was amazing that it was essentially designed without computers. They tested the wing strength by hanging an insane amount of weight off of them, and the test pilot pulled the stick back so far on take-off that the tail scraped the runway.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
Maybe now I can get a Titanium bumper, so it doesn't get as damaged when I run over spandex-clad
bicyclists because their feeble human power can't keep up with my DIESEL POWER!
Richard
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Deepthroat my submarine, swallow my seamen.
That's what I want for christmas!
Oh, and maybe a Titanium-reinforced gerbil tube.
Richard
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Deepthroat my submarine, swallow my seamen.
And it's like that muppet song. You know, Da da, da-da-da (MUH NA MUH NA). Maybe it's time for some Muppet Schoolhouse Rock? Da da, da-da-da (UN UN I UM!)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's fine. Good deal for the rest of us.
You really think humans will last 'til 2215?
I give us 2050, max.
BTW, it might not be painted, but I'm certainly sportin' wood right now!
Richard
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Deepthroat my submarine, swallow my seamen.
The way that I think of it is this from heaviest to lightest Steel-titanium-aluminum. From designed strength highest to lowest, Steel-titanium-aluminum. However, the strength-to-weight ratio from highest to lowest goes like this: aluminum-titanium-steel.
I did enjoy the nice selection of links which you provided with your comment. Thank you indeed.
Keeping
So, is there any way to then get the oxygen out of the electrolyte cheaply? Do we do this now with the electrolyte in the aluminum refining process? And if so, how do we do it?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In Genius , the Richard Feynman biography, there was an anecdote where the scientists working on the nuclear bomb at Los Alamos discovered they could requesition *anything* from the army. After asking for and recieving a 12 inch diameter solid sphere of gold (later cut in half and used as a door stop) they asked for a kilogram of osmium, only to be turned down when it was discovered that that significantly more than existed in pure form in the entire world at that time.
/* This post not warrantied for mission critical applications. */
Besides, beryllium is EXTREMELY tightly controlled ; mostly due to its very interesting properties when building "uncontrolled" nuclear fission devices (ie, bombs). Beryllium has the very interesting property of being a very good neutron reflector, which means that if you coat a mass of fissible material with a (thin !) beryllium reflector, you reduce by two or three the critical mass.
n dex.html for more design details (search for Beryllium there).
:-)
Also, Beryllium can be used as a source of neutrons (when bombarded with alpha rays), which again, is a desireable property when building certain types of devices...
Both effects have been put to use even since Trinity...
see the HEW archive at http://www.enviroweb.org/issues/nuketesting/hew/i
In short: don't show up at an airport with some Be on you. You'd Be In Trouble (tm)
Most if not all aluminum is refined from a relatively rare ore called bauxite. I'm not sure if a titanium equivalent is necessary for this new process. General abundnace of the element isn't necessarily the largest factor in a material's value.
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
As far as I'm concerned you're lucky that someone posted a note that explained the wordplay in your joke before it got modded down to -1.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
I have to say that you were most likely modded down due to the reputation you have--going after others grammer all the time probably pisses off a few people--I know I always thought of you as a troll, till I saw the your posts above.
Slackware: old school feel, new school gear.
I used to be involved with production of titanium bike frames, as well as aluminum, 4130, etc.
;-) With the correct setup welding is not a problem. Gotta keep the tubes clean as well. We used ultrasonic cleaning to keep them clean before welding. Works great.
You can not weld titanium in free air if you want it to last
So... if I try to read that in english what you are saying is that I was on to something in my original post? :)
In other words, though I possibly didn't have the correct chemistry terms or specifics my hunch was based in reality and not the result of smokin' $3 rock?
Do not taunt Happy-Fun Ball
Land Rover still uses aluminum bodys as well.
So precious, in fact, that the Russian Czar (I forget which one), stunned his court by giving his new-born son an aluminium rattle!
~=Keelor
The book also mentiones they bought the Titanium from Russia through a specially setup company.
On a sidenote: beer cans made of titanium. Like to see people crush those in one hand. (and keep it that way) ;).
--Lilior
Beryllium is the lightest/strongest metal for practical use.
Beryllium isn't a very useful metal, though. It's so toxic that they issue strong advisories against breathing the dust from machining beryllium/copper alloy spring contacts. I would imagine it's a really nasty metal in more pure forms.
Yes, I paid $3700 US for a titanium wheelchair. It's an awesome chair. Not much to it. Very light, yet it feels like it will last forever. Worth the cash since I spend most of my time in it. I just wish the medical industry wouldn't rape the disabled so badly.
What kills me is thinking what I had to pay for it when I see cool stuff that seems 'expensive', but at half the price of my chair. Like the huge, loaded, riding lawn mower I wanted to get was 'only' $2200. It seems infinitely more complicated than my simple 17 pound chair for about half the price. And that Itanium upgrade...
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Napoleon had a banquet setting made of aluminum. It took half the refined aluminum in the world to produce it.
Actually, I was wondering if 666 came from the old Greek dice games where they would roll three dice; it was considered lucky to roll "triple-sixes", as that was a high score.
Of course, if you're looking for conspiracy theories, then you can find 666 in role-playing, "www", UPC bar-codes, and pretty much everything else, too. (29Ah; ha ha ha!)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Folks,
If they can drastically cut the cost refining titanium and working with that metal, it could have a tremendous effect on the civilian aerospace industry.
For one thing, it would make Boeing's HSCT (High-Speed Civilian Transport) second-generation SST all that more practical. Given that titanium alloys are very strong and resist heat far better than aluminum alloys, with lower-cost titanium production Boeing could do major weight savings on the HSCT design compared to the aluminum-alloy/stainless steel structure design Boeing studied with NASA back in the mid-1990's. This means that Boeing's HSCT could either carry more pax/cargo for the same proposed range (Los Angeles-Tokyo nonstop) or carry enough fuel to fly LAX-SYD non-stop cruising at Mach 2.3.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
When Intel triad to nail someone (amd?) for infringing their trademark on 80486 they found out that you can't trademark numbers. As a result, they renamed the '586 the pentium and the rest, as they saying goes, is marketing.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
I'm not sure what it is at now, but a few years ago titanium was around 32 dollars a pound. Good bicycle frames weigh less than 4 pounds. However, titanium frames start at 800 dollars and go up, way up. So I'm thinking most of the cost is in the manufacturing. Still, every bit helps, eh? Shambhu My sig hasn't made it out of QC yet.
Rome wasn't bilked in a day.
Oxygen, dont forget what we breath is only like 20 some odd percent oxygen and the rest nitrogen, breathing pure O will make you pass out eventually. Nitrogen is like 70 percen tof the atmosphere we breath if I remember properly... :)
Jeremy
my spine is reinforced with steel rods... i survived. the process btw is called "fusion" where hooks are placed on the vertebre keeping it in line. too bad i had to have it done already, it'd be so cool to say "i have a titanium-reinforced spine"
Oh, I'm sorry darling, but they haven't rebuilt that part yet....
