The Sexiest Metal

jonerik writes "Denver's weekly Westword magazine has this article on titanium and the attempts to break it out of its traditional aerospace/defense industry niche, including its growing use in architecture, computers, jewelry, sports, knives, cars, medicine, and other areas. The upside: It's as strong as steel but weighs half as much, it doesn't rust, and it's fairly plentiful. The downside: It's expensive compared to steel and aluminum and its high melting point makes it difficult to work with under some conditions. Still, it's nice to see it being used in other applications." Heck, I know someone who used it as his wedding ring. Pretty cool, actually.

Comments

And that's why...

[Gehenna_Gehenna]

my TiPowerbook is sexy.

Boo yah.

Not for anything, but I get looks of envy everywhere I go. I love that computer.

Re:And that's why...

[laserjet]

Isn't your girlfriend SUPPOSED to have a hole?

[ducks]

Titanium Glasses

[freakboy303]

The greatest thing about my titanium glasses is that some little part of me would survive re-entry should I fall off the space shuttle in the future!

Re:Titanium Glasses

[sacherjj]

I HAD to get titanium frames on my glasses, because my sweat is so acidic. The other glasses I used to wear when I worked out had some type of metal that was pulverized after one year of sweat exposure. The titanium looks just like new, after almost two years. Did I mention they are light. :)

Titanium is also very flexible.

[Flarners]

Titanium may be as strong as steel, but it's far easier to bend when cut thin. Anybody who has one of the titanium PowerBooks will attest to the fact that if you try to pick them up from one end, the thing will bend disturbingly. This is why you won't see titanium in kitchen sinks, silverware or anywhere else where the metal needs to be thin, strong, and unflexible. The only thing it has going over steel in these cases is buzzword compliance and price (if it's more expensive, it must be better!)

Re:Titanium is also very flexible.

[Shinobi]

Considering that titanium has been used in mountainbike frames for at least 8 years, and in quite a thin layer, especially compared to the steel/cro-mo frames, and have proven themselves to be just as durable, you are quite wrong. I used to compete in mountainbiking, and I had a titanium frame. Me and another biker smashed into a rock at about 45km/h, with our bikes hitting the rock instead of us hitting it, and his alu 8005 frame got warped, his upper tube bending, while my titanium frame barely got scratched.

Re:Titanium is also very flexible.

[Flarners]

The newer TiBooks are reinforced in order to prevent this bending problem. The first few runs of them (including my own) flop around to a dangerous degree unless you make sure to pick them up with both hands. If a CD or DVD's in its drive, you can hear it getting scuffed up by the drive hardware when it bends! Apple's "designer" computers have a history of problems in the first run (heat fissures in the plastic moulding of the G4 cubes come to mind). Be glad you weren't an early adopter :)

Re:Titanium is also very flexible.

[The Mayor]

I don't know the properties of Ti off hand, but I think the original poster was trying to say it has good tensile strength relative to weight when compared to steel, but it doesn't have good sheering strength compared to steel. Your bike frame is made to distribute forces to act against the tensile strength and not the sheering string (cylindrical shapes, like on your bike tube, are good for this).

Re:Titanium is also very flexible.

[corey_lawson]

Hmm... It depends on the alloy.

"3/2" Ti alloy is what is usually used in bike tubes, unless it's a Lightspeed, which uses "6/4" alloy in some of its frames.

The Ti alloy for glasses is an alloy that doesn't stay bent.

And the Ti tubes in bike frames, especially road bikes, can be breathtakingly thin. Cycle Sport recently did an article on a bike that the downtube was almost as thin as a soda can, in the middle (the ends are internally butted, i.e, thicker), and flexible (i.e, you could push it in with your hand...). And the fitted out bike weighed 15 lbs, with all the lightest weight stuff they could put on it.

Bike frames are insane compared with where they were 10 or even 5 years ago, thanks to Cannondale, Trek, Kestrel, Klein, Lightspeed and Merlin, et al., not only with newer steel alloys, but also with the newer aluminum alloys, titanium, and carbon fiber.

Re:Titanium is also very flexible.

[Wyatt Earp]

I have Titanium silverware.

I got a set of Ti sporks, great for pasta and anything with rice or slippery seafood in it.

Re:Titanium is also very flexible.

[dhovis]

Oh Boy.

Puts materials scientist hat on

The TiBook is made from commertially-pure (CP) Titanium. This is basically an unalloyed grade and is very weak relative to the better 6-4 (6%Al-4%V) "aircraft grade" Titanium alloys.

This is the thing. Apple chose Titanium more because it was sexy than anything else. You see a lot of things advertised as "Titanium", and often times the Titanium plays no important role in the product. There are some golf balls out there that has some Titanium in one of the resins close to the core, but the Ti is not in metal form, and is really only there in minute quantities.

In fact, sometimes titanium overshadows everything else there. One of the responses mentions "Titanium" glasses frames that are very flexible. Those are not pure titanium. They are a 50-50 alloy of Titanium and Nickel. It is a "shape-memory alloy" which has the ability to deform easily by realigning the crystal structure when bent! and then shifting the crystal structure back when the stress is removed. They are way cooler than just titanium. They have been precision engineered to be superelastic.

Titanium may be sexy, but it is not always the whole story. The marketing people often latch on to it, but as it becomes more common (and it will), it will start to lose it's allure. A large part of the cost of titanium is in refining it from the ore, and I've heard about a few developments that might bring it closer to the cost of aluminum in that respect.

Re:Titanium is also very flexible.

[tswinzig]

The only thing it has going over steel in these cases is buzzword compliance and price (if it's more expensive, it must be better!)

Actually in the case of metals, the cost is usually related to how rare the metal is (i.e. how much higher demand is than supply), and/or how much it costs to form it (in the case of steel).

Re:Titanium is also very flexible.

[56ker]

Prehaps the tit in titanium makes it the reason why the marketing people latch on to it - just my tuppence.

Re:Titanium is also very flexible.

[Panaflex]

molybdenum IIRC

Re:Titanium is also very flexible.

[davmoo]

Of course Apple used titanium because it was sexy. I've never seen Apple push their products any other way in the last 10 - 15 years. They show the fancy shapes, they show the neat transparent colors, and they push their machines because they are "different".

Instead of showing me how its "sexy" and "different", their advertising should show me how its "better than a PC" and I might go buy one.

Now, back on topic...

I have a couple of pairs of eyeglasses with titanium frames. Most expensive frames I've ever bought. And the best damned frames I've ever bought. I'll never again buy frames made of anything else. They don't crack and turn funny colors like plastic frames, and they don't corode and turn my skin green like traditional nickel-based frames. And combined with nice modern polycarb lenses I bet they don't weigh a tenth of what traditional frames with glass lenses weigh.

Re:Titanium is also very flexible.

[oyenstikker]

Yes the thickness and alloy have an effect, but the reason you can make a mountain bike and not a computer is a matter of shape. Circles, or even better, and probably what your mountain bike frame cross section would look like if you cut it, ellipses, are much stronger than a straight sheet.

Take a sheet of paper, and hold it by the end. It flops over. Roll the paper into a circle, tape it, and hold it sideways. It stays out.

I suspect that his bike had a circular cross section, while your more expensive titanium one had an elliptical cross section. Your frame was stronger because of that, and his broke.

(mechanical engineer posing as a computer geek)

Re:Titanium is also very flexible.

[b_pretender]

This is the thing. Apple chose Titanium more because it was sexy than anything else. You see a lot of things advertised as "Titanium", and often times the Titanium plays no important role in the product. There are some golf balls out there that has some Titanium in one of the resins close to the core, but the Ti is not in metal form, and is really only there in minute quantities.

