There has to be a better way to make titanium
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There has to be a better way to make titanium
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Re: There has to be a better way to make titanium
#2The work hardening when machining titanium is also just brutal, worse than stainless
Re: There has to be a better way to make titanium
#3This is interesting. I questioned the "why is tinanium so expensive" more than once and the only answer was "It's hard to make"
I have a bit of a titanium fetish. 90% of my cutlery and cups in the kitchen are now made of titanium. I especially love the (double-walled) bowls.
I really like touching the material. I like its aesthetic. I find it very strange myself. My first encounter was 15 years ago with the Snow Peak spork that I bought for outdoor activities/camping. Later, I acquired a Snow Peak cup, which I still use every day.
Re: There has to be a better way to make titanium
#4TLDR, AFAICT:
A: refining the titanium is probably fairly close to maximally efficient. But converting the refined titanium sponge into the final product has a ton of steps, and figuring out ways to delete one or two of those steps would pay dividends.
B: Assuming that the price of energy is going to drop relative to the other costs in the process is probably a safe assumption that can be exploited.
Re: There has to be a better way to make titanium
#5This is interesting. I questioned the "why is tinanium so expensive" more than once and the only answer was "It's hard to make" I have a bit of a titanium fetish. 90% of my cutlery and cups in the kitchen are now made of titanium. I especially love the (double-walled) bowls. I really like touching the material. I like its aesthetic. I find it very strange myself. My first encounter was 15 years ago with the Snow Peak…
Titanium is super easy to clean as well, without the downsides of non-stick surfaces. Silicone is the only other material that competes in my mind, although obviously it's used for different things than titanium.
Re: There has to be a better way to make titanium
#6The work hardening when machining titanium is also just brutal, worse than stainless
Wasn’t there also some issue with water when the A-12 or SR-71 was being built? Like the local water treatment plant started fluoridating the water or something, and it completely screwed up the production process?
Re: There has to be a better way to make titanium
#7This point was also briefly mentioned in the article, but I think is other half of the equation: even if Ti is made cheap to manufacture, it's use will still remain problematic as it's brutal to machine and form, which increases manufacturing costs drastically.
Re: There has to be a better way to make titanium
#8This is interesting. I questioned the "why is tinanium so expensive" more than once and the only answer was "It's hard to make" I have a bit of a titanium fetish. 90% of my cutlery and cups in the kitchen are now made of titanium. I especially love the (double-walled) bowls. I really like touching the material. I like its aesthetic. I find it very strange myself. My first encounter was 15 years ago with the Snow Peak…
As someone with a self proclaimed fetish I have to ask if you have ever tried working with the material? I find even the most basic manipulation to be wild compared to other common metals.
I was sanding and polishing a long handled titanium spoon to make it more smooth (slowly) by hand and the friction from that quickly made it too hot to hold. It's thermal conductivity is 1/10th of aluminum and roughly 1/2 of stainless steel.
Another fun thing is to anodize it to different colors. Compared to aluminum it can be achieved without the use of caustic chemicals.
Re: There has to be a better way to make titanium
#9The work hardening when machining titanium is also just brutal, worse than stainless
Wasn’t there also some issue with water when the A-12 or SR-71 was being built? Like the local water treatment plant started fluoridating the water or something, and it completely screwed up the production process?
"Completely screwed up the production process" seems a bit overstatement: with the budgets at stake for these projects, adding a distillation step to the water isn't some massive financial burden.
Re: There has to be a better way to make titanium
#10Is it cost effective to go from sponge to powder then Electron Beam Melting?