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
That's why oil's so useful. If it wasn't cheaper than bottled water (ever figured out the price/gallon of evian=!=naive or perrier?), we'd be using something else to get ourselves around, make plastic with etc. etc. That's also why people are screaming so much about the recent rise in the price of gas.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
That stupid gesture is left over from the days of steel cans that really were hard to crush on your head. Someone who could crush a steel can had a real bone head. Oh, I know, they had a bone head to want to do it too, but it was impressive. Crushing aluminum cans is about as macho as ripping open a candy wrapper.
A chunk of a Diamondtalk.com Forum has some nice information on this. In particular, one poster cited an article in The Atlantic entitled "Have you ever tried to sell a diamond?" notably, it says the following:
Just like any other cartel, like the Cocaine People(tm).
That's true now, but remember that previous article in The Atlantic? Well, it links to another article which has this next juicy tidbit:
Namaqualand is described slightly above that snippet of text as "...a sandy slab of South Africa along the Atlantic coast. Namaqualand's pan-hot desert and scraped little hills start north of Cape Town and run up to the Orange River..." which is striking, because what that means is that at one time, you could head off from Cape Town, go to the beach with a rake, and just dig up uncut diamonds.
Also, the American Museum of Natural History has a nice diamond web exhibit which contains, among other things, this page which points out that diamonds were discovered in South Africa by a boy finding one just lying around on his father's farm. Nice anectodal evidence.
And just to make you ill without sending you to goatse.cx, consider this article (in Red Herring) which talks about a company (now called Blue Nile) which got billions of dollars (literally) in two rounds of VC funding in one month.
So when you're forking over two months' salary for an engagement ring like a barmy git, keep in mind that once upon a memory you could walk on the beach in Cape Town and spontaneously find a diamond in your toes. How often do you think that happens nowadays?
Enough data mining for tonight. You're all on your own from here on out.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I don't disagree in general, but it must rust under some circumstances or given enough time. My chemistry is pretty rusty (Hahahaha!) and I'm not sure I ever understood anything about metals but I'm a religous reader of the Economist and the whole point of the article was that you get titanium dioxide and the new electrolytic process for getting pure titanium is more efficient than the old chemical reduction method. So under what circumstances does titanium rust (i.e. titanium dioxide) form in the first place?
I realize this is a tangent, but I'm honestly curious to hear an understandable reconciliation of the anti-rusting properties of titanium with the prevalence of titanium dioxide. Maybe I'm just trying to make up for not paying enough attention to chemistry courses when I was an undergraduate...
antichrists read slashdot too, you know, and we have a right to be able to read slashdot without being exposed to christianity. so please exercise judgement when you write messages. I have to say slashdot is getting pretty sad in this regard.
thanks, ac (antichrist)
Whew. Good thing we didn't have this technique back then. The $19.95 man doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
... when it was discovered that that amount was significantly more than existed in pure form in the entire world at that time. I suppose a reliable copy editor/sentence parser (perhaps using neural nets or something) is far too much to ask of slashcode. vheissu
/* This post not warrantied for mission critical applications. */
Titanium siding on my house! Titanium engine parts, head, block, pistons. It's so light and strong one could build a big block engine that could turn 15,000 RPM!
Titanium is quite reactive and quickly forms a protective oxide film when exposed to oxygen. The oxide film doesn't flake off (unlike iron oxide) and protects the metal from further damage. Aluminum, another very reactive metal, does the same thing.
Ryan
Actually, it was the 707, during the first public display of the craft. Technically, this is not a big deal at all - when properly performed a barrel roll induces a constant 1g load, which all aircraft are cpable of handling.
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
A brief search failed to turn up any confirmation of 747 loop-de-loops, but I can believe it. The "vomit commet" used by NASA for 0-g flights is a pretty big plane, and the parabolic cycle probably puts every bit as much stress on an airframe as a loop. Maybe more.
My question would be whether or not Ti is flexible enough. Fighter jets have shorter wings than passenger jets. Ever watched the wings of a 727 during heavy turbulence? They flex quite noticeably. Would Ti stand up to that day in and day out for 20 years or more?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I don't think titianium batteries are that much different than normal alkiline batteries. I beleive tiainium is only used in trace amounts in the batteries.
here are a few. (Nice post, btw - briefly covered the current state of titanium supply industry). If this electrolytic refining technology foreseen in the Economist article is realized, some changes will occur. Toothpaste and white paint might get more expensive as titanium metal gets less costly (as metal refining starts to compete with dioxide, the price of titanium dioxide will have to rise). But the major changes will likely proceed from a combination of technologies. One might note that several have remarked that titanium is tough and this means its hard to machine. What if you could create titanium parts without significant tooling? What if you could form a part out of a titanium dioxide/alloy paste on a 3-dimensional 'printer' and then use an electrolytic process to finish it as a completely formed titanium alloy part? Cool? You betcha! That's where the article is pointing. China won't be left behind in such a transition - they'll simply shift from (labor intensive) sponge production to new electrolytic processes and parts manufacture - to designs specified real-time. And they'll use unicode-enabled Linux (TurboLinux? or their own ripoff of same) to drive 3D "printers." Years ago, I toured the Wah Chang plant in Albany, Oregon. Their product was Zirconium, back then...
but you're figuratively inspecting a neutron bomb with a sledgehammer.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Bringing irony to the Slash-masses
No dumbass, silicone is.
And here I thought silicone was a man-made product...
Ohh... you meant silicon...
Nah. They wouldn't be uncrushable: They'd be ultracrushable. They'd crush just fine, but when you let go of them.... sproint! they'd pop back into shape. You'd get to crush it again, and again, and....
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
The lightest radioactive element is tritium, hydrogen with 2 neutrons. Very weak beta emitter.
As a designer of helicopter rotor systems I can tell you that, yes, Ti is good stuff. I'm a personal fan of TI-Al6V4, we use it all over the BA609 tiltrotor (www.bellhelicopter.textron). However, as others have mentioned, the stuff is difficult to machine and has a real problem with galling, meaning that splines and other components with relative motion aren't good applications. But, hey, I'm all for cheaper Ti.
;-) Can't say I blame them... no liability, no quality assurance, and no need for machining tolerances on the order of a few thousandths of an inch.
However, God intended Ti to belong in airplanes, helicopters, and Soviet submarines. It does not belong in golf clubs. Everytime I hear a vendor turn us down because their production capacity is taken by golf clubs I want to kill someone
Baskin
That is such a cool idea! That sounds like the coolest material for a wedding band outside of adamantium (sp?) or Reardon metal.
;) If I one day meet a girl, it would be good to keep in mind!