Titanium Dioxide, commonly referred to as rutile, is a form of titanium. This is commonly found in most white pigments and dies. Chances are, the white golf ball has rutile, and thus titanium, in the dyed plastic coating. Gold balls are usually white, and I wouldn't be surprised if most of them contained rutile.

Kitchen sinks, stoves, refrigerator, bath tubs, many have a porcelain coating and rutile is the whiteness in the coating. Even your green stove has a white rutile base prior to adding green pigment.

That being said, I agree that structurally, it would have been better to use steel or alluminum for the case of the PowerBook. However I own a powerBook, and, although flexible, I prefer it's titanium, although polished aluminum would be cool too.

The coolest thing about titanium, that often get's looked over is its resiliancy. It makes it ideal for applications where steel and aluminum are useless. Look at bicycle frames, for example. Steel frames have been around for years and they have been optimized to be ultralight, strong, yet flexible enough for a comfortable ride. Aluminum came along, and although lighter than steel, it made for a rigid stiff frame and a toothshattering bike ride. The *design* of the aluminum frames could have been altered to allow for more resiliency, but the problem with aluminum is it fatigues and breaks if it flexes to much, so redesigning the frame to be more flexible was out of the question. Fortuneatly, suspension bicycles need a high stiffness in order to keep hinges/shocks/etc. lined up straight, so aluminum is ideal for this purpose.

Titanium, although not as strong as steel and not as light as aluminum, offers resilience. The first Ti mountain bike frames were awful, built similar to their steel counterparts, and compared to riding a wet-noodle rather than a bicycle. Over the years, the design of Ti bikes has caught so that the frames are resilient in all of the right places, while still remaining sturdy in the other places. Some frames have even used this resilience as the suspension and put a damper/shock into the frame to allow for suspension travel and damping in a metal frame with NO hinges.

Re:Titanium is also very flexible.

[Zeio]

Uncoated and unalloyed metals are of limited use in general. A pure gold ring will fold quite easily if pressed between your fingers. It must be alloyed with Copper to make it reasonable.

I find that people who don't use alloyed titanium and instead use pure or cheap alloys annoying, because sex appeal is not very important in a functional unit.

As far as interesting metals go, Platinum and Iridium are far more interesting and "sexy". Iridium makes radiant salt and complexes, and both of these metals are very "noble," resisting tarnish. I would think a titanium ring for a wedding band as a trite piece of junk personally.

I have personally seen a forged iridium platinum ring. It was striking. Far better than gold, I think.

There is also an alloy of steel and gold, gold steel, which is a very curious blue color.

Alloys are an awesome field, I recently read an article about Damascus steel, and that it has *finally* been recreated.

I think that the statement that Titanium is the sexiest metal is the furthest thing from the truth - its interesting, its useful, but not sexy. Unless the Russians have recently began to set the sex appeal standard in the world ;p.

Note that the Alfa class subs the Russians use are able to go several times deeper than a Seawolf class. The Alfas are made from titanium and can go over 4,000 feet deep.

I have provided a link FAS, which shows the real world implications of Titanium and Steel strength. This is also manifested in that fact that because the Russians have a plethora of Titanium, they are able to make cobra-maneuver capable jets like the MiG-29 and Su-27, Su-37, Su-everything, . Titanium is not for sex appeal, its for strength when alloyed with the right things. Even though the Russian planes are more acrobatically capable, Avionics, JSTARS, and AWACS makes the dog fighting concept almost entirely obsolete in modern warfare.

A submarine's hull is normally constructed of steel, or exceptionally of titanium. Special High Yield [HY] steel alloys have been developed to increase the diving depth of submarines, although the improved depth performance of these alloys imposes a price of increased fabrication challenges. These special steels are denominated by their yield stress in thousands of pounds per square inch -- thus HY-80 steel has a yield stress of 80,000 pounds per square inch [corresponding to a depth of 1,800 feet], HY-100 a a yield stress of 100,000 pounds per square inch [corresponding to a depth of 2,250 feet], and so on.

During World War II, American fleet submarines normally operated at a depth of 200 feet, though in emergencies they would dive to a depth of 400 feet.
Post-War American submarines, both conventional and nuclear, had improved designs and were constructed of improved materials [the equivalent of "HY-42"]. These boats had normal operating depths of some 700 feet, and a crush depth of 1100 feet.
The Thresher, the first American submarine constructed of HY-80 steel, reportedly had a normal operating depth of 1,300 feet, roughly two-thirds the crush depth limit imposed by the HY-80 steel.
The Seawolf, the first American submarine constructed of HY-100 steel, is officially claimed by the Navy to have a normal operating depth of "greater than 800 feet," but based on the reported operating depth of the Thresher, it may be assumed that the normally operating depth of the Seawolf is roughly double the official figure.
The Soviet Alfa submarines, constructed of titanium, reportedly had an operating depth of nearly 4,000 feet
.

Baxter.

Re:Titanium is also very flexible.

[VivianC]

I'd like to see a picture of that bent aluminum frame. Steel and cro-molly frames will bend. Aluminum will not bend but crack. In my four or so years with the Quick and the Dead MTB Racing Team, I never saw an aluminum frame bend.

Re:Titanium is also very flexible.

[guttentag]

I had a friend in Jr. High whose parents bought him a pair of those Nickel-Titanium glasses because he kept breaking the others.

The day after he got them he was showing me how elastic they were. "See, I can bend it like this and it changes back," he said, folding one end over itself.

"That's really cool," I said. "So the whole frame is like that?"

"Yeah," he said, twisting them into a pretzel-like shape, when SNAP! He had to hold his glasses in place for the rest of the day to use them.

He would make a great QA Engineer.

Re:Titanium is also very flexible.

[YrWrstNtmr]

Bike construction depends mainly on design and geomotry, rather than material.

Alu, CroMo steel, Ti, Carbon fiber...any can be made great, or any can be made a noodle.

Re:Titanium is also very flexible.

[Com2Kid]

However, the original poster is right that the 50-50 nickel-Ti alloy "nitinol" is seriously cool. It's incredibly expensive to make and use, and I think it's pretty heavy, but you can do stuff like take a wire of it, dip it in cold water, then twist it into any shape and it will stay like that. Then you can dip it in hot water and it will go back to its original shape.


That is . . . . Extremly . . . . Cool.

How much does a wire of that material cost? Could a plain old consumer get it or is it special order only?

Holy crud, the artists could have some serious fun with that, LOL!

Hey, would a block of it be moldable? If it was say worked with inside of a refridgereated area or even inside of a walk in freezer could a thick brick of it be molded in a simular fashion or would that not work?

Re:Titanium is also very flexible.

[dattaway]

The ever common form of titanium: Titanium Dioxide. Its cheap and everywhere. Just about anything white as it is a strong pigment close to phosphorous. All white house paints, Liquid Paper, also food grade titanium dioxide is in toothpaste, ice creams, candies, etc... just look in the ingredients.

You can buy raw titanium dioxide in the 50lb bag and it is some nasty stuff to clean up if spilled. Everything gets white and it takes lots of sweeping, soap, and water.

Re:Titanium is also very flexible.

[armb]

> > steel can be assumed to be immune to failure from fatigue.

> Not for bicycles. Trust me - I've worn out several steel frames.

