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Science

Titanium As Cheap As Aluminum? 257

Posted by timothy from the minitower-case-please dept.
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."
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Titanium As Cheap As Aluminum? More

Titanium As Cheap As Aluminum?

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  • 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
    ----
  • 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.

  • 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
    --
  • 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!!!
  • The story i remember hearing is that when the 747 was being first tested, the test pilot took it through a barrel-roll after the prototype had passed all the normal tests. Now that's something i'd love to see!

    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.

  • 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
    ----
  • That's what I want for christmas!

    Oh, and maybe a Titanium-reinforced gerbil tube.

    Richard
    ----
  • nah, ununium is much much cooler... atomic number 111 oh yeah baby....

    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!)

  • 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
    ----

  • Re:Uses of titanium (Score:4)

    by grammar nazi ( 197303 ) on Saturday October 07, 2000 @08:41PM (#723123) Journal
    Dear 1010011010, Please back up your comments in the future. You say that titanium is as strong as steel, but the fact is that steel is stronger in a tensile tests with the same cross sectional area. Indeed titanium is lighter than steel, but you claim that it is twice as strong as aluminum. If you compare tensile strength-to-weight ratios, than aluminum comes out the winner.

    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.

  • It is an important engineering problem for this to be an economically viable alternative to the current titanium production process.

    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?

  • Re:Could this mean more elemental commodities? (Score:5)

    by vheissu ( 229617 ) on Saturday October 07, 2000 @08:44PM (#723125)
    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.

  • Re:But dont forget.... (nukes !) (Score:4)

    by Chep ( 25806 ) on Saturday October 07, 2000 @10:56PM (#723126)
    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.

    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/in dex.html for more design details (search for Beryllium there).

    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.
  • Well, it helps if the people reading your joke can follow the thought process. For people (like me) who didn't get the {t,}itanium -> cheap computers link, it looks like your posting really belonged in the transmetta notebook article -- and was even slightly off-topic for that one.

    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.

  • 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.
  • I used to be involved with production of titanium bike frames, as well as aluminum, 4130, etc.

    You can not weld titanium in free air if you want it to last ;-) 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.

  • 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?

  • Land Rover still uses aluminum bodys as well.

  • Ouch (Score:3)

    by Keelor ( 95571 ) on Saturday October 07, 2000 @05:37PM (#723134)
    You know, crushing a titanium can against your head would really hurt.

    ~=Keelor

  • 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.
  • from Dictionary.com [dictionary.com]:
    1. adamant
    2. A stone imagined by some to be of impenetrable hardness; a name given to the diamond and other substances of extreme hardness; but in modern mineralogy it has no technical signification. It is now a rhetorical or poetical name for the embodiment of impenetrable hardness.
  • 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.

    A chunk of a Diamondtalk.com Forum [diamondtalk.com] has some nice information on this. In particular, one poster cited an article [theatlantic.com] in The Atlantic [theatlantic.com] entitled "Have you ever tried to sell a diamond?" notably, it says the following:

    The major investors in the diamond mines realized that they had no alternative but to merge their interests into a single entity that would be powerful enough to control production and perpetuate the illusion of scarcity of diamonds. The instrument they created, in 1888, was called De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd., incorporated in South Africa. As De Beers took control of all aspects of the world diamond trade, it assumed many forms. In London, it operated under the innocuous name of the Diamond Trading Company. In Israel, it was known as "The Syndicate." In Europe, it was called the "C.S.O." -- initials referring to the Central Selling Organization, which was an arm of the Diamond Trading Company. And in black Africa, it disguised its South African origins under subsidiaries with names like Diamond Development Corporation and Mining Services, Inc. At its height -- for most of this century -- it not only either directly owned or controlled all the diamond mines in southern Africa but also owned diamond trading companies in England, Portugal, Israel, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland.

    Just like any other cartel, like the Cocaine People(tm).

    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.

    That's true now, but remember that previous article in The Atlantic? Well, it links to another article [theatlantic.com] which has this next juicy tidbit:

    Diamonds arrived in Namaqualand millions of years ago, tumbling down the rivers and into the sea. When the ocean receded, some of the diamonds remained on the beach.

