titanium for host

wazzzzz uupppppppp.... i was at a jobsite in new mexico and a truck driver there was shipping titanium ingits. so he saw how interested i was in them and snapped off a big chunck of slag for me. i am pm'ing stridAST because i already have one of his silver hosts.

here is a pic of the chunck i got. i used a pen for referrence and it is about 1/8th inch thick.
michael.

chipdouglas said:

wazzzzz uupppppppp.... i was at a jobsite in new mexico and a truck driver there was shipping titanium ingits. so he saw how interested i was in them and snapped off a big chunck of slag for me. i am pm'ing stridAST because i already have one of his silver hosts.

here is a pic of the chunck i got. i used a pen for referrence and it is about 1/8th inch thick.
michael.

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Ive used a metal forge only a few times and always with aluminum but titaniums melting point (3000 deg F) is roughly twice as high as silver. It is much higher than aluminum and even a bit higher than iron...

Might be hard to find someone who can work with it. I would also imagine that for the silver hosts a jeweler type setup (electric heat unit) using lost wax would have been used which AFAIK does not have the same temperature capabilities of the larger setups.

^^^^ well geez. thanks for bursting my bubble lol.


michael.

chipdouglas said:

^^^^ well geez. thanks for bursting my bubble lol.


michael.

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Sorry man! I could be completely wrong about it but I just know that theres a reason they use titanium in extreme conditions...its tough stuff.

On a happier note thats a nice big chunk of free titanium!

chipdouglas said:

...he saw how interested i was in them and snapped off a big chunck of slag for me.

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Either you're using the wrong word or you got jipped. Slag is the junk the floats to the top.

Ok, I've worked with titanium before, However, I had it cast for me by Ruger Investment Casting down in arizona. While it's melting point of 3034 F (1668 C) is rather high, Platinum has an even higher melting point at 3214 F (1768 C)

The problem is Titanium will burn at 2,190 F. This is well below the melting point. So you need an oxygen free environment to melt it in. Basically an induction furnace inside a vacuum chamber. Rather expensive tech there. While outsourcing a cast is certainly possible, there was a minimum order of $500 or so just to get something cast. (and that was 10 years ago.) Also, the main cost is in the expensive materials not the cost of the metal. Titanium is quite common, and the metal is far from expensive to acquire, the cost however in working it also gets rather pricey.

Just cleaning up cast titanium rings took me about 15 hours per ring. While my skills as a jeweler have improved since then, cleanup time on something as large as a 18650 laser host would still probably be somewhere above 60 hours of labor. Also, many of the rings I had cast had casting pits that I simply couldn't burnish out, so small defects would be a given. All in all it's the kind of project that would be logistically a nightmare.

I would love to do a titanium host, but I suspect the cost would outpace anything anyone would want to pay for a single host.

Cyparagon said:

Either you're using the wrong word or you got jipped. Slag is the junk the floats to the top.

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yeah wrong wording on my part. you are right. but it is pure titanium. it is the excess "flap" that was still attached to the titanium 16,000lb cylinder.

stridAST, thanks for the feed back. i guess i just have a paper weight. LoL.


michael.

Well, the metal can still be worked. It just wouldn't get used for casting. Though in this case the working needs to be cold. (grinding and polishing into a shape)

You could also anodize it blue. A simple torch flame can color it too. just heat until the metal starts to glow then take the flame off. This builds up the same oxide layer that anodizing will do, just less controlled. Violets and blues are easy to produce this way, with temperature controlling the color.

If you really want a titanium host, going with grade 2 rod or tube stock is probably your only option. It's not that much harder than aluminum to work with machine wise, though it's not much stronger either.. When most people think of titanium they think of grade 5, which is the really strong stuff. Grade 2 behaves similar to aluminum, with a much higher melting point and a lot better corrosion resistance.

I had thought about making one before but there are a few major downsides. The biggest three of which are Cost.. grade 2 titanium 1" round stock is about 14x the price of aluminum. Appearance... For the 14x price increase, it ends up looking pretty much like aluminum. And lastly, titanium has a fairly low thermal conductivity.

So really, unless you have a need to play with lasers in a corrosive high temperature environment.. the only things you get from having a titanium host are a lighter wallet, and being able to say you have a titanium host.. That's pretty much it.

Well, it'd be a nice conversation piece, but the thermal conductivity is 90% lower than aluminum - even lower than steel.

Yeah that's why I said it has a fairly low thermal conductivity..

Like I said in my closing statement. All it gets you is a empty wallet and bragging rights.

Say did you guys know it has lower thermal conductivity worse than steel :crackup:

Don't be overly concerned with thermal conductivity: the design of most hosts is such that the biggest liming factor is the surface area.

The problem with titanium is that its very hard as mentioned, and working it on a lathe etc would be much more difficult than aluminium. The only advantage of titanium is that the finished product would be very durable... but that wouldn't be a big thing i suppose, damaging a chunk of aluminium is also rather difficult

Benm said:

Don't be overly concerned with thermal conductivity: the design of most hosts is such that the biggest liming factor is the surface area.

The problem with titanium is that its very hard as mentioned, and working it on a lathe etc would be much more difficult than aluminium. The only advantage of titanium is that the finished product would be very durable... but that wouldn't be a big thing i suppose, damaging a chunk of aluminium is also rather difficult

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Grade 2 titanium has about the same machinablity as 6061 aluminum. Not all titanium is hard to machine. Only certain alloys.

That's not titanium. This is titanium LOOOOL

qumefox said:

Grade 2 titanium has about the same machinablity as 6061 aluminum. Not all titanium is hard to machine. Only certain alloys.

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Interesting.. i've only seen the very hard type. I suppose its mainly used where a very durable metal is needed, but perhaps there are some applications where it should be more malleable.