Decent quality ones? Anyway, it is possible to design a steel structure that _won't_ fatigue under a specified load (though the fatigue strength isn't generally as high as the yield strength, so a steel bike designed for absolute minimum weight could have a fatigue limited life (and so could a poorly designed or poorly welded one)), but aluminium has no lower limit - the lower the stress, the longer the life, but eventually any cyclic load will fatigue aluminium.

Articles on bicycle metallurgy:
http://www.sjsu.edu/orgs/asmtms/artcl e/articl.htm

Re:Titanium is also very flexible.

[Decimal]

I had a friend in Jr. High whose parents bought him a pair of those Nickel-Titanium glasses because he kept breaking the others.
The day after he got them he was showing me how elastic they were. "See, I can bend it like this and it changes back," he said, folding one end over itself.

"That's really cool," I said. "So the whole frame is like that?"

"Yeah," he said, twisting them into a pretzel-like shape, when SNAP! He had to hold his glasses in place for the rest of the day to use them.

He would make a great QA Engineer.

Sounds like one friend I have. He did this twice. You think he would have learned after the first time...

Re:Titanium is also very flexible.

[Decimal]

Isn't stainless steel used in kitchen sinks? What is the difference between steel and "stainless" steel?

Re:Titanium is also very flexible.

[blair1q]

You are correct sir.

This came up in the late '80s when Titanium balls first appeared.

The Titanium in the name refers to the Titanium Dioxide in the white pigment. They don't tell you that, though. You're supposed to just stand there feeling better about the $4 you just put in the lake, knowing it would have been 18 feet from shore instead of 11 if you'd only spent $2.

--Blair

Sexier

[Beliskner]

A sexier metal is Selenium. Runner up is Elerium-115

Re:Sexier

[SuiteSisterMary]

Elerium is also VERY profitable when you need one more base to interdict those nasty harvesters and what not. Nothing cuts into your funding faster than failing to stop a terror mission. MUCH cooler than zbrite.

Re:Sexier

[SuiteSisterMary]

Yeah, but if you were doing enough interdictions, you had tons and tons of it. What was it... plasma cannons were huge profit? Build em and sell em and you were rolling in it. Somebody should take the Freedom Force engine and turn it into a sweet remake of X-Com: Enemy Unknown.

Re:Sexier

[SuiteSisterMary]

It might have been stable, but it also used timing loops. Bad move.

Re:Sexier

[SuiteSisterMary]

Yup, exactly. Why, even on a P200, it's just not as fun to use the guided missile; you set up a lovely little course for it, so it flies all over the map, through a window, orbits the alien, then gives him a taste of what it's like to be anally probed; and ZOOM! it's over in a split second.

Re:Sexier

[SuiteSisterMary]

I've heard it's real bad in Toronto - hardcore C++, C kernel hacker class people that used to do coding and sysadmining now working in FutureShop, many from Nortel. Sad when resume "wrote Linux device driver, Masters degree" changes to "70 words per minute, good SATs"

Yes, it is. My sig has become a feature here on Slashdot; I've had it since, oh, September. I sometimes get a reply to a comment saying 'Geeze, SSM, still haven't found a job yet?' We had a few pretty major places all fold in a very short period of time. Hell, travel down Matheson Street, between, oh, Mavis and Dixie, and you'll see Motorola, Microsoft, Oracle, and something or other else. "These Micronians are completely ignorant of space-war tactics. Their population centers are far to close together to allow them to survive an orbital bombardment." Pretty much sums it up. :-)

Re:Sexier

[SuiteSisterMary]

I've lived in Canada all me life, me bucko. I was referring more to the fact that Toronto is soooooo damn full of high-tech companies, big ones, like Nortel, that one one tanks, the market is crapflooded. I've been to London, and a few other places in England, and I've been to a few large cities in the states, and I've been to Korea. Hell, the only reason I've never gone to Japan is that I'm agoraphobic. Can't stand crowds.

Ti wedding rings

[farnham]

www.tirings.com carries some great rings. They seem to be the only ones making highly polished ti rings. I'm hoping my fiancee gices me the go-ahead to get one. She unfortunatley has a hang-up about our rings not matching.
I think the blue titanium oxide looks great. I have questions about the oxides durability in the long run. Fortunatley I don't have to think about the rings durability.
Does anyone out there have one of these?

Re:Ti wedding rings

[geekoid]

I have been looking for a new ring for my wife as a gift for are anniversary. Every Jewlery store I've gone into offers titanium rings of some sort.
Nice ones to, not those "rings" that are just cut from a piects of titanium pipe and polished.

Re:Ti wedding rings

[m0nkyman]

It'll hold up well. We've been using it in Jewellery for about twenty years, and haven't had a problem. The only downside to a Ti wedding band is that you're hooped f you need it sized.....Stuff burns like magnesium when you try to solder it in oxygen.....

My wedding ring too, and just to be extra geeky...

[waytoomuchcoffee]

I inscribed my wife's initials into it as binary. Just a lot of silver-inscribed dots and lines, no one knows it's binary unless I tell them, and then it's a lot of "umm, ok..."

No not ascii, there wasn't enough room for 7 or 8 bits each. 5 bits, for 15 dots/dashes. Got my ring from this site (of COURSE I ordered it through the web ;)

I am partially made of Titanium

[spookysuicide]

I shattered my wrist a couple years ago, and theybolted a titanium plate to the bone in my wrist. The doctors said it is supposed to stay inside me for the rest of my life. They explained that the lightweight metal was especially well-suited for this purpose, because of it's strength/weight ratio.
My only complaint is it aches after a hot shower or bath, anyone have any scientific reason for why this would be?

Re:I am partially made of Titanium

[Bill Currie]

the aching is likely due to the metal expanding at a different rate to your bones.

Re:I am partially made of Titanium

[RadioheadKid]

It's probably due to the fact that you have a titanium plate in you wrist.

Re:I am partially made of Titanium

[kaimiike1970]

It might be from the 'exercise' your wrist is getting while you take those looooong baths and showers.

Re:I am partially made of Titanium

[Cedric C. Girouard]

My only complaint is it aches after a hot shower or bath, anyone have any scientific reason for why this would be?

The same happened to me. They initially put in surgical steel, and it turned out my body did not react happily to it. They then replaced it with Ti.

My uneducated guess about why it hurts when you take a hot shower / bath is most likely due to the fact that your bone take expansion, and that unfortunately, the Ti plate does not... And is very well anchored therefore putting a strain on both bone pieces.

But then again, IANAMD...

Re:I am partially made of Titanium

[scrod]

My only complaint is it aches after a hot shower or bath, anyone have any scientific reason for why this would be?

They're your wolverine claws extending. That wasn't titanium you had implanted in your wrist--it was Adamantium!

Re:I am partially made of Titanium

[Gid1]

I've got a bloody great titanium scaffold bolted to my spine. My surgeon took out six cartilage discs, chopped up two of my ribs, put the rib bits between my vertebrae, drilled seven titanium bolts into the vertebrae and threaded titanium cable through the heads of the bolts.

As a result of using titanium, it doesn't set off alarms in airports, etc!

Incidentally, my parents have palladium wedding rings, as it was the subject of my dad's doctorate. Knowing my dad, I wouldn't be surprised if he hasn't dunked his hand in heavy water...

glasses

[Scrameustache]

My glasses are pure titanium! (the frame, not the glass..duh)

AND they don't have any screws...they're almost indestructible (that is why I wanted 'em...I'm accident prone).

+ they're super light and they look real good! :)

Ti Wedding Ring?

[4of12]

If you haven't been married for long you probably don't know that sometimes, when people gain weight, the rings start to become, uh, constrictive.