    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 [amnh.org] has a nice diamond web exhibit [amnh.org] which contains, among other things, this page [amnh.org] 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 [redherring.com] (in Red Herring [redherring.com]) which talks about a company (now called Blue Nile [bluenile.com]) 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.

  • 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

  • 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?

  • 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...
  • 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.

    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 ;-) 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.

    Baskin
  • Strangely my old University bible (61st edition (1981) of the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics) doesn't seem to have this data. However it does list the elastic modulus, which is higher the stiffer a metal is:

    Titanium: 16 million PSI

    Aluminium Alloys: all at around 10 milion PSI

    Ingot Iron and Plain Carbon Steel: both at 30 million PSI

    Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
    Thought exists only as an abstraction

  • Be (Score:2)

    by jerrol ( 7184 )
    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.

  • Titanium Material Properties (Score:3)

    by kurthr ( 30155 ) on Sunday October 08, 2000 @03:45AM (#723176)
    Just so it's clear though, Titanium has some good points. Manufacturers seem to be able to build bikes out of it fairly easily. It's fatigue properties are significantly better than most any other material, especially at high temperature (discounting the single crystals like Ni & Si). Aluminum's fatigue strength is basically awful... try bending it a couple of times. Furthermore, Ti is rarely used as a pure metal (except for some marine and medical). Much like Aluminum, it occurs in common alloys like 6-4 (6% Al 4% Vanadium) and in alpha and beta anneal forms, which can have pretty different properties.

    See the extensive data for your selves:
    http://www.matweb.com/GetIndex2.asp
    MaterialType Fatigue(MPa)Density(g/cc)Melting(C)

    Al/6061 [matweb.com] 60 2.7 582
    Ti/11/6/4,720C [matweb.com] 1000 5.06 1573
    Co/Cr/Ni Coldworked [matweb.com] 500 8.3 1427
    Silicon /100/ [matweb.com] 120 2.31414


    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 [dlp.com] where you lengths are near the grain size of Aluminum the reliability goes way up.
    http://www.dlp.com/dlp/resources/whitepapers/mem s/dplmems/1intro.asp
  • 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?

    ________________________________________
  • OK, this is certainly going to get lost in the shuffle but ...

    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 ... 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.

    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 :)
  • 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
  • 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.
  • 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 :)
  • > This means that Beryllium is the lightest/strongest metal for practical use

    Except for the fact that it's highly toxic so it's not terribly practical to machine the stuff. There's more workers from Rocky Flats suffering from beryllium disease than radiation problems.
  • 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)

  • Re:Titanium Material Properties (Score:3)

    by blakestah ( 91866 ) <blakestah@gmail.com> on Sunday October 08, 2000 @04:46AM (#723200) Homepage
    Just so it's clear though, Titanium has some good points. Manufacturers seem to be able to build bikes out of it fairly easily. [snip]Much like Aluminum, it occurs in common alloys like 6-4 (6% Al 4% Vanadium) and in alpha and beta anneal forms, which can have pretty different properties.

    The pure metal is actually fairly easy to machine - I made my wedding ring from titanium bar stock. You can bet I didn't choose 6/4 ELI titanium for that.

    The titanium alloys are very difficult metals to machine. They have very high yield strength combined with a much lower elastic modulus than steel. This combination makes cutting titanium similar to trying to cut a hard rubber. It gives, but it doesn't want to yield. It grabs the bit.

    Also, titanium literally eats taps and dies for the same reason. It can get exspensive to work fast.

  • 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

    And don't forget that the Earth is realllly big. Less than 1 per cent of the surface is still a shit load, yo?

  • Titanium foil? (Score:3)

    by gregh76 ( 121243 ) on Saturday October 07, 2000 @05:46PM (#723209)
    So how long until titanium foil hits the shelves?
  • For those of you who don't know about the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism), they do reasonably realistic recreataions of medieval times -- including combat (though they use padded and blunted weapons).

