Should I buy titanium?

N

Nicholas A Young

Joined
Jun 24, 2018
Messages
7
I was perusing Craigslist and a local machine shop is selling 6al4v drops mostly 1" thick. I've never worked with titanium and I was considering using it for some handles one day or who knows what. The guy is selling it by the pound and has literally tons of it.
How easy is titatnium to work with? Would it be a good thing for a beginner to do? It's only like $6 per lb.
 
Sure, why not? I'm sure you'll find some kind of use for it. If not, you can sell/trade to another maker.
 
I bought a sheet of 0.152" from alpha. It turned out great for a particular project and heat coloring was an interesting experiment.
On the other hand, it was a pain to cut, a bigger pain to file (wearing out 2 files), and grinding makes a lot of very hot sparks (thought I might set my hair on fire).
I don't even want to think about working with 1" thick pieces...
 
There's no question that Titanium is a pain to work with if you're not set up for it. It's very "gummy" and can definitely eat up some tooling without the right speeds and feeds.
 
That's why it is called titanium ........ :)
If I have that opportunity I will buy all he has ;)
 
With Alumininum as alpha stabilizer and vanadium as beta stabilizer this is one of the most used forms of titanium alloys, resistant to all but hydrfloric acid and hydrochloric, sulfuric a phosphoric acids. Sound like a good deal, if you can cherry pick the non-dissolved rods and bars.
 
Wet grinding helps, but it needs to be at slow speed which means it takes forever.ideally you need flood coolant.
 
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