With a traditional soft gold alloy you can snip the tight ring with a pair of bolt cutters or even wire cutters for thinner gauge rings.

With titanium, I don't think you'd have such an easy time removing a stuck ring. A cutting torch is not going to leave much of a finger and using a diamond saw, too, could be real tricky with in vivo parts involved.

Get ready for gangreme to set in, unless you lose a bunch of weight in a hurry or find a good lubricant.

Re:Ti Wedding Ring?

[Chagrin]

when people gain weight, the rings start to become, uh, constrictive.

Cool. An insurance policy I can take out on my wife!

Re:Ti Wedding Ring?

[Tekmage]

Just a followup to this. If/when you get a Ti ring, get in the habit of taking it off at night so it doesn't get stuck.

My wife got my a Ti-Au combo ring for X-mas; I wear it on my right middle-finger. :-)

Re:Ti Wedding Ring?

[ek_adam]

With titanium, I don't think you'd have such an easy time removing a stuck ring. A cutting torch is not going to leave much of a finger and using a diamond saw, too, could be real tricky with in vivo parts involved.

Forget power tools, just be patient with a small hand file.

Re:Ti Wedding Ring?

[llamalicious]

Yeah, I don't think I trust myself enough with my dremel to perform a emergency ring removal.
It'd turn into a finger removal for sure.

Re:Ti Wedding Ring?

[56ker]

IANAJ (I am not a jeweller) but what happened to good old soap and water? :)

Re:Ti Wedding Ring?

[CodeShark]

Tell me about it. I have a titanium & gold wedding ring, which I nowwear on a pendant around my neck now.

It took an injury to my left hand with a circular saw -- and a nurse who pulled the ring off while I was unconscious -- so that they could put about 10 stitches in that finger (not counting the 70 or so inside and out on my index and middle fingers) to convince me that Ti Wedding rings are *NOT* a good idea.

Re:Ti Wedding Ring?

[laserjet]

I know your post was a joke, but refering to all the comments we see with obscure anagrams: does anyone else see the stupidity AND redundancy of using an obscure anagram, then describing the anagram immidiately after?

For instance, TIABOSL (This is a bunch of stupid letters).

If you need to describe it, you may as well not put your anagram letters down - chances are we won't remember them, and you are just doing more work for no reason at all.

Re:Ti Wedding Ring?

[56ker]

In reply to IDKWPUOAFNPR I'd just like to say FHMOSWK (For humorous purposes, or so we think) - and yes I am the one who posted the joke that started this entire thing off. (makes it start sounding like I swallowed a spider to catch a fly etc..)

Re:Ti Wedding Ring?

[banuaba]

When I did volunteer EMS in rural NJ, we had this thing in our rig called a 'ring remover'. It removed rings with a little saw blade, and it was nigh impossible to damage the patient's finger with the cutter. Ti was on the list of metals that it would cut. So I wouldn't be *that* worried.

Re:Ti Wedding Ring?

[Tekmage]

It's kind of like what happens when a tree grows through a chain-link fence, only with your finger. You get to that point of no return where the finger is easier to remove than the ring. ;-)

Aside: I already have a permanent "dent" from my engineering ring, which I've had and worn longer than my wedding ring and TiAu ring.

Re:Ti Wedding Ring?

[dattaway]

I have worked with enough exotic alloys (including radioactive thorium alloys) to know anything can be cut with a cheapo cut off wheel powered by a $50 walmart dremel tool. The precision is remarkable by skilled hands.

Re:Ti Wedding Ring?

[styopa]

A cutting torch is not going to leave much of a finger

And it isn't going to do as much as you think to the Ti ring. You don't cut Ti with a cutting torch, you can use regular saws if you keep the Ti fairly cold (close to 0 C), but don't expect it to be easy. An oxy-acetaline cutting torch requires getting a puddle of the material to form and then you add large amounts of oxygen. This works really well on steel and iron, if you try it with Al then you will get a big puddle of Al on the floor because it spreads the heat out too quickly. Ti has an amazingly high melting temperature, I think that a cutting torch would have a huge problem with it, which is why they use TIG welding on Ti not oxy-acetaline.

Re:Ti Wedding Ring?

[Hektor_Troy]

Dude, just learn to put on titanium-mesh gloves when working with stuff like that.

Re:Ti Wedding Ring?

[jafac]

naw, that's why god created Dremels!

Re:Ti Wedding Ring?

[styopa]

I recommend that you don't try to use oxy-aceteline on Al or you will have problems. It isn't a matter of melting temperature it is a matter of conduction (Al has a higher conductivity than steel). Al will spread the heat out fast enough that by the time you have puddle a large portion of the Al, not just area with the heat on it, will start to melt and you will have a mess on your hands. It is possible but it isn't easy.

It is possible to MIG weld if you have a line that is short enough to handle the Al line feed. There are special guns designed for this. People usually use TIG welding on Al.

If you don't believe me then go to your local certified welder and ask. I personally just got done learning how to weld. Welding Al, and the problems that occur when trying to do so were very high on the instructors list.

"soft"?

[Roadmaster]

Watches are some of the most common consumer goods available in titanium. Citizen is the largest titanium watch maker in the world.

A concern with titanium watches is that, while they're light and strong, they also tend to scratch more easily than steel. This is a concern because in time a titanium watch will look more battered than a stainless steel one. Citizen actually claims to have a process to reduce titanium's "softness" (can't recall if it's an alloy or a special coating), thus reducing this problem.

Re:"soft"?

[morcheeba]

I've had two titanium watches....

The first was a Wittnauer (I don't think they make it anymore). It was unfinished titanium, and got a lot of scratches during the year and a half that I wore it (it has a 10-year pacemaker battery!)

The second one is a ventura v-matic watch, and it's had the honor of being on my wrist for 3 years. Usually I get bored of watches, or they get scratched, so that's quite a feat! This watch has a special nitrogen coating that seems unique to ventura (I'd love to see it on non-watch products). The surface has been hardened to the hardness of saphire. Saphire is just below diamond on the hardness scale, and, yes, it scratchs glass. The watch is absolutely scratchless. It has a small ding (.5mm dia) that occured in a hangglider emergency landing (although "survived a plane crash" sounds much sexier!). But, the ding is exactly that - not a scratch. Since only the surface is hardend, the material is still soft underneath and can be dented.

Although the watch is big (pure mechanical, automatic winder), it's still light. As an engineer, I love the see-through back!! Check out the 3d viewer of it.

It's a bit spendy, but most of the price is the mechanicals inside. Ok, a good chunk (1/5-2/3) is to the retailer, but most of the manufacturing cost is probably labor.

soviet relics

[kharchenko]

Back in USSR, for a given quantity of alchohol, you could get pretty neat titanium ware. We had titanium hiking gear such as ovens, climbing hooks, portable shovels, etc. They were considerably better in most ways. Later, in the mid-90s, some "businessmen" were selling bike frames made out of pure titanum. A friend of mine still rides one of those - doesn't rust and very light.

Re:soviet relics

[4of12]

titanium hiking gear such as ovens

They sell it at REI. It's nice and light for backpacking, but pricey.

I bet it took more than one bottle of good vodka to get a set in the old days.

Re:soviet relics

[red_crayon]

pure titanum [sic] is not as stong as the titanium alloy with 6% Aluminum and 4% Vanadium. This is what's usually used when Ti is used as a lighter alternative to steel.

http://www.ushba.com/tifacts.html

TI watchbands are functional too.

[Nonesuch]

I finally got a new Seiko watch about a year ago, a simple analog kinetic model with a titanium band. Previously I've worn a big heavy steel-bracelet model.