    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.

  • Woohoo! Cheap 64-bit computing for everyone! And here I thought I'd have to take out a second mortgage!

  • Titanium (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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!

  • Re:Titanium Material Properties (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Manufacturers seem to be able to build bikes out of it fairly easily.

    Not true. Many manufacturers build bikes out of it, 2 or 3 build really good bikes out of it. It's easy enough for them to weld a Ti frame, they simply do a variation on the TIG welds they do to Al, but the bike ends up costing 2x more and not being as solid a performer.

    To really build a Ti bike, you need to use shape tubes, Ti isn't nearly as stiff as Al and you want you $4000 Ti frame to be stiff so you can go fast, shaping the tubes can distribute shock differently and stiffen up parts of the frame. Shaping Ti tubes might be rocket science, I only know of 2 companies that do it standard, DEAN and Litespeed (Litespeed == Ti bikes) and you pay a premium for it they only do it on certain models and they are not cheap. Colnago, Pinerello, Bianchi, and I believe Pegoretti and Medici will build you Ti bikes with shaped tubes but they are custom order, again, not cheap. Make that very not cheap, a Colnago Ti-40 fully built can approach $10,000!

    I used to own a Litespeed classic (non-shaped) and it was like riding a wet noodle, I could move the bottom bracket simply by standing out of the saddle when I climbed. Now I ride Al or carbon, period. It was sexy riding a Ti frame but it just didn't have the ride I could get from Al and for the cost I could get one hell of a tricked out Al bike.

    On the up tick, Ti bikes last forever, the frames don't rust, break or deform. Class 2 pros like to ride them for that reason, they can ride one bike all year. They are less stiff so unless you're racing or hardcore it's a damn fine touring bike, debatably you can get better steal bikes (Reynolds 800 series is sweet and ultra light, they are doing awesome things with air cooled steal these days...) from Italy but Ti make a nice touring machine that you can put hundreds of miles on a week. Also, if you're 50 and you decide that you're going to "get back in to" riding, the usual thing to do seems to be dropping $4500 on a soft Ti bike that you can't race; personally I think that it's a great use for them, let the old folks buy them. Ti also seems to be a good fit for cyclocross and certain types of mountain bikers, I still prefer Al on a mountain bike because it's lighter and you do a load of climbing but Ti is insanely rugged and that's also a big concern.

    Carbon is where it is all going anyways, they can do insane things with that material and it is both stronger and lighter than Ti and they can dial in how stiff it is when they build it. Still, Ti is a remarkable metal, I just don't think it's the best metal for bikes.

  • This is a truly good day. I have always appreciated your grammar comments but I am now glad to know you have some skill with real content as opposed to just delivery/constructive criticism. I have questions though.

    Is there any truth to the rumor that the Russian Typhoon class submarine uses a 6 inch thick Ti hull welded in only 6 passes, something western technology would require 140+ passes to weld?

    Would Ti be a good candidate for reinforcement wire in reinforced concrete structure due to its corrosion resistance?

    Has there been any research into titanium as an element of composites comparable with say, Tungsten/Boron wires in an epoxy matrix?

    Finally, Can the process used to make Ti cheaper be applied to Beryllium?

  • Screw titanium (Score:3)

    by MustardMan ( 52102 ) on Saturday October 07, 2000 @05:47PM (#723218)
    What I want is... Adamantium.

    Reinforced Skeleton, here I come!

  • Re:But dont forget.... (Score:3)

    by (deleted - SCI) ( 207889 ) on Sunday October 08, 2000 @06:26AM (#723231)
    A practical application of this are new forceps used in brain surgery. A human hair is ~100-300 microns in diameter, while these forceps are ~0.6-1 microns in diameter. Brain surgens use these to hold brain neurons while performing surgery.



    I think that is amazing. Just in case you were wondering what a grammar nazi knows about Materials Science, don't.

