Share your titanium secrets with me...Please.

The newer design is looking even better! Nice work.

I'm using the Balax taps with a Tapmatic tapping head and not 100% sure about hand tapping with them. I used them with a drill press to hand tap but broke a lot of taps.
 
Just a note:
The blade edge should sit just off the spacers and end bolt. The stop pin should keep it from touching these. I assume the drawing was for shape and placement purposes, and the edge would be ground back a tad.
 
Just a note:
The blade edge should sit just off the spacers and end bolt. The stop pin should keep it from touching these. I assume the drawing was for shape and placement purposes, and the edge would be ground back a tad.
 
Lower the pivot a hair and it will raise the blade up (out) when closed... further away from the standoffs and it will look better closed in my opinion.

The stop pin area will be ground as the lock... that may be very tricky to pull off. It will be hard to grind the lock where it is and also to make it transition well to the flipper extension aesthetically. The stop area will be angled too... better flat so there is more surface area on the stop pin. It's a small thing really as you can probably separate the two areas with a small hole, etc.
 
Daniel Fairly Knives said:
Grind slow, use sharp belts, don't let it spark, use plenty of ventilation, use sharp end mills/bits and drill slow...
Click to expand...

How the hell do you grind it and keep it from sparking? I started on the side plates today. Got the cutting on the bandsaw figured out easy enough except I did notice that the Ti likes to pick a line and stay on it. Took some real pressure to get it to cut on a very gradual curved line. Now when I went to the grinder to clean up the profile, things were interesting! I obviously had the speed too high because I was getting plenty of white sparks and I used up a new 50grit Blaze on one plate. I was also getting a buildup of dross on the grinding edge when the belt started getting worn. I was dunking continuously and the parts never got hot or even warm for that matter. I'm really glad I went with .125" instead of the thicker stuff.

Bob
 
RangerBobTX said:
How the hell do you grind it and keep it from sparking? I started on the side plates today. Got the cutting on the bandsaw figured out easy enough except I did notice that the Ti likes to pick a line and stay on it. Took some real pressure to get it to cut on a very gradual curved line. Now when I went to the grinder to clean up the profile, things were interesting! I obviously had the speed too high because I was getting plenty of white sparks and I used up a new 50grit Blaze on one plate. I was also getting a buildup of dross on the grinding edge when the belt started getting worn. I was dunking continuously and the parts never got hot or even warm for that matter. I'm really glad I went with .125" instead of the thicker stuff.

Bob
Click to expand...

To avoid the sparks run your grinder very slow.

Ti is some tough stuff to work with! I hacksaw out blanks sometimes just to make the grinding seem easy. :D :D :D
 
Daniel Fairly Knives said:
I hacksaw out blanks sometimes just to make the grinding seem easy. :D :D :D
Click to expand...

You ain't kidding! Here's how I hacksaw titanium:

[video=youtube;6AVkaU2ConU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AVkaU2ConU&feature=youtu.be[/video]

Regular metalworking tools work on titanium alloy, they just obliterate themselves quickly. The high-dollar ceramic belts and big-city cutting consumables are much more resilient and useful.
 
RangerBobTX said:
How the hell do you grind it and keep it from sparking?
Click to expand...
Slow down your grinder. We grind thousands of pounds of titanium every year. If you grind slower your belts last longer and you remove material faster. It is counter-intuitive, but it works. We run our speed control at 30%-35%. Slowly increase speed until you start getting sparks and then slow it down.

One downside of grinding slow is you get piles of titanium dust. It can be exciting when the occasional spark gets in a dust pile. :eek:

Chuck
 
Spalted said:
The way I understand it titanium will burn so hot that if you put water on it when its burning the oxygen will evaporate from the water and it will flare up. That means if a real fire breaks out a waterhose wont work to put it out , neither will an ordinary fire extinguisher. You need a class D fire extinguisher (or a bucket of sand??).
A couple weeks ago I had a handful of titanium shavings and wanted to see if sand will work to put a titanium fire out. I put the shavings on the ground and lit it with a torch and it started glowing real bright, well first I wanted to see it flare up when I put water on it so after the titanium had been burning for only about 2 seconds I poured a cup of water on it .... and the fire went out.
Lesson learned- if you are real quick to get water on it, it will put the fire out. I still dont know for sure if sand will work? I dont have anymore shavings to try
Click to expand...

Just as a side note, I think you are confusing Ti and Magnesium. The way i understand it, Magnesium does draw some oxide compound when doused with water and will only burn worse. Ti is just really hard to put out in large burning quantities with water... But it will eventually go out.

A small pile hit with some sparks won't bother you too bad. Drilling and milling swarf in bigger piles is an issue. I had a little friction fire start on the mill with 6-4 and it flared up pretty good. Swarf pile was small enough that it went out quickly, but any more and it would have been bad... Just manage it...