Price and 'sexiness' aside, there are some real advantages to titanium watch bands. All of the strength of a steel band, at a fraction of the weight. I've also noticed that this watch doesn't feel as cold in winter.

I find that Plastic bands do not last, leather bands get sweaty. IMHO, a metal band with a good fit (not too tight, not too loose) works best for me, and they last forever with only minor scratches.

One drawback -- the dull "grayish" hued TI shows scratches more than my old (shiny steel) band. I like the less flashy look (compared to steel) and the lower weight... I've had plastic "sports watches" that weigh more.

Titanium wedding rings

[totallygeek]

Be careful about using titanium for your wedding rings (or any ring for that matter). The ring cannot be resized, and is fairly-much useless if your finger grows or shrinks.

Re:sci-fi reference

[Zenjive]

that titanium (or an alloy of it) is used

I remember somethign from high school science class about plain old titanium being quite brittle, you can actually crumble titanium ore with your hands. The only thing that makes it twice as strong as steel is making an alloy out of it with some other metal(s). The thing I never found out is: what other metals do you mix it with to make the alloy?

What a neighborhood

[stoolpigeon]

Where the aerospace industry is described in such a way,

"While titanium has its fans, it's still not clear if the metal can break out of the aerospace ghetto..."

.

Titanium wedding rings = more torn off fingers?

[IvyMike]

When I received my order of the engineer ring, one of the speakers mentioned that it's a very good idea to remove the ring while working with machinery, even moreso than with normal jewelry. The stainless steel is much less likely to break than a gold ring, and thus that much more likely to pull your finger off in an industrial accident.

Then again, a titanium ring helped that dude in "The Abyss", so maybe it has advantages, too.

Re:Titanium wedding rings = more torn off fingers?

[stoolpigeon]

An engineer cult? Who would have thought it?

Having read some Kipling I've got to wonder if he was talking about combat engineers. Not really the same thing.

But the kicker is the banged up looking ring for your pinky?

Kind of a poofta thing I would think.

Only in Canada.

.

Oops!

[quantaman]

At first I thought the headline was "The Sexist Metal"! When I started reading about aerospace and defence I started wondering if some militant feminist groups had started going after titanium!

used to make the world's coolest building

[subgeek]

Ti is also what was used to cover the new guggenheim in bilbao, spain. Frank Gehry is a genius. originally he was going to use stainless steel. but it didn't catch the light quite the right way. then he saw titanium and was sold. he was worried that it costs 2x as much as stainless, but it was ok because it only had to be 1/2 as thick.

i love the total lack of right angles in that building. simply beautiful.

www.metalsmiths.com

[sterno]

I also recommend metalsmiths.com. They do some great work and they do have titanium rings. We got an engagement ring and two wedding bands from them and they were very well done and reasonably priced. My wedding band was titanium with a stripe of gold and my wife's was platinum (and the engagement ring was platinum with an emerald).

The one caveat I would say is that they do sometimes take a while since it is a small operation, so if you are planning to meet a specific timeline order well in advance.

I've got Ti wedding rings

[Chairboy]

My wife and I got married back on March 24, and we are both wearing excellent titanium rings from www.boonerings.com.

My ring is styled after Ed Harris's ring from The Abyss, and my wife has a pair of helix rings, one that holds a diamond through tension in a spectacular manner not possible with softer metals.

See: http://www.boonerings.com/large/helixxlite.htm

In regards to safety, Titanium rings can be easilly removed using cutting tools present in most ERs.

Re:I've got Ti wedding rings

[Chairboy]

NEWSFLASH: I am a geek!

Gosh, read the byline for Slashdot and grab a clue.

Titanium and Corrosion

[Veramocor]

Titanium is actually a very reactive metal even more so than Iron.

Fe = -.440
Ti= -1.63

Titaniums corrosion resistance is actually confered to it by the formation of titanium dioxide scales, TiO2 (same stuff in toothpastes go ahead look), the layer slows down the diffusion of oxygen and other oxideizers to the surface of the metal. Much like Chromium does in stainless steel (Cr2O3).

Is Titanium then the best metal for all corrosive environments? Hell no! Its protection is based on the thermodynamic stability of its scales.

Put your nice shiny new Titanium in a highly oxidizing and basic environment (look up Pourbaix diagrams if you want more info). Kiss it goodbye. While plain carbon steel would have resisted it since its scales are stable in that environment and a lot cheaper to. Had you used titanium for your reactor thinking it was the best, you my friend would have been fired.

The moral of the story, there is no one good metal for all applications. You need to consider many factors not to least mention cost.

Re:Titanium and Corrosion

[Dixie_Flatline]

This is why, in fact, that welding Titanium (for things like bike frames) is extremely expensive. Titanium must be welded in the presence of a noble gas, otherwise your welds are ruined.

It IS possible, as well, for the titanium parts that they use in joint replacements to react with other things. While it's extremely rare, I've heard of one case of a woman whose hip corroded slightly, and formed a mean-ass titanium-acid substance that caused her great discomfort.

Here are some links to beatiful titanium bike makers:

http://www.merlinbike.com/
http://www.litespeed .com/
http://www.sevencycles.com/Main.html

It'll be the last bike you buy. Not only will it last forever, but it'll probably bankrupt you, too. :)

Why so expensive

[GreyPoopon]

If Titanium is plentiful, then why is it so blasted expensive? It can't be solely because it's hard to work with, can it? Is it expensive because it's currently only used for "special" applications? If we start using it more, will the cost go down?

Re:Why so expensive

[bmasel]

Takes a lot of energy to refine.

Re:Why so expensive

[jonerik]

If Titanium is plentiful, then why is it so blasted expensive?

According to the Westword article, the extraction process is expensive. From the article:

The complexity of the manufacturing process is usually blamed for the metal's high cost.

"They need to find a cheaper way to extract it from the ore," says Ken Gall, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "It would mark a large technical advance if that process could be improved."

One of Timet's competitors invested millions in a new production process that was supposed to cut costs, says Martin, but it was unsuccessful. Research on cheaper ways to create titanium is under way in Europe, but he isn't expecting any dramatic change.

"There's no breakthrough at hand," Martin says. "There are a lot of obstacles to overcome."

Re:Why so expensive

[ThesQuid]

There was an article on /. a while back on the potential of cheaper Titanium, "Titanium As Cheap As Aluminum?"

I wonder if there's been any progress since then. The original story is still on The Economist' site.

it _is_ abundant

[cats-paw]

Check out :

http://www.science.co.il/PTelements.asp?s=Earth

Although abundance doesn't necessarily mean it's easy to get to, or does it ?

There was an article in WSJ a while back which basically said that if Ti could be more easily extracted, it would take over steel. Apparently it's hard to get the metal out purely.

Obviously that's not true for TiO2 which is used as white pigment in darn near everything.

Ti rings = bad news if injured

[GreenKiwi]

Wearing a ti ring is bad if you ever get injured and your finger swells. Most ER's are not capable of cutting through ti and as a result, you could be in a lot of trouble if you ever need to have it taken off.

Ti and acidy skin

[shibut]

Many in my family were "blessed" with acidy sweat/skin. This means that any watch we buy aside from all plastic or all titanium will have it's mechanism eroded in a matter of weeks or months (depending on person). One clockmaker even asked if we dipped a 6 month old designer watch into the ocean for a day or 2... Anyway, with Titanium watches my brother has had the same (very expensive) watch for 3 years now. Since Plastic only goes so far, I bought Ti this year too (although w/ leather strap, but even the strap clasp is Ti). It's light and reliable - what more could we ask for?

ice screws!