    Also, don't ask what a Grammar Nazi knows about neurosurgery. "Brain surgeons" don't hold individual neurons during surgery. In fact, you would be very surprised to that common standard brain surgery tools include tongue depressors, spatulas (the tiny ones used to measure out chemicals, not the ones you use to flip burgers) and other 'blunt' devices rather than scalpels/forceps, etc. Despite its delicacy, the texture/consistency of the brain (especially as contrasted to the vascular structures within it) lends itself to certain rather unexpected techniques of manipulation.

    Further, medical science is nowhere near the level of manipulating individual neurons, and it is questionable whether it would ever want to -- the brain isn't like a microchip, where a single miswired trace causes a logic unit to fail. Single neurons are not that important, and a general principle of neurosurgery is to ablate (destroy) a region, and let the brain rewire itself around it (like the Net). If specific neurons are ever targeted (in our lifetime) it will be chemically (e.g. with tailored antibodies, etc.) With 10 billion neurons (and single axons that may run a tangled path many centimeters long) -not to mention the 100 billion 'support cells'- the brain is not amenable to 'simple rewiring by hand'. Have you considered the problem of locating and manipulating, any significant number of indivdual neurons.

    That is not to say that *researchers* don't often manipulate individual neurons for any number of reasons (in lab apparatus, not in patients). I'm sure that they will find a use for such micro-forceps in their work.

    DISCLAIMER: I am not a neurosurgeon, but I am a physician. I was also raised by a neurosurgeon, and spent way too much of my early 20's doing things like "emptying (squid) interneurons" -- squeezing them out like toothpaste tubes, so we could perform experiments on the cell membrane.

  • Titanium is a bitch to machine, form, weld, etc. so it will still be expensive to make titanium stuff compared to aluminum.
  • Those who spend their time chasing the 'Karma' being handed out by the 'moderators' at SlashDot, will only find torment in the end.

    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. :) 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.

    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.

    ________________________________________
  • Ever thrashed a titanium computer? I've seen people popping shots at them from elss than 6 inches (with a shotgun) and lil more than messing up the paint job. Was awesome. Wish they still made those machines. I want a titanium cased laptop now though. :)

  • Re:But dont forget.... (Score:3)

    by Life Blood ( 100124 ) on Monday October 09, 2000 @05:11AM (#723246) Homepage

    Note Grammar Nazi is an idiot. He knows no material science and did no research.

    Titanium isn't a superstrong superlight alloy. Titanium has roughly twice the specific strength of aluminum. Titanium also has approximately the same specific stiffness as aluminum. This means the aluminum is just as springy as titanium, but it breaks sooner. Look it up.

    Titanium will always be harder to work with than aluminum. True but not for the reasons you site. Titanium is about 50% stiffer than aluminum but is 200% stronger. This makes it a bear to machine as opposed to aluminum which is wonderful to machine. In terms of raw materials, the two may be close, but in terms of manufacturing aluminum beats titanium every time.

    Titanium may become cheaper than steel. Steel is not cheap due to its abundance or ease of refining. Steel is used in many application today because it is easy to manufacture. You can weld steel. Most of a products cost is not in raw materials, it is in manufacturing. Therefore steel is cheap.

    BTW as nice as titanium is for some things, it really doesn't matter. Compared to advanced fiber reinforced composites, titanium is nothing. Its most likely going to be too expensive to work with compared to steel and aluminum and not good enough as advanced materials go.

  • 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!)

    --
  • If you bothered to read the article you would find this little tidbit of info in the first paragraph:

    "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.

  • 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.
  • I don't even want to imagine what it's like to weld.

    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.

  • Even though it covers < 1% of the earth, titanium is considered to be in the top 10 of the earth's most abundant elements. I believe silicon is the most abundant element.

    Saw that off a periodic table - that fact was pretty interesting in itself.
  • 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.
  • 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.

  • Yay! (Score:2)

    by atma ( 68232 )
    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.

  • Titanium beer cans and whatnot. (Score:5)

    by bmo ( 77928 ) on Saturday October 07, 2000 @06:04PM (#723271)
    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.
  • 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.