Do you take custom orders?
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
had a helmet made of solid aluminum, if I remember correctly. It was more valuable than gold or platinum at the time.
"..don't you eat that yellow snow."
The 2001 Corvette Z06 uses titanium exhaust from rear axel back including the mufflers.
D'oh! Thanks. I know about protective oxide layers with steel and I should have been able to figure that out. If I were a moderator, I'd try to bump you up to 5 for concisely answering a basic question about something relevant to the discussion. But instead I'll just sit here feeling stupid...
you forgot one...
Beryllium dust causes Beryllicosis...one of the more unpleasant ways to die.
It's sort of like Black-Lung disease, only not so pretty.
Never let your fears overcome your dreams.
Actually there are many bikes that are made exclusively of Chineese Ti. It, however, is known to be manufactured by the Chineese military on the same machinery that they make thier nuke missles on. Really amazing that the US buys their crap, gives them the tech to make the missle capable of killing us and then supports them by buying more of their crap. I guess they had to do that, so they could have an excuse to fund BS like Star Wars missile defense! Absolutely amazing. When it comes to bicyles, cheap Chineese Ti frames (i.e. Airborne bicycles) generally are O.K. if you do not mind the moral implications of buying machines made by political slave labor, to less exactling specs on hardware used to make nuclear missles pointed against the free world, with the manufacturing waste being dumped into the water supply of the most populous nation on earth. As for me, steel is where it is at (Ritchey steel is as light as most Ti bikes. Just going to show that engineering beats wonder material)! Aluminum is good too, My Gary Fisher Supercaliber frame is just 3.2 pounds, which is as light if not lighter than many wiggly Ti bikes. If you want Ti, get a real bike. Us Ti bikes, such as the top end Mongoose pro (yes most Mongoose bikes suck, but this is an exception) are much stronger because the material's grain is microscopically aligned (Proprietary Sandvick process I think?). This greatly strenghens the material. Boeing won't even touch Ti that has not gone through this process.
See the extensive data for your selves:
http://www.matweb.com/GetIndex2.asp
Aluminum has good points too... like it's got really high thermal/electrical conduction, and you can injection mold it. The latter is pretty cool, and happens because its high temp viscocity falls at high pressure. And interestingly if you go to small enough length scales like the TI micro-mirrors where you lengths are near the grain size of Aluminum the reliability goes way up.
http://www.dlp.com/dlp/resources/whitepapers/me
It was the test flight of the 707 and it wasn't a barrel roll _as_such_. More flying around a helix, ie the axis of the rotation was not cocentric with the airframe. Anyway, the story goes that all aircraft can do this with no additional stress to the airframe and the test pilot knew this and just did it. Afterwards the boss told hom in no uncertain terms to never do anything like that again.
There's a film of this happening. Don't know if it's been webifyed yet.
OK, so this has CID 277, so that explains part of it, but it still amazes me that this post remains at +2. If this post was arguing PRO-religion/christianity/catholocism, it would have been moded into oblivion in .4 seconds. I'm used to living in this lost world, but the bias here is larger than I expected.
So, what's your beef? What was anti-Christian about my post, assuming that that's what you've got the problem with? Any why post anonymously?
________________________________________
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
I just wonder when they started misspelling "aluminium". Why do they complain about "ebonics" etc. not being real English when they can't write or speak real English themselves?
I'm not trolling, it's the Americans!
Intel Pentum Outside.
.-.
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
Well it is still hard to make an titanium bike frame which beats a well constructed aluminium or carbon frame in terms of high stiffness at low weight.
Titanium sounds great, but it's not *that* different from hi-tech steel. Slightly lighter, more elastic and a bit higher strength, that's all
UNOX - The worst operating system
Defence is just as correct spelling as defense. This variant is mainly used in Britain though.
OK, this is certainly going to get lost in the shuffle but ...
... if your finger ever swells up you will lose it (the finger), as standard tools will not be able to cut the ring from your finger.
:)
I have a titanium wedding ring, made of the Ti6Al4V alloy, which is the alloy that they use in those wonderful military applications. In other words, this is the really strong alloy; regular Titanium is, to my understanding, not all that strong.
Titanium is nice and light and I think it makes for a great, somewhat exclusive, cheap ($200) wedding ring. But
Furthermore, it's not really what I was going for - I wanted the ultimate ring, the most indestructible I could find, but I settled on Titanium because it was cheap and easy to get a ring made out of it (www.titaniumrings.com).
If I had it to do all over again, and I had the gumption to get going on the project early, I would have a tool steel ring made and have it coated with a TiN or TiCN layer, which should give it the strength and hardness to cut steel. Throw it in a wood chipper, and it would break the chipper and come out unscathed. That was my goal and I fell short with Titanium.
If there are any entrepeneurs out there listening, I will give you a free business idea: get yourself a foundry which is good at working with tool steel, and a jewelry designer, and start cranking out indestrucible wedding rings. If you can use the green tint or blue tint Titanium Nitride coatings, so much the better. I think people would go nuts over "indestructible" wedding rings. The symbolism is great - the commmittment is indestructible, and so is the ring.
Let me know when you have done so as I will be your first customer
Okay... grammar nazi boy... let's see here.. first not knowing that tensile test with the same cross sectional area show that steel is stronger.... whoah... kay.... now.. do you think its possible to say that the original poster was not trying to totally scientifically correct? He was saying "roughly." Further, his comparison of Aluminum and Titanium CLEARLY are based on AMOUNT not weight. He said Titanium (itsself) is twice as strong. This is entirely true. Aluminum is %60 lighter, thus, from his post you can easily derive that aluminum will be about %10 stronger per unit of weight. Please, lose the attitude, nazi.
If you ever visit the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Portugal, check out the building supports...they're Titanium. The metal was purchased, all at once, when the price of Ti was beneath the price of Al. Admittedly, this price inversion lasted only about a week...
Never let your fears overcome your dreams.
battlebots, for one, restricts what weapons you can use, and EMP is on that list. In fact just about everything interesting is on that list. Lasers above 1 mW, liquids, adhesives, entanglement (but not entrapment) devices, heat weapons (flamethrowers, etc.), explosives, guns (untethered projectiles of any kind, tethered up to 10' ft.). About the only things you can do are shove, punch, drill, saw, and grind.
The bot that i would make would use suction cups, or a material like iguana skin, to latch on, lift the bot up, and drill into the bottom. (for spite, just holding it still for 30 seconds wins, as well as having a backup weapon should someone manage to cut off the attachment device. (which would be armored, at least lightly)).
--Lilior
I visited a Ti foundry and bar mill last year, they recycle every little scrap. Of course, the price of recycling is far below buying new material.
On a side note, I now have a real cool paperweight...a small piece of 2" Ti rod.