[red_crayon]

Various companies have been making Titanium ice screws for about 11 years now.

Lighter than Cr/Mo and rustproof, take more wear and tear then Al, and stronger, all things equal, than either one.

See for example.

You'll get my titanium spork...

[jpellino]

...when you pry it from my cold dead hands!

http://www.snowpeak.com/gear/sct004.html

Ah, the titanium spork - a glimpse of the sacred within the profane.

Seriously, i trust the spork - I don't trust many of the titanium bike builders out there - do it right (Tom Kellogg) and you have a dream to ride. Do it wrong, and you've got something that will leave you cursing technology and send you right back to your trusty CroMo or Aluminum steed. And it's very very easy to do it wrong.

Titanium is also excellent in body piercing.

[thesolo]

Titanium has seen more and more use over the past decade in body piercing as well. While it is just as strong as 316LVM (Implant Grade) Steel, it does not contain nickel either. People who have numerous and/or severe nickel allergies can be safely pierced thanks largely in part to Titanium (and Niobium as well).

The lighter weight of titanium is another highly-touted feature of the metal in body piercing. Once the piercing goes past a certain point in terms of size, called gauges, weight can become extremely prohibitive for successful healing. Titanium solves a lot of those problems, and allows people to easily start piercings at sizes like 2 gauge (1/4") without having the weight be problematic. I know several men and women who both swear by titanium in their bodies, and will never go back to another metal.

Re:Titanium is also excellent in body piercing.

[Grishnakh]

The lighter weight of titanium is another highly-touted feature of the metal in body piercing. Once the piercing goes past a certain point in terms of size, called gauges [bmezine.com], weight can become extremely prohibitive for successful healing.

Or you could just not punch unnecessary holes in your body and avoid these problems altogether. I've heard of people trying to drill holes through their arms/legs; is this the next step for body piercers?

This reminds me of a scene in Pulp Fiction:
"Is she the one with all the shit on her face?"
"That's my wife."
"Oh"

Titanium is very hard to work on

[MtViewGuy]

While Titanium is actually a very common element of the Earth's crust, working on titanium metal is major problem, to say the least.

This was what Lockheed discovered when they built what became the famous A-12/YF-12/SR-71A Blackbird using titanium structural parts. Cutting the metal was a major problem, you couldn't use tools with cadmium as part of the metal alloy to work on titanium, and manufacturing large quantities of quality titanium metal was very hard, too.

Even today, titanium alloys are still way too expensive to make compared to modern steel and aluminum alloys. That's why golf clubs with titanium alloy shafts cost over US$400 per club, and also the reason why for commercial airliners titanium alloys are used only in areas where high temperature resistance is needed (e.g., jet engine nacelles).

Besides, the rapid development of epoxy-resin and graphite composites in the last 30 years has reduced the need to use titanium alloys for lighter airplane structures, especially for private and commercial planes. Even though composites are a bit more expensive than stainless steel or aluminum alloys they're still way less expensive than titanium alloys.

Re:Titanium is very hard to work on

[AstroJetson]

I saw a special on TV about the SR-71 once and it discussed how difficult Ti was for the folks at the Skunk Works to work with. For one thing, all the wrenches, and other tools had to be specially made because normal tools had something in them that would contaminate the metal long term and cause it to fail. Another thing was that they started having wing root failures all of a sudden in some of the planes but not others. Investigation revealed that the failing units were all built in the summer. The city of Pasadena uses Chlorine in the water supply during the summer and they were using regular tap water to clean the parts. The chlorine reacted with the titanium and weakened it causing the failures years later.

Re:Titanium is very hard to work on

[MtViewGuy]

They had to switch over to a deionized, distilled water supply. As for the cadnium problem, it stemmed from the techs using cadnium-plated wrenches on bolts on Blackbird, and when they were heated, the boltheads fell off!

Now you know why titanium alloys are only used on very specialized applications in aerospace, primarily in high-temperature environments. If titanium was easier to work with today's commercial jetliners would sport quite a bit more titanium structural parts (because of its high strength per kilogram) instead of the heavy use of epoxy-resin and carbon-fiber composites seen on modern jet airliners such as the Airbus A320 Family of planes and the Boeing 777.

Re:Titanium is very hard to work on

[Mandelbrute]

They DO use it for turbine and compressor blades, because it doesn't "creep" like steel-based alloys, especially in turbine blades.

It takes a lot longer to creep out of shape (think of something like putty on a hot day) if you use a Ti based alloy like Nimonic 80 than if you use an iron based alloy to do the same job. Pure titanium is of course not the sort of thing you want in that situation - you want an alloy. Turbine blades cast as a single crystal are also good.

Ti bicycles

[ragnar]

Actually, titanium bicycles are quite common. There are dozens of manufacturers (lightspeed among the most common) who specialize in titanium. It has been done since the early 80s, but it has always had a premium on price.

The reason for this material on a bike frame is to keep weight low and to reduce road vibration. The material is also holds up well in crashes and since it doesn't oxidize it requires no paint and you can ride in the rain without concern.

Personally I think that carbon fiber is the ultimate material for bicycle frames, but variety is good.

Re:Ti bicycles

[Orville]

If you make a quick trip to your Local Bike Shop, you're pretty likely to find a titanium bike.

Titanium is typically only used on a few brands of higher-end bikes, though. (For example, I took a Lemond 'Tete de Course' or somesuch for a test ride last weekend. Great ride, light, but about $3500.) I'm not sure how the 'ride' of titanium would compare to the ride of steel or aluminum on longer rides, though.

Oh, and a kickstand implies that you are actually going to stop. We all know that all serious riders *never* stop. ;-)

Re:Ti bicycles

[ragnar]

Yes, they are more common for race bicycles. I guess it depends on weather you talk about bikes in department stores or bike shops. Since I race bikes competively my view may be a tad scewed.

As for kick stands, you don't need them. Just lean the bike against something. Reducing well over a pound of weight is significant, but even more important is the safety factor. It is too easy for a kick stand to get caught on something and engage.

Your statement about the wheel puzzles me. The pneumatic tire reduces a lot of road vibration and it makes the most difference. There are many styles of wheels and rims that affect handling and ride comfort but I've never heard of a wheel being more or less designed for a titanium frame.

Re:Ti bicycles

[ragnar]

A kick stand only implies that you want to stand your bike up by itself, nothing more.

As for your off the cuff comment about how other people should spend their money, everybody has their own thing. Some people pay extra for a nicer car even though the basic model works. Some folks pay more for a Macintosh.

A well made bike is a beautiful thing and it is really hard to describe the passion. I took a second job and ate ramen noodles for 4 months in order to purchase my road bike. It costs around $3500, but I love it dearly and ride about 2 hours a day. If a person spends that much time on a bike saddle it makes sense to be choosy. Don't be so quick to call someone a pig for purchasing the right equipment.

Re:Ti bicycles

[Orville]

Agreed. I didn't quite spend that much on my road bike (~$2500), but I look at it this way: spending money on this hobby (which I really like, BTW), goes toward preventing me from the 'perils' of working with computers. (i.e. the 'slob-effect')

Even though the pay is higher working as a programmer, there is another hidden 'price' that I am trying to avoid! (And I *hate* going to the gym. Spending all that energy to go nowhere?)

Bicycles - a materials primer

[legLess]

Titanium has been used in high-end bicycles for some time. Litespeed and Merlin are the two big original manufacturers, although some others have come on board. Ti's pretty hard to work, though, so Joe's Bike Shop and Espresso isn't going to be able to buy the kit necessary to work it.