  • Uses of titanium (Score:5)

    by 1010011010 ( 53039 ) on Saturday October 07, 2000 @06:07PM (#723279) Homepage
    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 [boeing.com], as well as lacrosse sticks and mountian bike frames. It's used in that rainbow-hued metallic jewlery [aol.com] available at the mall. Because it's not corroded by salt water, it's used in desalination plants, propellers [optic.or.jp] and other marine applications (including lures [terminatorlures.com]). Titanium is used to make "Shape memory alloys" [sma-inc.com], notably nitinol (nickel-titanium). You can use nitinol wire to make walking robots [cam.ac.uk], 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. :)

    ________________________________________
  • ObNostalgia: Actually, up until around 1978, beverage cans were steel, not tin. These are easily recognizeable by the seam that runs down the side of the can. Coincidentally, these cans had IDs nearly identical to the OD of a tennis ball. When I was a lad, playing D&D and Traveller using inexpensive little saddle-stapled rule booklets, we'd use these cans to build lighter-fluid-fueled tennis ball cannons.

    Alas, this practice all but ended with the switch to aluminum cans. Only Hansen's juices and nectars kept to the steel cans... but they switched to Al, too, a year or two ago.

    But you can still soak a tennis ball in lighter fluid, ignite it, and kick it around...

  • He would have been better off with a titanium shield. I built a shield from lexan (polycarbonate; ie. bulletproof glass) (as opposed to the plywood or steel, or aluminum most people use), and it was much lighter. Greatly reduced the time it took to get the shield into position to block. A large, lightweight sheild makes you nearly unstoppable. come to think of it, prolly lexan is better than titanium for that too.

    I used lexan in the rest of my armor as well. I heat-formed it, painted it, and put in some decorative rivets, looked like hard-leather. Very light, extremely tough. Ah, those were the days. That suit is probably still out there somewhere, because I sold it when I quit.

    I did use a very stout iron helmet though. The lexan was great at distributing force, but I was smart enough to protect my head well.
  • Not to mention, about 10% of people are "allergic" to Argon gas. That is, the presence of Argon in significant quantities causes major irritation of the lungs and breathing passages. Don't know why. I just know that it makes me sneeze. And that also limits the amount of people you can find that can even do this kind of welding.
  • Titanium is not just an outright replacement for aluminum. In offshore yacht racing, titanium is banned as a material for the railing posts - the titanium was failing after being welded - and the rails of a yacht are one thing you don't want failing!

    Sometimes it's better to stick with materials that we properly understand.

  • Re:But dont forget.... (Score:5)

    by Tycho ( 11893 ) on Saturday October 07, 2000 @06:26PM (#723297)
    Well if you want to get technical about it Aluminum makes up 8.2% of the crust. Titanium makes up .56% of the crust. On top of this all Aluminum is mined from highly leached clay deposits near the surface. These deposits are formed in areas with a tropical climate and were only formed in the last 60 Million years. The Soviets tried getting Aluminium out of igneous rocks earlier this century. They even couldn't make Aluminum in an economical manner.
    At any rate Titanium is obtained from rutile or Ilmenite that are from ocean beach sands or titianium bearing igneous rocks. In the late 80's and early 90's the US produced 25,000 metric tons per year of Titanium metal. The other major use of Titanium is white piment for paints and for the same period, 1 million metric tons of Titianium pigment was produced per year. By contrast the US used 6 million metric tons of Aluminum in the mid 1990s. At any rate due to the rarity of Titanium deposits I doubt that Titanium will ever be as cheap as Aluminum. For that matter Titanium is a much harder metal than Aluminum and wears out tools that manufacture Titanium much faster. It is possible though that Titanium will be used in place of Aluminum in many cases. Don't count on Titanium replacing Aluminium cans though.
  • Alright, I'm going to get some facts from books and then I'll put them here. Tonight, I promise.

  • Aluminum was a "precious metal." (Score:4)

    by Speare ( 84249 ) on Saturday October 07, 2000 @06:31PM (#723299) Homepage Journal

    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.