Never let your fears overcome your dreams.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
I am an aerospace engineering undergrad, and we talked about this in my structures class this semester.
Ti has SUPERB crack resistance and fracture toughness...FAR superior to aluminum. The maintenance costs of a titanium wing box would be radically lower than aluminum. However, fabricating such a large, mission-critical structure from titanium would be (with current technology) obscenely expensive.
Note that the wings of most commercial jets are designed to flex a WHOLE LOT during flight. A 747 with a ~270 foot wingspan will allow its wingtips to displace +- 20 to 25 feet with negligible structural damage. However, this WILL acclerate the crack growth that ultimately leads to failure in aluminum parts. Fortunately, this crack growth phenomenon is well understood, and replacing the part well before it is compromised is part of the normal servicing regime for modern airliners.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I'm sure all the tools (except one set of masters) were destroyed, but the masters are in some warehouse in Virginia somewhere-- probably next to the Ark of the Covenant . . .
davejenkins.com |
Frugal American printers found that they could save on ink costs:
Aluminium -> Aluminum, cha-ching 11%!
Colour -> Color, cha-ching 14%!
Favourite -> Favorite, cha-ching 11%!
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Aluminium is makes up around 8 percent of the earths surface, and titanium is a fraction of 1%. I doubt titanium will ever be as cheap as aluminium
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"Almost isn't good enough - but it's almost good enough."
-Me
Damn, my Titanium VISA from First USA is worthless compared to the cheesy gold card I carry .. and I thought I was impressing the chicks at Denny's.
"The Russians didn't have as much steal as the US does. This means that they had to get their metal some where else."
I don't think that that is right. The USSR had an incredible amount raw material, and steel production had been a high priority since Stalin assumed power. Eg. the USSR produced more than 50.000 tanks of all types, until WWII ended. The postwar production was at least on the same scale.
I think a better explanation would be the fact, that the USSR had the worlds largest reserve/amount af titanium.
On a related note; The USSR civilian production system, and economy had been collapsing since the 30'ies. That meant that factories would need barter with other factories to get the rawmaterials they needed. A russian teacher I knew, claimed, that at one point, a showel-factory ended up with a huge amount of titanium. So of course they started a production of titanium showels, selling them for the ordinary fixed price of showels. Alledgedly, this happenend in the 70'ies, when titanium was still an outragious exotic material in the west.
Not gonna have a problem if i do break those TWO titanium wires that hold my braces together (they cost about 25-40% of my total treatment :)
If your views had been supporting the Bible/Christianity rather than against it,
Explain to me how my post was against it?
________________________________________
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
How cool! Now manufacturers will be able to advertise "super-strong titanium computers! Able to withstand everything!" Except the butchering that the wrong OS will do to the hardware :)
Yes, perhaps in some future day titanium could get as cheap as aluminum. But would it transform our everyday life in the same way that aluminum did? I think the largest influence of the cheapening of titanium is going to be in engineering, and I dont think it is going to be as important as the cheapening of aluminum.
Titanium? Forget that! Everyone knows that, with humanities' myopic nearsightedness, old-growth hardwood will be THE thing to own! No, you can't build missile casings or Aurora spy plane skin with it, but thanks to aggressive deforestation of old growth lumber, in 2215 a coffee table might cost you $25,000! REAL wood furniture will be accessable to only the filthy rich. "Vinyl Siding? What kind of LOSER are YOU? I have PAINTED WOOD SIDING on MY home. Get a REAL job!" (Roll the Ren & Stimpy Log Song)
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
Have any of you ever seen an actual electrolytic aluminum processing cell? I mean an industrial one. It is awesome.
The plant I saw was Reynolds Aluminum in the Tennessee River Valley in north Alabama. There were multiple electrolytic cells. When you stood at one end, you could not see to the other end.
Each cell used 96,000 amps. The plant was pretty much directly connected to the main output of the Wilson Dam. We were told that the plant used over 90% of the dam's output capacity and that the remainder supplied electricity to all the cities and towns over a large surrounding area.
At the end of the cell was an electrical connection that looked about like the lead battery post and ring of a car battery. Except that the ring was about four feet thick and about twelve feet in diameter.
Just trying to comprehend the amount of electricity going through there was what boggled my mind.
OT - Also the LOC was a key player during the early years of patents and copyrights.
Dang it! You mean this really cool Fossil titanium watch that I bought is going to be worthless?
Your reality is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. - Baron Munchausen
It's cool that existing uses of titanium will continue at a lower cost, but I think that, realistically, it will be a while before we start to see titanium used in cans, cooking foil, etc. The reason is that most metalworking machinery is a very hing capital investment. Although some of titanium's metallurgical properties are similar to those of aluminum (aluminium for you Brits out there), much of this machinery would need to be replaced. If I read this correctly, aluminum would still be cheaper to extract from bauxite, due to the relative simplicity of the electrolytic process. With that said, I can't wait to see what new, cool things scientists decide to do with the new, cheaper titanium. An uncrushable beer can, anyone?
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
Yeah, but the best thing about aluminum's cheapness to be that you can cast it into the basic shape, then mill it, because you can afford to lose the shavings. Of course, when people machine things on a large scale, they recycle.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Well I am sorry my grammar is not up to snuff. This isn't exactly a masters thesis or anything.
When I was in grad school I worked at a lab that tested the seakers for the navy. We had the entire seaker and we also used to put the windows in a wind tunnel to see if they would survive.
I beleive the sapphire is grown in a single crystal but I am not sure since I am an optical/electrical engineer and not a material science guy.
With all do respect even though you haven't heard of sapphire lenses doesn't mean they don't exist. Yes sapphire is expensive but it is VERY strong. Sapphire only passes in the midwave and not the longwave which is why they use a different window material for longwave heat seaking missiles.
So how long until titanium foil hits the shelves?
One fellow had the bright idea of making himself a titanium helmet. It looked more or less normal, but it was incredibly light, and it gave him massive bragging rights..... Until he got into battle. The first head hit, he went down with a concussion.
After that, the SCA changed the rules so that helmets had to have a minimal weight. It turns out that the added inertia is part of the protection that they provide.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Woohoo! Cheap 64-bit computing for everyone! And here I thought I'd have to take out a second mortgage!
Free music from Jack Merlot.
This stuff is getting seriously cheap already. When the Russians were putting up a titanium statue of Gagarin, you couldn't get the stuff for money or a reasonable amount of love. A few years ago the Russians sold off a submarine hull made of it, and it started showing up in golf clubs. You notice now that it is appearing in ordinary disposable batteries, hand tools sold via mass-mail, computer cases, etc. The Russians must be dumping it by the oxcart load to get foreign exchange. It's a fad, like cellophane, which was once a prestige material.
