Cutting/ Drilling Titanium

They use the titanium oxide in fireworks and what not and i heard that grinding dust of it can be ignited.

The person who told me not to grind it has WAY WAY more experiance then anyone on this forum- the head of titanium industries uk.

James i dont want to imagine your gran grinding her hips away.

Ed, it depends on the titanium,

Alpha type titaniums contain aluminiums, oxygen, nitrogen. wereas beta types contain molybdenum, iron, vanadium, chromium, manganese etc blah blah

titanium has been known to catch fire easily, 360s disc caught fire when we were making it- i through some tango on it though so it was ok lol.. sam smith told me about the large titanium turbine blades in jets which can spontaniously catch fire once.

I believe mark lumb also told me at the euro champs that he didnt want to angle grind little spinners blade off because the dust that comes off can cause cancer. (he made Glyn do it i think lol)

Personal insight...

Titanium swarf can ignite. The reaction is like magnesium burning. Perhaps brighter. Biggest danger is setting fire to nearby objects - very hot.

When grinding anything, silicon carbide (or whatever the disc is made of) will be ground into the air. Titanium is particularly resistant to grinding and so will wear the disc far more, releasing far more dust. Again, inhaling any dust is not good for you.

(Message edited by kane on January 22, 2008)

Thanks kane, i therefor stand by my initial statement- i dont advise you grind it.

Yep, when dave threw the tango on it, the laithe bed was shining very brightly lol.it didnt smell too good after the tango either!

the titanium got tangoed just like some of the girls in my school :rofl:

Advising not to grind Ti and claiming it is cancerous is quite a step though. In effect grinding as a rule should be avoided if possible, specially if you need to weld the material afterwards.

We had it with aluminum that welds way worse after we grinded the piece in the shape we wanted. the parts we used the guillotine for created a much nicer weld (fewer contaminations in the aluminium).

I dont even like Ti that much, I feel it is highly overated material anyway.

I love Ti, if it was edible, I€™d eat it!!

i heard that if you inhail ti then it grows inside and forms the shape of new limbs. in fact this is how the first robot was produced, like all things on accident. An engineer once had to grind a big piece of ti. it took him 3 days solid but in the mean time the ti was gradually inhailed and formed new limbs and destroyed the original ones and viola a robot was born. mysteriously though he didnt realise this and started to grind him self away... not knowing the difference obviously until he him self was just dust! thats why there is no proof.

:rofl:

James i want whatever uve just taken.

Leo- the most probable reason for your welds being rubbish on ground material is because it wasnt clean. Grindings a messy process. Titanium and aluminium both have to be very clean to weld well. I pressume you know that though.

Grant- atleast it stoped the fire abit lol, though tbf we were laughing for a good minuite before we realised it was getting dangerous :)

Ive got a couple of decent books from my sponsor about everything anyone would want to possibly know about titanium.. ill look up the carsagenic (sp?) rumour that i got told.

I personaly like Ti, its has good strength relative to weight and high impact resistance. Im not that keen on building robots out of plastics / polymers - no offence to anyone intended, I just prefer metal .. makes it more robot like imo and generally components last alot longer.