  • actually titanium is forgeable, although it may be more difficult to forge than iron or steel. if I recall correctly, when you heat titanium to around near normal steel forging temperatures, its crystal structure shifts from hexagonal-close-packed to cubic-close-packed (if I recall incorrectly, I've got those backwards), which results in it being significantly softer, and possible to form. when it is cooled, the crystal structure changes back, and the titanium becomes hard and stiff once again.

    I've experienced this phenonmenon firsthand (wearing gloves, it's very hot) with a forge, some burning coke, a titanium rod, a hammer, and an anvil...

    as for machining, the bitchiness as far as I know is that it needs a lot of lubrication or special cutting fluid due to titanium's high coefficient of friction and inherent hardness.

  • Wrong. Iridium has 22.65 gr/cc. Osmium is 22.61 gr/cc. Platinum is 21.09. Rhenium is 21.02.
    So you see the math says iridium is the densest. Since these are all precious metals, the most common element used for ammunition after lead is uranium (19.05 gr/cc) that has been depleted (i.e. nuclear waste).
  • I thought the catalyst in fuel cells was platinum, not titanium. I could be wrong.
  • My baby design is a almost solid metal sphere w/ no external moving parts except for now and then when it shoots one of it's weapons out to attack. I was considering an accelerated spike that'd been ultra-heated. A drill might be kewl too. The benefit of a sphere is it's so solid, nothing to break off and it's stresses all equalize well. Also it's always upright because it has no top or bottom. A shame they don't allow bots to fly or anything awesome like that.
  • The change was from tin cans which you cannot easily crush on your head to aluminum cans which you can crush with only slight cranial discomfort.
  • 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 :)

  • Re:Uses of titanium (Score:5)

    by po_boy ( 69692 ) on Saturday October 07, 2000 @07:14PM (#723315)
    Don't forget medical supplies like implants. The human body doesn't reject titanium and it doesn't rust, so that's what they make the screws and stuff that they use to put humpty-dumpty back together again.

    cool, hunh?

  • Yah, and just try getting on an airplane after that!
  • Of course, anyone unsophisticated enough to drink beer out of a can has a skull thick enough to withstand the pain anyways ;)

  • Doh (Score:2)

    by Altheus ( 237916 )
    Drink the can first, jeeze! They didn't teach you anything in college.
  • Actually, O is the most abundant element in the crust, followed in order by Si, Al, Fe, Ca, Na, K, Mg.
  • Actually, most of the titanium dioxide used in Ti-diodes, pigments, and catalysts in various industrial processes are derived from petroleum coke calcining.
  • In the book Skunk Works [amazon.com] there's a pretty good account of how the Lockheed guys had unbelievable problems working with titanium during the construction of the SR-71.

    They had to develop special procedures and tools, and eventually got good enough working with it to efficiently mass-produce the Blackbird, but the book also mentions that their tools were ordered destroyed when the project was end-of-lifed, and most if not all of the guys who developed those procedures are probably worm food by now. It is workable, but if all the handling information was destroyed, the procedures will have to be rediscovered.
  • The Russians didn't have as much steal as the US does. This means that they had to get their metal some where else. They spent a lot of time perfecting titanium production. A lot of the titanium that is now on the market is from Russia. Legend has it that during the cold war the US government secretly bought titanium on the open market that came from russia for use in it's spie planes. While our subs are made of sperate pieces of steal the Russians used to make the hulls of their nuclear subs out of one piece of titanium. So we might not be able to work with titaninum very well in the west but in the east they may be able to help us out.

    On a side note aluminum is sometimes hard to work with as well. It has a low melting point and conducts heat and electricity very well. This makes it harder to spot wield than steal (which is why you don't see car bodies made of aluminum -- just engine blocks.) Notice that although aluminum is cheap aluminum bikes for example are still more expensive than steal bikes. Also aluminum tends to melt and "float" when you are working on it -- this makes working with it a pain sometimes. So although aluminum is cheap it is still more expensive for some applications. I bet the same will be true for titanium if it gets as cheap as aluminum.
  • isn't there a trick to it? you push in from the sides to get the collapse going, loosely speaking to get off of the unstable equilibrium of a "perfect" cylinder.
  • Actually, Titanium is one of the more abundant metals here in North America. The problem, up until now, has been refining it is very expensive. This should help change that. However, the fact that it still has to be alloyed with Chromium and Vanadium (both rarer metals) to be usable will keep the costs from ever reaching "cheap".

