Ferro-Titanit??

galadduin · Oct 28, 2008

I found a distributor in my country selling Ferro-Titanit. As far as I read about it, this may be a good material for cutlery.
Here is a link I found: http://www.dew-stahl.com/index.php?id=1301&L=1

And the product I found is "TF-C Special". Here is a data sheet for that: http://www.schmolz-bickenbach.com.tr/fileadmin/user_upload/SBTuerkei/IMG/TS/PDF/Ferro_Titanit_C_Spezial.pdf

Any thoughts on that, opinions / suggestions ?
Thanks
Emre

galadduin · Oct 28, 2008

Found a good article on this material : http://www.ferro-titanit.com/tiny/Kj//lg_en/wear_and_corrosion_of_ferro.pdf

sunshadow · Oct 28, 2008

Should be interesting stuff, not at all like steel. You are going to want to abrade to shape, once you have precipitation hardened it the material will be very tough to work with. The Titanium (if I am reading it right) will suck up a fair amount of the carbon into Titanium carbides (Titanium is a reactive add, my guess is that you will end up with with Titanium carbides in a matrix with about 40 points carbon)
Might be worth getting enough for one blade if you have a kiln capable of following their heat treat directions. I wouldn't make the blade too thin, embedded carbides like to cause stress risers. I am curious as to what they are gaining with the copper.
Not quite the alloys I work with so I'm guessing.

-Page

galadduin · Oct 28, 2008

sunshadow said:
Should be interesting stuff, not at all like steel. You are going to want to abrade to shape, once you have precipitation hardened it the material will be very tough to work with. The Titanium (if I am reading it right) will suck up a fair amount of the carbon into Titanium carbides (Titanium is a reactive add, my guess is that you will end up with with Titanium carbides in a matrix with about 40 points carbon)
Might be worth getting enough for one blade if you have a kiln capable of following their heat treat directions. I wouldn't make the blade too thin, embedded carbides like to cause stress risers. I am curious as to what they are gaining with the copper.
Not quite the alloys I work with so I'm guessing.

-Page

The data sheet doesn't mention of "age hardening". Some ferro-titanit types' data sheets are mentioning it but this specific is not. Do you think it is a typo?
Also I'm wondering as most of high alloy steel manufacturers suggest vacuum heating and N2 positive pressure air quench, but instead we use foils and normal air cooling and plate quench techniques This one suggest for Ferro-titanit C, vacuum and 1 bar N2 air cooling, just as my Bohler D2 data sheets, so maybe it can be possible to gain some good HT results with our traditional methods.???
You are right it will be almost impossible to work with after hardening, 69 HR

after temper

mete · Oct 28, 2008

As I understand it they are mixing TiC and matrix material [ steel] powder and pressing and sintering [HIP] .I didn't see mention of toughness but it must be low. I think it would have limited application for typical knives.

galadduin · Oct 28, 2008

Mete, there is an article here: http://www.ferro-titanit.com/tiny/ad//lg_en/mechanical_properties.pdf

It explains the mechanical properties of the material but I couldn't understand, is MPa a toughness measure??

Here is the table of properties of the material. Can you compare with a tool steel? It is Chinese for me..

galadduin · Oct 29, 2008

Bump for toughness... Anyone understands this table???

artmichalek · Oct 29, 2008

galadduin said:
Mete, there is an article here: http://www.ferro-titanit.com/tiny/ad//lg_en/mechanical_properties.pdf

It explains the mechanical properties of the material but I couldn't understand, is MPa a toughness measure??

Here is the table of properties of the material. Can you compare with a tool steel? It is Chinese for me..

There's no toughness measurement there. E,G,and K are stiffnesses, CL and CT are density measurements by speed of sound, mu is related to compressibility, and R is a measurement of breaking strength in bending. Toughness would be given by impact energy required to break a notched bar. The fact that fracture strength was tested in bending rather than tension indicates that it's very brittle, and the toughness is likely to be low relative to tool steel. The only way to make a usable knife out of this would maybe be to laminate it.

sunshadow · Oct 29, 2008

artmichalek said:
There's no toughness measurement there. E,G,and K are stiffnesses, CL and CT are density measurements by speed of sound, mu is related to compressibility, and R is a measurement of breaking strength in bending. Toughness would be given by impact energy required to break a notched bar. The fact that fracture strength was tested in bending rather than tension indicates that it's very brittle, and the toughness is likely to be low relative to tool steel. The only way to make a usable knife out of this would maybe be to laminate it.

that is why I said you wouldn't want to go thin. Think of trying to make a blade out of peanut brittle. The stuff is strong in tension, relatively compression resistant, and it's got abraive lumps in it (peanut pieces) try to bend it and you get crack propagation between peanut nodules.

-Page

galadduin · Oct 29, 2008

artmichalek said:
There's no toughness measurement there. E,G,and K are stiffnesses, CL and CT are density measurements by speed of sound, mu is related to compressibility, and R is a measurement of breaking strength in bending. Toughness would be given by impact energy required to break a notched bar. The fact that fracture strength was tested in bending rather than tension indicates that it's very brittle, and the toughness is likely to be low relative to tool steel. The only way to make a usable knife out of this would maybe be to laminate it.

Thank you very much for the explanation :thumbup:. I really needed it. I know the sales person wouldn't say that is too brittle until I complained about the product after days or weeks later I purchased this stuff...

I guess I have to search a reasonable steel instead...

sunshadow · Oct 29, 2008

galadduin said:
Thank you very much for the explanation :thumbup:. I really needed it. I know the sales person wouldn't say that is too brittle until I complained about the product after days or weeks later I purchased this stuff... I guess I have to search a reasonable steel instead...

evaluate your equipment and capabilities and experience, then match the steel choice to what you can work best. much better than buying whatever the latest "hot" super steel then finding out that you are not equipped to get all of the best out of it

-Page

artmichalek · Oct 30, 2008

sunshadow said:
that is why I said you wouldn't want to go thin. Think of trying to make a blade out of peanut brittle. The stuff is strong in tension, relatively compression resistant, and it's got abraive lumps in it (peanut pieces) try to bend it and you get crack propagation between peanut nodules.

-Page

But, how thin is thin? For a brittle enough material, you could end up needing 1/4"+ of thickness to not snap under normal use. That's why harder steels are best used in the center of a laminate. The outside layers, which experience the highest stresses under bending, are made of an alloy that can take some elongation after yielding. I still think this stuff would make a killer blade if you could match the thermal expansion and laminate it.

galadduin said:
Thank you very much for the explanation . I really needed it. I know the sales person wouldn't say that is too brittle until I complained about the product after days or weeks later I purchased this stuff... I guess I have to search a reasonable steel instead...

The lesson here is that there's no such thing as free hardness. Some other property always has to lose. You can't cheat the physics.

Ferro-Titanit??

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