Litespeed cold works a lot of their tubing, which they say creates a stronger tube. They make some breath-taking bikes. And they're breath-takingly expensive, too, believe me.

For some time now people have been arguing the relative benefits of different bike materials. For most of bike history it was steel, but steel's heavy, plus it rusts. You're lucky to get a steel frame under 5 pounds. Some people still swear by the loose feel of a steel bike, but steel is on its way out. Because it's so damn heavy you can't make a really stiff bike from steel - tube stiffness squares as diameter doubles.

This is a win for aluminum, and the reason Cannondale can make such fat-tube aluminum bikes. The Litespeed Blade (Ti) has skinny, horizontally stiff and very aero tubing, but it's not so laterally stiff. Let me tell you, when you weigh 220 and you really pound on the pedals, you appreciate the extra width of aluminum tubing. Some people think it's too stiff, though. A nice aluminum frame (like mine, even if it's a few years old) can weigh 2.75 pounds. Unreal.

Carbon fiber has gotten big lately, too. Tell me this doesn't make your mouth water. That's right - it's got no seat tube. No way can you do that with any metal. Carbon's frighteningly light, but fragile - little scratches really build up and can adversly affect the frame. If you T-bone a carbon bike, one of two things will happen: (a) nothing, (b) you're walking home carrying $2,500 worth of plastic. Trek makes a lot of carbon bikes, including the one Lance Armstrong has been dominating the Tour with. That frame weighs 2.25 pounds.

Trouble is, the start-up cost for a carbon bike fab is astronomical - higher than any other material. If you want a custom frame, you're likely SOL. This is where Ti shines - custom frames are almost as easy as steel.

Thus endeth the lesson :)

Alloys

[Anonymous Coward]

For most applications it is Titanium 6-4, very hard and very tough:
- 6% aluminum
- 4% vanadium
- 90% titanium

For bicycle frames, Titanium 3-2.5 is used as it is more ductile (for forming seamless tubes) and has a better stiffness in torsion (which is needed as pushing on one peddle then the other torques the frame back and forth):
- 3% aluminum
- 2.5% vanadium
- 94.5% pure titanium

Higher temperature resistance?

[niola]

I wonder if using Titanium instead of steel in the World Trade Center would have saved some lives? They say the main reason the towers collapsed was the heat from the buring jet fuel destabilizing the steel. The steel weakened and could no longer support the potential energy from the floors above.

Now titanium they say has a higher temperature resistance, as well as weighing half as much as steel. That means that there would have been more time before the towers collapsed (if at all) for them to evacuate people.

Just a thought...

--Jon

Yeah, but beware of scams

[WhaDaYaKnow]

Yeah, we got titanium rings for our wedding.

It had 'platinum' inlays. After a couple of days my wife got a rash. Now, she wears a titanium watch all the time, so she's not alergic to that. She also has been wearing the platinum engagement ring for several months, so she's not alergic to that either. She is however alergic to tons of other metals, like white gold (or the nickel they use in it).

When she contacted the company, all they said was, ok, return them, insisting that it was real titanium & platinum. To be fair,- they did refund us promptly, but the ease at which they did it makes me suspicious.

What I'm trying to say is, how do you know for sure that things are actually made of the material you are paying for? I guess especially when you buy stuff online it's pretty risky.

And it kind of sucks to have to return your wedding rings :(.

Titanium cookware

[bmasel]

ad ad safety discussion

Re:Titanium wedding rings

[karnal]

So you're saying I shouldn't get a titanium cockring?

I guess that wouldn't be a good idea... (laugh, you know you want to!)

Other treatments for titanium

[mbessey]

Titanium can also be surface hardened by anodizing it, or by coating with titanium nitride (which turns it a golden color).

There are also purely mechanical treatments that can increase the surface hardness of the metal, or make it less likely to show scratches.

-Mark

Some sexy Ti sites to slashdot

[circletimessquare]

Check out the movies. Now THAT'S sexy!

Some more Titanium info, but this site is just way sexy. Check out the Flash Periodic Table on it.

Remember this post? "The Periodic Table of Comic Book Elements" from 2 days ago. The main site seems to have been fatally slashdotted, but here's Titanium on a mirror. Not so sexy, but timely. ;-)

Re:Exactly! It sure rocks in aerospace though!

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Titanium has almost exactly the same strength to weight ratio of aluminum in fact.

It's main advantages are impact resistance, and heat tolerance. You get aluminum to 400C and it loses its temper; do the same with titanium and its just getting into its stride. Was the titanium near any hot jet engine bits by any chance?

Its downsides are workability and cost. Titanium dust is extremely dangerous- it seriously, seriously burns.

Welding?

[markmoss]

Anyone here welded titanium? I wasn't a welder in the Air Force, and it was a long, long time ago, but IIRC the metal shop had to drag out all sorts of gear if welding Ti was necessary. I think you have to flood the weld area with nitrogen because its ignition temperature in air is lower than the melting temperature. Of course, you need something much hotter than the normal welding torch. Then you get the weld done and need to grind down the excess bead -- and as hard as Ti is, that's going to take some time.

But it's mighty durable once it's together.

The bank sent me some titanium sheets...

[Mark of THE CITY]

... with iron oxide strips on them. Oh wait, it's really just plastic. :)

Jewelers have a tool for this

[swb]

My dad had to have his ring resized back in the late 70s and I went with him to the jewelers. His ring finger had swollen substantially over time and his ring had become quite uncomfortable.

To remove it the jeweler had a tool with a flat bit that slid between the ring and the finger and had a cutting wheel (like a dremel cutting disk) that cut through the ring. The bit that slid under the ring was aligned with the cutting wheel so that when you went through the ring you didn't start cutting flesh.

The ring was then resized and re-fused to be a continuous ring. I'd guess that cutting is a last resort and that cut rings might have been resized by actually adding material to make them bigger rather than just stretching them.

IIRC the cutting part was hand actuated, but with the safety "backstop" I see no reason other than heat that it couldn't be mechanically operated.

Cheap titanium

[naoursla]

I remember reading in Science News a few months back that a new process for reclaiming Ti from oxide compounds was discovered. Ti is one of the more abundant elements on the planet, but most of it is in a form that makes it unusable for metal products. The article predicted that it would be used for all sorts of things very soon (like car frames).

Re:Exactly! It sure rocks in aerospace though!

[homer_ca]

Actually, they did use steel for another Mach 3 jet, the Russian Mig 25, but it paid the price in lots of extra weight and slow acceleration. Aluminum can only go up to Mach 2.5 before the heat from air resistance weakens the material. Steel and titanium can take higher temperatures.

Better than titanium

[r_j_prahad]

But it's actually aluminum that reigns supreme for enhancing sexiness. Any fool who has downed a six-pack of aluminum beer cans will tell you how much sexier (and even younger) the babes in the local tavern get with each aluminum pull-tab.

Fad

[RadioheadKid]

This titanium wedding band thing has fad written all over it, get some balls, buy platinum, don't cheap out with the titanium, and don't bother replying saying that platinum dulls, already know that.

Titanium Chopsticks.

[Alkaiser]

Anyone know anywhere to find those Titanium Chopsticks they mentioned? There are some Snow Brand "Carry-on" Chopsticks that are part wood, and part brushed aluminum (dubbed titanium), but I haven't found any of the weapons grade Titanium chopsticks the guy talks about in the article, except on this Korean site that didn't actually sell anything.