  • Re:That's all fine but... (Score:3)

    by grammar nazi ( 197303 ) on Saturday October 07, 2000 @07:38PM (#723339) Journal
    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.
    I may be the grammar nazi, but I my Master's degree is in ceramic engineering and I'm afraid I'm going to have to correct that statement. The government must have two materials in use at the missile tips, the other being MgF (called IRTrans). My thesis was about IRTrans, and although it is not transparent to visible light, it is nearly transparent to IR light and it is also very strong. Since it exists in a glassy state (as opposed to Sapphire), it's cheaper to produce than Al2O3. To be honest I have never even heard of Sapphire IR lenses. My research was funded by the dept. of Defence and the only IR lenses we worked with were MgF (IRTrans).
  • 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.

    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.

    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.

    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.

  • Wow. Without titanium, none of this stuff would work! Gee, thanks Mr. McLure!
  • 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?)

  • Re:Bad news for Lens Crafters (Score:3)

    by ajna ( 151852 ) on Saturday October 07, 2000 @07:09PM (#723348) Homepage Journal
    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!

    At least for bike frames, I was under the impression that most of the premium was because titanium is so difficult to work with. This suggests that costs may not fall too much for frames, even if the material becomes suddenly cheap.

    Merlin Metalworks, who make some of the nicest, imo (I ride a Kona myself as I don't have unlimited funds), frames on the market, has a titanium primer [merlinbike.com] up that has some relevant info on how weld quality is very important when working with titanium, among other tidbits.

  • Some titanium info (Score:4)

    by tap ( 18562 ) on Saturday October 07, 2000 @07:50PM (#723351) Homepage
    I remember reading an interesting post about the titanium industry in rec.bicycles.tech a while back. So I went and found it on dejanews so I could whore for karma. Actually, I just thought other people might find it interesting too.

    As one of those responsible for the titanium rush, perhaps I can shed some light on where the titanium used in bikes comes from.

    Most of the titanium used in bikes comes from Australia. Yup, the deserts of western Australia are the source for most of the titanium ore used in the world today. Titanium ore is an abundant resource (titanium is the fifth most abundant metallic element on our planet), and white sand is the best place to find it.

    Most of this material never is never processed into metal. Over 90% is refined into titanium dioxide, a common white pigment used in paint.

    The most common destination for the sand used in making metallic titanium is China. The Chinese produce a very high quality titanium sponge that is used worldwide to produce primary mill products all over the world. The United States, France, Russia, and Ukraine all produce sponge as well. Most US producers of primary mill products use a significant amount of Chinese produced titanium sponge.

    In most cases, virgin material is mixed 1:4 with scrap material making titanium one of the most recycled metals. This is where the Russian or Ukraine material comes in. Most scrap from the former Soviet states is contaminated, and cannot be used to produce ingot for tube production. Material with high levels of chemical contamination can be used for low quality castings, and finds its' way into golf club head, valve bodies, etc.

    About the only titanium tube that you will find that contains significant amounts of Russian material is tube from Russia. There is not a great economic advantage in using poor quality scrap from Russia, when high grade domestic scrap is available in the United States.

    Litespeed uses material from Ancotech and Haynes International. The sponge used to produce the raw material for these tubes is from either China or Henderson (Nevada) depending on the price. Orement/Wah Chang or Timet produce 100% of all the starting billets used by the big three companies in the United States (Ancotech, Haynes International, and Sandvik Special Metals).

    Oremet (Albany Oregon) has broken and recycled an entire pressure hull from an Alpha attack sub. None of the material was used to produce ingot for tube production, but this may be a source for much of the Urban Mythology surrounding bikes made from radioactive Russian titanium. Most of the recovered material became golf driver heads.