There aren't even any links in the artcile - and that was pretty funny!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yah BS. it is nearly as inert as gold when alloyed with nickel, and that series of alloys is what they use for prosthetic limbs and other medical equipment. The oxidation of Ti is so slow a person would have to live for about a thousand years to show any symptoms of poisoning. Another urban myth repeated without any minimum of reasearch involved is just another cowpie.
-- Defenestrate Microsoft!
I hate when someone replies to one of my own comments trying to discredit it with other facts. I realize now that I was doing this to you and for that I am sorry. In the future I will try to think of nicer ways to reply to other people's comments. Instead of 'as a matter of fact...' I could say 'in addition to...' or something.
What you say about the sapphire missile lens is truly interesting and even amazing (because sapphire is so hard to make).
Finally, your grammar was up to snuff in your first comment, but in your second you should have said, "With all due respect...". Sorry, I couldn't resist.
Keeping
What I want is... Adamantium.
Reinforced Skeleton, here I come!
Assuming you select the appropriate steel.
Steel is cheaper, stronger, easier to machine, and has a better strength/weight ratio. Then titanium or aluminum.
Titanium only makes sense in VERY specialized circumstances, for most stuff you can get a cheaper steel solution that won't throw your budget out the window, and cause the machinists to kick down your door an bludgen you with bar stock.
Yeah, I am a bit expensive. But I have no hassles working with Mr. Titanium :-).
It was funny when I was traveling in Europe to see the "aluminum-ware" of all the royalty. What's cheap and throw-away today was amazingly hard to find back then. Hopefully this, mixed with new separation techniques for the rare earth metals mentioned in this month's Science help usher in all kinds of cool cheap alloys and nifty materials...
Invicta{HOG}
Notice chromium was mentioned...imagin going areound bling blingin' with a chrome can of 7up in your hand...what would the ladies think...
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One would think there there is always a big audience in aww of what Titanium is etc etc. Perhaps this could be just like Diamonds. I would have to read more into the industry, but I would think there are only a few select dealers of Titanium just like Debeers is to diamonds. Diamonds are less rare in nature than Ruby or Emralds, but due to Debeers having upwards of 95% of the worlds diamonds they can set the price as such. I would hate to see a great resource go to waste but who knows what those who control the Titanium market will do. Think of it sure its as cheap to make as aluminium, but diamonds are mined in Zimbabwe by Africans making less than a sweat shop worker in Indonesia.
Bingeldac denies any responsibility for the
spelling and/or grammatical errors above.
I am a chemist. As such, I'm quite familiar with physical as well as chemical properties of elements, and their alloys. Strength is a physical property, and it is quite widely known that titanium actually has the highest strength to weight ratio of any other element or alloy. That's why it's so widely sought after for applications such as aircraft, cranes, etc. Steel may be stronger, but at enough extra cost in weight that making a thicker structure of titanium to achieve the same strength will still result is a lighter structure.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
The story of the "barrel roll" is pretty famous here in Seattle, but it was (?late fifties?) with the 707 prototype, & NOT late sixties with the 747. I believe it was Tex Johnston (or some other famous test pilot working for Boeing). The plane was making a fly-by appearance at the annual Sea-Fair hydroplane races, and this was "The BIG" coming out appearance for the new jet. A lot of VIPs were in the audience just to see the jet. In his memoirs, Tex wrote about how he wanted to do something that would really show off his wonderful new toy (in other words sell the jet and save the company), so he picked a very flashy but relatively safe maneuver ... a barrel roll ... it is possible to do it so that it is a constant 1G stress force thru-out the whole maneuver ... the same force on the jet as if it were flying level.
So without warning any of the company bigwigs, Tex did exactly that. And on the 2nd pass of the flyby, he did it AGAIN! Story goes that the Boeing president wanted to kill Tex from the reviewing stands, then he was shut-up by an impressed Airline President that said Tex was only doin' his job ... selling airplanes.
so i will finaly be able to afford a rhinoskin case??!?!
-nbot
What the hell is "bling blingin"?
Uhhh-oh... I must be getting old. I've stopped absorbing new slang... No matter... I'll just buy one of the new bullet proof, light weight titanium SUV's that are just around the corner. Hopefully they won't get so light they drop diesel engines as an option. Nothing more fun than having a lowered Honda Civic DX (Don't forget the Type R sticker) pull up next to you at a stop light, both windows rolled down, playing that really loud distorted rap. Light turns green, romp on the accelerator, a little turbo lag, and rich injector mix builds up some nasty exaust. The turbo spools up just about the time the exaust pipe is level with the driver's open window. The plume shoots in one window and out the other. :-)
Hmmm... Titanium turbine wheels might eliminate the turbo lag. Probably affect my timing somewhat. I guess I still have a few years of fun left.
Temkin
Titanium is a bitch to machine, form, weld, etc. so it will still be expensive to make titanium stuff compared to aluminum.
YOu'll have to do better than that. Cite scripture. Explain yourself. I remain unconvinced, and think that you're more a follower of the church than of Jesus. Also, "traditional christian beliefs" are not necessisarily biblical. Purgatory, for instance, is pretty traditional; but it's not in the bible.
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
One of the reasons why titanium is not used except in specialised cases is not only the cost, but it's workability using hand tools. If you've ever done custom cases you would not the DISTINCT difference between working with steel and working with aluminium. Now picture the difference between Titanium and steel.
Engineering for Humanity.
Those who spend their time chasing the 'Karma' being handed out by the 'moderators' at SlashDot, will only find torment in the end.
:) However, theology is a pretty intersting topic. Did you know that satan and hell are largely inventions of the Catholic Church? And a lot of Protestant churches latched onto the fire-and-brimstone-hell, the model for which was the local trash dump in jerusalem (called "gehenna") which regularly caught fire. As far as I know, the Bible teaches that the 'wicked' will not be tormented for eternity in Hell (Gehenna/shaol/etc), but will simply be destroyed -- that is, cease to exist. The Gnostics began the process of creating a "Satan" -- an embodiment of evil -- from the biblical mentions of "satan" -- which just means "adversary," and "the devil" -- which means "slanderer." So "Satan" is the "father of all lies" in as much as the concepts and words that were lumped into the capital-S satan mean adversary-to-god, liar, deciver, slanderer, etc. Giving all evil corporeal form (no matter how fictional) allowed the Gnostics and their later followers to shift blame off of God for the things they thought were bad in the universe. Small-e evil became big-E Evil. All of the little opposers of Christendom were collected together and given form under the banner Satan.
I don't collect karma. I'm not kidding. My karma did not rise due to points allocated to that post.
It has come to my attention that the user who posted the parent comment has a nick that is the binary representation of 666.
You're darn tootin'!
You may be earnest in your satanism, but I am one-hundred fold more earnest in my respect for and love of Jesus Christ, Our Lord. If you ask Jesus to come into your heart, he will. That's all you have to do. Then you can put your pursuit of 'Karma' and other worldy goods behind you.