Re:my glasses frame is made of titanium

[MavEtJu]

Mine too, because non-titanium frames didn't last long. The protective layer around them was corroded[sp?] away within a year due to the acid level of the sweat. Since I'm using titanium frames I don't have to worry about that anymore.

Oh, and it matches nice with my wedding ring which has a piece of titanium in it. The place where we bought the rings told us that he would never make this design anymore because it was very hard to get the piece of titanium on top of the whitegold.
thumbnail 1 and thumbnail 2. The big pictures can be found on the website too, but that was before I learned about the macro-option on the camera :-/

I have one also - Ti is strong but not hard

[Bryan Ischo]

I have been wearing a Titanium wedding ring since 6/1999. I bought it at www.titaniumrings.com, a place in Montreal that I would highly recommend.

The ring is a Titanium alloy - Ti6Al4V ... it is very strong, and I think pretty attractive.

The problem is, whereas Titanium is a strong metal, it is not a very hard metal ... meaning that it scratches more or less as easily as any other metal. So after a while your ring ends up as scuffed as any other ring.

If I had to do it all over again I would have had a hardened tool steel ring custom made with a Titanium Nitrate coating. I think that the result would be basically indestructible and nearly scratchproof (with 99% the hardness of diamond). Actually some of the other nitrate coatings are cool too because they have a blue or greenish tint. I probably would have gone with one of those.

Re:sci-fi reference

[jejones]

Sexy or not, anything that makes it possible for Fuzzy fuzzy holloway to survive is OK in my book!

Re:Exactly! It sure rocks in aerospace though!

[WolfWithoutAClause]

OK. It must go upto a few hundred degrees there. If they'd have used aluminum at that place the plane would have snapped in half or something because the aluminum would have lost most of its strength due to the temperature.

There's not much point in having it anywhere else- aluminum is much easier and cheaper to work and obtain, and exactly as strong, provided you can keep it cool.

Um

[autopr0n]

Your bikes' frame may have bent a lot, then returned to its orgional shape. Titanium is very flexible and durable. What the orgional poster was saying that titanium isn't rigid. So it's not good when you don't want it to be bend ever (you would probably want a bike frame to be somewhat flexable, although I don't know)

TiO2 and self-cleaning glass

[wowbagger]

One other neat application of Ti is TiO2 coating glass and other surfaces. The TiO2, when exposed to UV light (like sunlight) causes a catalytic reaction oxidizing anything on the surface.

Car windows treated with TiO2 on the outside would literally burn off the gunk that gets on them (insects, bird splats, hydrocarbon grunge) in the sunlight, staying clean.

There has even been talk of using this in medical surfaces (exam tables and O.R.s) - when you are done, flood the area with some UV and burn the microbes off the surface.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=TiO 2+UV+surfa ce+treatment">here's a link to some pages on Google.

a href="

Ti wedding rings - my designs

[ecloud]

I wanted to design a ring/wedding band set which would interlock, and came up with this design. This guy Boone is selling it as one of his regular designs now, but I think it's my wife's ring in that picture.

I also got my groom's ring from him (this one). I intended it to be reminiscent but not an exact match to the bride's ring.

Tension settings...

[Ed Sassler]

This is true, what they call a tension setting is really a compression setting - I never really gave any thought to it before. I've made a number of compression settings (still called tension setting on my web page), but my newest sample is a reverse compression setting where the metal crosses under the stone and comes up to hold the sides. To set the stone I compress the ring instead of expanding the ring as with the other compression settings. I'll have it pictured on the next update of the site - http://www.ti-designs.com

It's not...

[Ed Sassler]

I buy titanium plate for use in jewelry production, it's not expensive. My rings start out as a hole drilled in a plate, so the thickness of the plate is the maximum width of the ring. a 1/4" thick 1-1/4" X 1-1/4" piece of titanium is somewhere between $10 and $20 depending on the grade...

How to remove a stuck ring:

[Mr. Flibble]

If you have a titanium ring it may be difficult to cut it off, but there is another method that often works.

Wrap a piece of string around the finger *BELOW* the ring, winding it towards the ring. When you arrive at the ring thread the string through the ring, then "unwind" the string, the coiled string acts like a screw thread and pulls the ring off.

An illustration of this technique can be found here. (The page also reccomends trying a dremel... which most geeks own, but modifying cases is one thing, modifying fingers is another.

Mod parent up guys

[Mandelbrute]

I've got a degree in Engineering, specialising in Metallurgy and I can't say it better than what's above - so mod the parent up guys.

Re:sci-fi reference

[Mandelbrute]

you can actually crumble titanium ore with your hands.

Yes, it's called sand. One important source of titanium is the Rutile and Ilmenite in beach sand.

The only thing that makes it twice as strong as steel is making an alloy out of it with some other metal

It is as strong as most steels, but a great deal lighter. As with most metals, it has far better mechanical propeties if it is mixed with something than if it is pure. You have a mixture, a "solid solution", and the other material dissolved in it adds to the strength by making it more difficult to push the crystal structure out of shape - since there are other atoms of a different size in the way. If you have enough of another metal, you can get a lot of small particles of a different composition forming, and these can also make it more difficult to damage the material.

The thing I never found out is: what other metals do you mix it with to make the alloy?

It depends on what you want to use it for. If you want to make cutting tools, then titanium and nitrogen alone are good (ie. the gold coloured coating on a lot of high speed cutting tools). If you want a structural material then Aluminium, Vanadium and Chromium are good things to add. For turbine blades or processing hot and nasty chemicals look up "Nimonic 80" on the net - much better stuff has been developed over the last 30 years, but there is a lot of info about the old established stuff.

Mythril

[CAIMLAS]

In my mind, titanium is the real-world mythril. I think making a wedding ring of the stuff is one of the damned coolest applications.

I'm not sure, but isn't there another strong, white metal that is used in rings as well? Or is that titanium I'm actually thinking of? I know white gold and silver exist, but they suck when we're talking about strength.

I plan on getting my wedding bands made in titanium, with fine laser etching/engraving on the inside of the band. :) (Probably something mutually meaningful)... I think that her engagement ring will also be made of the stuff, with a nice (not big, not small) stone, and a jeweled light blue stone on either side - all three stones will be plush to the titanium, so that there are no 'rough' edges on the ring.

Or so I hope, at least. :)

Sure, but what about ...

[Hektor_Troy]

Mother-in-law? Can the ring stand up to her?

I had those bendy-frame titanium glasses....

[argStyopa]

and they sucked.
Frame: bendy as all heck, would return with nary a problem.
HINGES: due to the difficulty of welding titanium (so they explained to me) they had to use a milder-than-normal steel for the hinges. Bent like tin.
(so they said, but when I asked them how they welded the eyeloops & nose bridge together, they didn't know...)

So as long as the only thing getting bent on your glasses was the actual lens fram or nose bridge, everything was cool. But if the hinges were put under stress (like 99.999% of the time), you're screwed.

To their credit, it only took moderate bitching before they allowed me to return them for a pair of plain-old-spring-hinge glasses which are great.

Re: Un-obtainium

[Deven]

I don't recall the actual buildings, but I believe some monument has an Al top part

You're thinking of the Washington Monument. Apparently it cost $225 (in 1884) and was actually intended as part of a lightning rod system for the structure, not as a tribute. (Not as good of a story, I admit!)

Lost fingers

[ka9dgx]

I know of at least one case of a lost finger because the ring cutter in an ER couldn't remove a Titanium ring in time to save it. While new versions of this tool might be designed to cut Titanium, do you really want to bet that the one actually available to your ER crew can really deliver?

--Mike--