    Gary Helfrich Arctos Machine

  • Oh, fer chrissakes, I was making a damned joke, referring to Intel's Itanium [intel.com] chip, and I get moderated down as "Offtopic"?!?

    From the Slashdot FAQ:."If You Can't Be Deep, Be Funny: If you don't have something truly developing to the topic, some humor is welcome. Humor is lacking in our lives and will continue to be promoted. Remember though, what rips your sides out may be completely inane to somebody else."

    Moderators 'round these parts have totally lost their sense of humour... *grumble grumble*


  • 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...

  • Re:But dont forget.... (Score:5)

    by grammar nazi ( 197303 ) on Saturday October 07, 2000 @08:17PM (#723365) Journal
    Thank you, Tycho, for the informative comment.

    Here are a few more facts about Titanium:

    Titanium isn't a superstrong superlight alloy- On the periodic table, as you move up and to the left, the solid elements have an increasing strength-to-weight ratio. This means that Beryllium is the lightest/strongest metal for practical use. Aluminum even has a higher tensile strength-to-weight ratio than titanium. Why isn't aluminum considered a ubermetal, similar to titanium? I think it is. One problem with aluminum is that it fatigues when it flexes. This is why aluminum bicycles have thick thin-walled tubes, so they can't flex. When properly designed, aluminum will provide a better strength-to-weight ratio than titanium.

    Titanium will always be harder to work with than aluminum- Aluminum is lightweight and easy to work with. The industry has over 50 years of experience working with aluminum, whereas they have 30 years of good experience with titanium. Commercial products (golf clubs, bicycles) didn't start using titanium until the '80s and the decline of the Cold War, when the military-fed companies had to start selling to the civilian industry. Even after titanium knowledge gets closer to what we know about aluminum, we will continue to push aluminum, since it is cheaper and softer (i.e. cheaper to work with).

    Titanium does have great properties- Did you ever wonder why many titanium bicycles don't have any paint? There's no paint because they don't need any, titanium is one of the least reactive metals there is (ironically, this is what makes it hard to process, too). So, where other metals have to be painted to reacted to prevent corrosion, titanium is fine as it is. This property also makes titanium nice for biological applications (bones, valves, etc.).
    Another nice property of titanium is its resilience. Titanium has a relatively large linear elastic strain region, i.e. it's very springy. This is what makes titanium great for bicycle seat rails, but not neccessarily bicycle frames (unless you like the wet-noodle feeling on a bike). Before you flame me, realize that good design prevents this.

    Titanium may become cheaper than steel- I wish someone else would have pointed this out. Now that they can process titanium in one step, it may have a chance to compete with steel. Since we have been forming steel since the middle ages, it has a long way to go, but due to its strength-to-weight properties, corrosion resistance, and resiliance it could easily surpase Steel as the cheap standard metal. Perhaps the lack of painting on titanium can make up for its higher temperature (higher temp->more energy->more $$$) of processing. Since it would have a higher working temperature I could easily see it being used in engines and buildings. Ti's resilience may create for very Earthquake proof/fire proof buildings. If you talk to someone who works with Ti, they will say that it is too funky to machine and work with, it's resilience fights back against the machinist. I think that the machinists need to get used to the metal and that is all.

    If you read all the way to the end of this, now you'll see the good part- Titanium has many applications in the area of nanotechnology. TiNi has shape-memory properties which means that you can do cool stuff with it. For example, I've stretched TiNi Super-elastic wire. Basically, it was a wire that stretched similar to a rubber band. Also, by alternating thin layers of TiNi on the surfaces of other metals you can create various thermal strains and stresses due to thermal expansion anisotropy. A practical application of this are new forceps used in brain surgery. A human hair is ~100-300 microns in diameter, while these forceps are ~0.6-1 microns in diameter. Brain surgens use these to hold brain neurons while performing surgery.

    I think that is amazing. Just in case you were wondering what a grammar nazi knows about Materials Science, don't.

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