Snort. I know you're joking.
Notice also that Satanism is a derivative, not of Christianity, but of Catholicism. Black masses, inversion of the Catholic pentacle (which means "truth" and was painted on the inside of crusader's shields) to make the satanic pinnacle/goats' head, etc. In that Satan is defined as the antagonist/slanderer/etc. of catholicism, it is not surprising that it is, in fact, a dark mirror of catholicism. If something isn't adversarial or slanderous of catholic dogma, then it isn't satanic. Therefore, to be satanic, you must oppose, subvert and slander catholicism.
So, the pursuit of Satanism is really a convoluted self-deception based on wishful thinking begun by Gnostics many centuries ago. Not that it doesn't result in actual harm to actual people, but by setting it up with its own independant reality, rather than acknowledging its true nature, people give it way too much credit and authority. If the adversaries of the Church had never been lumped into an all-powerful Prince of This Planet, Satan, I imagine that there would be much less "satanism" and organized evil in the world.
Incidentally, what set you off originally was my 666-base-2 slashdot nick. It is unclear from the Bible that "666" has anything to do with the "satan" of popular doctrine. It is the "mark of the beast" -- but what is the beast? It might be the return of a global economic and military superpower akin in nature to the Holy Roman Empire. It's also used as a reference to "the Antichrist" -- which would be an enslaver rather than a liberator of Man; perhaps a single person, but more likely a system. It's also called a "great false prophet," a deciver of the people. It involves the ability to buy, sell and work contingent on the acceptance or refusal to accept the mark of the beast. I submit to you that the Beast was the Holy Roman Empire at the time that The Revelation of St John was written. The Romans used Fiat currency and printed lots and lots of it to finance their military ventures. They compelled its acceptance by the populace by the force of law. You couldn't work or be paid or buy anything without the use of Roamn currency. At the same time, Roman currency was a lie, a deception in and of itself. Unlike earlier Greece and Byzantium, which had gold standards (i.e., stable money actually worth something intrinsically), Rome money had no inherent or fixed value. In fact, its only value was that decreed by the state, diluted by people, unwillingness to accept it at face value. The real Beast is a military power that mandates acceptance of a worhtless currency by its subjects, which allows it to collect unlimited resources from them through inflation rather than the much more direct and difficult use of taxation. Rome finally went broke, and did it spetacularly. Byzantium, by contrast, had stable money (and prices) throughout its 800+ year ascendency, and its money was accepted the world over -- from China to Spain -- not because of the decree of law, but because it was actually valuable, and impossible to counterfeit. Metal is metal, or it is not; whereas fiat money merely has a stamp and a law backing it.
Remember that Jesus warned against the love of money as the cause of evil. He attacked the moneychangers. Real money -- like that an byzantium -- represents real value (in goods or labor). False money -- as that used in Rome and by the moneychangers in galilee -- represents a lie and the desire for unearned wealth.
Given this background, I would say that the Beasts of the modern day are the Federal Reserve, the IMF, the World Bank, and any other issuer of Fiat money; and the military powers that mandate its uses -- such as the United States, Britain, China, Japan, etc. It does not require prophecy to see that any time a government gives banks charter to print unlimited money, so that it can have unlimited spending power, that the banks will want to do all they can to get the governments in debt and keep them there, because they colelct the interest. Look at the history of the Rothschilds supporting both sides of the wars in Europe, and smuggling for both sides to boot. Look at how the Rothschilds, through JP Morgan and the Federal Reserve, draw the U.S. into World War I -- the banks benefitted massively through that war. Morgan was appointed banker and purchaser for the Allies. Total graft.
So, the moral of this story is that there is not just one Beast, who is satan, but lots of beasts. Any institutionalized deception is the hand of the Beast. U.S. dollars bear the current Mark of the Beast (the words "federal reserve note" and "legal tender for all debts"). The Mark fo the Beast used to be Niro, whose face appeared on the money.
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
What I don't understand is why they even needed a transparent material. Or any material at all. They just spent about 5-10 minutes transporting the whales. It's not like they lived in there for an extended period of time.
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GetSystemMetrics(SM_SECURE) == FALSE
Ummmmm, you ask 1010011010 to back up his comments, but then provide no backup to your own?
forgive me if i just don't understand.
"I don't need a compass to tell me which way the wind shines." - Mr. Furious, Mystery Men
You've sadly neglected one of the more recent uses of titanium: firearms. Smith & Wesson and Taurus are now two of the biggest users of titanium in revolvers. A titanium cylinder greatly reduces weight and is just as strong as steel.
"Prejudice is wrong; you should hate everyone the same."
I found your post(#118) interesting. Just one question: why is MgF preferred over KBr ? The latter seems to be often used as window for IR-spectroscopy machines. Is it the fact that there exists a glassy phase for MgF ?
As a sidenote: Sapphire is the material of choice in UHV (ultra high vacuum) applications when you need good thermal conductivity at low temperatures (below room temp.) and low electrical conductivity (insulator) at the same time (It's used as a spacer).
Sapphire is also used as a substrate for deposition of thin films. I don't have experience in that field, however.
Then there are of course Ti:Sapphire Lasers (Sapphire doped with Ti), their strength is the huge tuning range (1000nm - 660nm). The very first Laser back in 1960 was also based on Sapphire, more precise it was Cr:Sapphire, also known as ruby.
In case the SCA people hadn't noticed, people don't fight with swords anymore ;-)
Titanium makes excellent armor for vehicles and people, including titanium helmets. Real soldiers and police currently use titanium armour.
Bullets have much more energy, but much less momentum than archaic weapons, so lghter metal *is* desirable in modern applications.
-- Mike Greaves
While we're on this diamond subject, I'll mention that diamonds have been discovered in Canada's arctic. Look for "Dia-Met" on the web.
They're one of the exceedingly few diamond mining companies that aren't controlled by DeBeers. And boy, is DeBeers pissed...
Anyway, point is, if you're looking to buy a diamond, you might enquire about getting a North American diamond. It's a bit more unique than the others.
Better yet, go with a simple gold band sans stone, and donate the money you saved by buying a goat for a third-world kid: http://catalog.heifer.org/goat.cfm
(this organization has phenomenally low administration costs: most of the money you donate actually does go to the people you're gifting, instead of lining the CEO's pockets!)
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Wow, if titanium becomes as common and "household" as aluminum, glasses/snow-board/bicycle manufacturers won't be able to charge a premium for the space-age futuristic-sounding titanium!
Might have to start making things out of fine pewter again.
Kinda offtopic but fos sil sells some cool titanium watches. There still more expensive than the aluminum watches, but still cool.
AK
Think of it: maybe osmium anti-tank slugs (osmium is the densest material known to man: about 20 grams per cc) will become a commonplace piece of ammunition in the future. The railgun could throw that thing.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
It's heat and oxidation resistance are pathetic - among the worst of all structural metals.