-Eric
Spalted said:
The way I understand it titanium will burn so hot that if you put water on it when its burning the oxygen will evaporate from the water and it will flare up. That means if a real fire breaks out a waterhose wont work to put it out , neither will an ordinary fire extinguisher. You need a class D fire extinguisher (or a bucket of sand??).
A couple weeks ago I had a handful of titanium shavings and wanted to see if sand will work to put a titanium fire out. I put the shavings on the ground and lit it with a torch and it started glowing real bright, well first I wanted to see it flare up when I put water on it so after the titanium had been burning for only about 2 seconds I poured a cup of water on it .... and the fire went out.
Lesson learned- if you are real quick to get water on it, it will put the fire out. I still dont know for sure if sand will work? I dont have anymore shavings to try
Click to expand...
 
ooo no Ti dust will light off if sparked and its bright (jsut reread your post and see you were talking oabut the water doucing thing)
i grind slow and wet making sure to clear the dust pile now and then (keep it if you want a fire starter when camping
 
Oh yeah, it will light off for sure... I've had it gather up in places, edge of the work surface for one, and light off. Just seems small amounts don't do much more than make you see spots for a little while. I just take care to keep it from building up much more than a light dusting...

But water, baking soda, normal fire extinguishers should work just fine. I just think Spalted had it mixed up with magnesium. Which is nasty stuff when it's on fire... Not to mention it usually floats on water in small shaving sizes and will build up in a pile. Grind some steel after you've done a run of magnesium and you're flirting with a good, hard to put out fire. Magnesium will also propagate to larger and larger chunks of material, unlike Ti which doesn't want to burn in big blocks. Ever seen the old F1 racing fires with the mag skinned cars back before we heard of the word 'safety?' Nasty nasty stuff.

Why it makes a good firestarter though.

-Eric
 
edit; you can skip to @ the 3:30 point

[video=youtube_share;NDhnwLheoU4]http://youtu.be/NDhnwLheoU4[/video]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_classes

These are a couple of references I found when I was first looking at this. Now I am going to have to start a fire for sure. lol :D
 
Well I had a small piece of titanium @.120x.5x3 left so I held it in the fire of a propane torch for 15 mins and it would not get hot enough to start burning.I am going to have to wait until I get more titanium then save the shavings before I try again.

I was at a NCguild meeting a while back and one of the guys was talking about having a close call with titanium catching on fire in his shop. Then they talked about fire extinguishers and that titanium calls for a class d. They are expensive though and I wanted to see if sand would work.

Now I am curious as to weither or not I even need to add sand buckets beside my abc extinguishers before I do more work with titanium?
 
I should do some Ti grinding videos, the stuff is just nasty when it catches fire! It welds itself into a big molten bead in seconds... blinding too.

I'm sure it is a serious fire hazard so I keep everything as clean as I can, the only problem I have is during bevel grinding when a good pass makes a big dust pile and catches fire. I tried a few things, now I just keep a small brush near my work area and constantly clean so the combustion source is small. It burns hot and bright!
 
Had pretty good results today. Thanks to everyone for all the help. I slowed my grinder way down and found that it really worked much better. Didn't have any trouble drilling or reaming holes, just kept the speed relatively slow and the feed firm and constant w/cutting fluid. I didn't have a counterbore for the #4 cap screws so I made a jig that let me counterbore with a 3/16" end mill. In the photo below, there is a pin set into the steel plate made from a piece of #31 drill that I have aligned with the spindle. I was able to just drop each hole over the pin and bore with a 4-flute center cutting EM. Took about 30 minutes to make the fixture and it works really nice on the mill. I tried it on the drill press too but, there was too much runout in the spindle.

Untitled by Ranger_Bob, on Flickr

Here's where I left off for today. The blade has been through initial HT and I will temper it tomorrow then surface grind, and then fit to the stop. I also need to figure out how I'm going to cut the lock bar pretty soon.

Untitled by Ranger_Bob, on Flickr

Bob
 
Ya D. Fairly, I keep a wide soft-bristled paintbrush around and "sweep" everything off diligently. And I happen to have a lot of titanium grinder dust around, so here's a video of it on fire! :D

[video=youtube;HK6eaMvE_SA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK6eaMvE_SA&feature=youtu.be[/video]
 
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I have a very simple approach to the titanium dust and grindings at the grinder. I move my dust collector pipe to the side and let everything that will fall go to a large pail with water in it. What catches on the table I wipe off into the same pail. Frank
 
Ok, new question. I know a lot of guys use the Dremel thin cutting wheels to cut the lockbar. I tried one and chewed it up really quickly just cutting the short end cut. I was running it on the slowest speed on my mill which I think might have been too slow at 40rpm. What speed do you guys run these wheels and anyone got any other great tips on cutting the lockbar?

Bob
 
Bob, you're going the wrong way mate, run em as fast as you can. Think like its on a dremel or angle grinder!
 
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