Heating titanium?

[Dr Heelhook]

You see people all over the place heat treating titanium in order for it to take different colors, like blue, purple and gold. I was checking out titanium properties on wikipedia however, and there it says that if you expose titanium for temperatures exceeding 430 °C (882 °F), titanium loses strength.

Is it possible to heat color titanium without reaching the critical temperature, or do you need to accept the loss of strength in order to achieve the fancy colors?

 

[LX_Emergency]

You could just anodize it.

No heat needed then. Just electricity.

 

[Haze]

The colours are an oxide layer that forms on the surface from the heating process. There are many Titanium alloys and some will have their properties changed by heating and some will stay largly unchanged.

The grain structure of titanuim means that it does not behave like steel when being heated and cooled but some Ti alloys can be hardned and tempered to one extent or another.At the end of the day it will make little to no difference on knife handles or prybars and would only really be a problem if you are talking about some sort of component on an aircraft or racecar etc. And those pieces probably don't see much heat colouring by knife pimpers any way.

 

[knarfeng]

You see people all over the place heat treating titanium in order for it to take different colors, like blue, purple and gold. I was checking out titanium properties on wikipedia however, and there it says that if you expose titanium for temperatures exceeding 430 °C (882 °F), titanium loses strength.

Is it possible to heat color titanium without reaching the critical temperature, or do you need to accept the loss of strength in order to achieve the fancy colors?

Actual wiki quote:

However, titanium loses strength when heated above 430 °C (806 °F).

Dude! That's use temp. You can heat the Ti that high then cool it and it is still strong.