Titanium is *robust* - strong, tough, strong at higher temperatures, highly oxidation resistant. And it's fairly light.
Aluminum, Beryllium, Magnesium and *all* - repeat *all* - non-transition structural metals show either poor heat or poor oxidation resistance, or both.
-- Mike Greaves
"That is not because it is particularly rare (titanium dioxide is the basis of white paint) but because it is hard to extract as a pure metal"
If you are true about the 8:1 aluminum to titanium ratio it won't make very much difference. I doubt we will exhaust 1% of the earth's surface worth of alimuminum in our lifespans (correct me if my out of this world guesstimate is wrong)White paint is everywhere. They could maybe even (possibly) recycle cans of old paint just to make titanium.
Buying a Dell computer is equivalent to dropping the soap in a prison shower.
I was surprised to see this on slashdot as this initially struck me more as a bicycle geek thing. Titanium is a marvelous material for constructing bicycle frames, but it is very expensive. I'm eager to see this come to fruition in the bicycle industry.
-- Solaris Central - http://w
It is indeed a major bitch to weld. It is quite chemically reactive, even more so than aluminum which is part of the reason that it's been damn expensive to produce until now. The result is that you need a more than ususually inert atmosphere to do your welding. You can't even use nitrogen as your intert gas because Titanium will burn in a pure nitrogen atmosphere; you have to use Argon instead which is a fair bit more expensive. IIRC, for really large welding jobs, like airframes and submarine hulls, they've found that it's actually cheapest to put the thing that they're welding into a room with an inert atmosphere and have the welders wear breathing masks. This is obviously quite a hassle compared to working with Aluminum and absolutely outrageous compared to steel.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
I'd be able to build robots w/ titanium bodies. It's to expensive for me now. I always wanted to try being in one of those robot battle shows. Not one with remote controls but with AI bots. That'd kick ass.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I don't do custom orders, although I do make some for friends.
There are titanium wedding ring places online from which you can order. One-off titanium in New England is such a place.
The problem with Sapphire is, that is so hard and thus you need diamond to work it. Even then you have to proceed very slowly. Making a hole in a piece Sa can take hours and will cost considerable machine time.
Ever see a can of Sapporo Draft? It's a Japanese beer, and is very good. Their cans are aluminum, and ribbed. Because of the ribbing they are *very* difficult to crush.
-kidlinux.
My plans for a 15 foot tall war-mech are finally feasible! >D
One thing not mentioned in the article is how much calcium chloride is needed to produce the titanium... not too mention how often the electrolyte bath can be reused before the effectiveness of the conversion from solid titanium dioxide electrodes to titanium might start to fail. I'm assuming the basic principle behind this is similar to how a battery generates current until the chemical reaction dies from dilution.. Some /.'er with a more recent chemistry background care to comment? It's been way too long since I was in school learning this crap.
If the reaction has a relatively small window then the gain of using this process might be outweighed by the cost of managing/disposing of the spent calcium chloride...
It'll be interesting to see where this goes.
Do not taunt Happy-Fun Ball
> Napoleon had a banquet setting made of
> aluminum. It took half the refined aluminum in
> the world to produce it.
Only his most favored guests got to use it.
Lesser lights had to be satisfied with plain
old gold.
chris Mattern
Because titanium can be used in place of steel in many applications, it would make a great car body. It doesn't rust.
Even if you can't stamp it using a press (remember the huge elastic region) it would be great for an exhaust or a radiator. I'm sure that mfg. processes can be worked out for using it in just about anything. Alunimum is completely different from steel, but we've figured that one out.
Those of you who live in a place where they salt the roads in the winter or live on the ocean can appreciate this most.
I'm a machinist, and as an Expert In The Field, yeah, it would be neat to see a titanium beer can, but....
Titanium is a *bitch* to work with. It does *not* want to be worked. It doesn't like to be turned, milled, or ground, and if you're using a surface grinder and oil as a coolant, keep a fire extinguisher handy.
Or just shut off the oil.
I don't even want to imagine what it's like to weld.
Anyway, I digress...
Yeah, it'd be cool to see titanium as cheap as aluminum. It could be useful where aluminum cannot take the place of steel. It still won't make aluminum any less useful. Aluminum is *much* easier to work with (6061 alloy, anyone?), and therefore, less expensive for a finished product. You'll still see aluminum beer cans and aluminum engine blocks in the future.
DAMN ALCHEMIST!!! think they can change the world!! i'm sure someone sold their soul to make this possible.
I have a four tooth bridge composed of titanium underneath a ceramic coating (which is dyed to look like natural teeth). It's very aesthetically pleasing; quite impossible for the casual observer to notice the difference between it and real teeth. It was also quite expensive ($3500).
Nobody likes to lose their natural teeth; my sole consolation was that I could "officially" state that I had a piece of titantium "in" my body (the bridge is permanently cemented to two natural teeth which have been filed down). Hell, it's almost bionic; they'll far outlast real teeth. If I'm ever involved in a major air/auto accident at least they'll be able to "identify him by his bridgework."
Now that titantium stands the chance of becoming common place, I'll be just another geek with titanium implants.
This could be a tremendous environmental boon. One of the big costs of fuel cells is the titanium catalyst. If the price were brought down a lot, that would probably speed development and acceptance of fuel cell cars, not to mention the possibilities for other devices... I wonder if they would be cheap enough to replace the UPS on my computer. Or if not, at least the 20 or so UPS's on the computers at my old workplace. One car-sized fuel cell could easily power that many, and might be easier to have installed then a gasoline or diesel generator in an office building.
If you are modding me down because you disagree with me, use the "Flamebait" category, not the "Troll" one.
What has always puzzled me is why is the American spelling of Aluminium missing the second "i"??
hmmm
Steve
It is also very difficult to make castings with titanium. You have to cast it inside an inert atmosphere (no O2) to prevent it's very rapid oxidation at the elevated casting temperatures.
These requirements make it very expensive to cast.
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Titanium is as strong as steel, but 45% lighter. It is 60% heavier than aluminum, but twice as strong. Not surprisingly, it is often used in aircraft and missle hulls, as well as lacrosse sticks and mountian bike frames. It's used in that rainbow-hued metallic jewlery available at the mall. Because it's not corroded by salt water, it's used in desalination plants, propellers and other marine applications (including lures). Titanium is used to make "Shape memory alloys", notably nitinol (nickel-titanium). You can use nitinol wire to make walking robots, with the nitinol used as the musculature. It it used in pigments and is what makes white toothpaste white (TiO2). In fact, this is its major use. Plus, it's shiny. :)
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Im not saying it will be expensive im just saying itll be more expensive than Al becuase there is less of it. Not that it is rare... TiO2 is the base for all paints... when you want to paint your bedroom pink, the paint store guy gives you a funny look, then puts some pink tint in a can of white paint. Just because your sister costs more than your mother, doesnt mean she is expensive.
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"Almost isn't good enough - but it's almost good enough."
-Me
Well, yeah titanium may be cheaper but does that make it anymore usable? It weighs more than aluminum, right? It is stronger than aluminum. So it will just be cheaper. Not any more useful.
There was a film made of this little aerobatic stunt. I saw it a while ago on the t.v. history channel. The test pilot was probably wondering if he was going to get fired. He did not. ;-)
Anyway what good is titamiun, so what if we can make all those cool space ships we see on T.V, the ones with all those cool lasers and green chicks.
Theres one problem with reflecting your reality, sometimes your reality starts to reflect you.
Sometimes it's better to stick with materials that we properly understand.
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
Damn! You beat me to it.
--
These aren't the droids you're looking for.
When the Washington Monument, National Mall, Washington, D.C. was completed, a one-pound chunk of aluminum formed the very tip of the monument. Reasoning: it was a precious metal at that time. It was akin to placing a gemstone there.
[
Ok, when they are able to manufacture something like see-through Star Trek alumimum for cheaper than die-cast metal... then i'll be impressed.
.... oh no... i'm getting another one of those darned headaches again... gotta go..
Just kidding, I live right next to an aluminum plant
he...he...
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
Wasn't there an article on slashdot about 1-2 years ago about this?
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
Just a minor pedant...
"Steal" is a verb, meaning "to take that which does not belong to you."
"Steel" is a noun, meaning "an alloy of Iron.
We now return you to your normally scheduled browsing...
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
I really should check my facts before posting.
If you are modding me down because you disagree with me, use the "Flamebait" category, not the "Troll" one.
But since they will be using electrolysis, it may be possible to create the form with titanium oxide THEN to change it to titanium, getting rid of all the annoying metalwork that has to be done.
It's cheaper to import Aircraft Grade Australian aluminum from the US, than to buy it directly in Australia!
Figure That!
Area51 - We are watching...
Hrmmm...i hate being a Not-In-My-Backyard'er, but I'd be lobbying my council if a sign was suddenly erected next door: "Future location for Lunar Titanium rail-gun target."
This is not a looney as it sounds
da-dum *ting*
It's called sapphire (an aluminum oxide.) In it's pure form it is clear from the visible all the way down to the midwave IR. Yes if you put impurities in it it turns pretty colors (basis for purple sapphire stones, rubys and other gem stones.) But you can see right through industrial sapphire with no problem. It is the second hardiest window material known to man. The US government uses it as a window to cover the seaker unit on a heat seaking missile. Sapphire is the only material that passes the IR used for such missiles and is strong enough to survive on the end of a missile that is going much faster than the speed of sound. The only problem is that it is difficult and expensive to make windows that are very large. If you could make your windshield out of it then it wouldn't crack as easily and your car would be cooler in the summer since sapphire doesn't block the IR. While in grad school my advisor spent a lot of time and money studying industrial sapphire. He always said it was the clear aluminum as seen in Star Trek :)
Drink the can first, jeeze! They didn't teach you anything in college.
Lol, I don't think it'll become cheap that quick! However, I wonder what the price of titanium/aluminum is now, per oz/gram or whatnot.
IIRC for a long time now the dollar is no longer based on gold (i.e. the federal reseve does not hold equivalent amount of gold anymore). Ditto for other currencies.
This is gonna make Yahoo! stock skyrocket. BUY NOW!
to the moon!
if the aluminium were a quarter inch thick it would hurt like hell.
maybe a titanium can could be made even thinner?
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
Titanium is denser than aluminum, and it's stronger than aluminum. I'm not sure of the exact figures, but titanium has a better strength to weight ratio than aluminum. So, a piece of Aluminum is weaker than a piece of titanium with the same weight. Which means that, for example, a bike frame made from titanium can weigh less than one made from aluminum and still be just as strong. Also, you can make a lot of really cool alloys from titanium (not that you can't make a lot of really cool alloys from aluminum). Have you ever seen those nigh-indestructible frames for glasses? You know, the ones that can be twisted any which way and spring right back into shape? Titanium alloys.
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
Keeping
De Beers managed to increase the preceived value of diamonds though a carefully planned campaign of giving them to female Hollywood stars in the 1940s. Before that they were (rightly, IMO) considered rather boring.
Yeah, but diamond mining requires moving a huge amount of material to get a few diamonds. Titanium mining requires moving a large amount of material into a smelting facility. This process is not going to substantually change things other than making it cheaper. But it is going to change the lifestyle of titanium salesmen.
The main thing that excites me about this news is the possibility of airplane makers including more titanium in airplanes. That is a good thing. Stronger, lighter planes are always good.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
Naw... Un-nil-hexium Visa! (You know, w/ the 1.06% APR... ;-)
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
Now maybe I'll actually be able to afford one of those kick-ass titanium barrels for my paintball gun :)
Search first, ask questions later.
Actually, the concept is not really that titanium will replace aluminum but that it will be in the same order of magnitude in price. Where the price really makes the difference and where the real usefulness will be is in large objects. Bridges that don't rust, supertankers that are stronger, ultra-tall skyscrapers, jumbo jets that can take more load before the wings fall off (ok, that is an aluminum replacement...I wonder if they'll be able to do a loop?)
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
That, and it doesn't corrode. Pure aluminum's rather weak from a structural fatigue standpoint...so they alloy it with iron and copper to make aircraft alloys, like 2024, 7050, 7076, etc. Problem there is you get electrolytic corrosion which gets particularly nasty when you fly in coastal environments. Aloha had a plane that had some skin peel off because of this. Titanium skin/rivets would be much more preferable, since they're not nearly as susceptible to corrosion damage.
we don't wanna be shooting miniature black holes around. And think of it: once neutronium decays into hydrogen, it'll be like farting in a brushfire.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
nah, ununium is much much cooler... atomic number 111 oh yeah baby....
More on topic, I want a machined titanium full tower case.... Hahahahaha, I laugh at you and your wimpy plastic cases. And it would be lighter than the sheet metal case sitting on my desk right now....
Shit adds up at the bottom...
Hmm. I would assume that the calcium oxide would form at the electrode, and precipitate out of the molten CaCl, to form either a scum on the electrode or particulate matter. The former wouldn't be a problem since the other electrode would be the one accumulating the Ti. The latter presumably could be strained or filtered out. Anyway, calcium cloride is about as cheap as table salt. ;)
It also holds together Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man. Where would the entertainment industry be without the advent of the Bionic Man and his accompanying sound effects?
I shudder to think...
Normally mis-moderations don't bother me, but in this case it affects the credibility of what I am saying...
...there I'm done whining now.
Keeping