This is correct, material costs for machined/fabricated parts are only a small part of the total cost.
Not only that - titanium burns in air, and burns BRIGHT!
Many a scrapper found that the hard, shiny way when he took a cutting torch on an old heat exchanger.
Tiatanium is very rigid also, so depending on the type of bike some people still prefer a quality alloy of steel.
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Gotcha.
Iām often surprised how many people (including start-up owners) really do get mixed up about raw material cost vs. finished product price, so that was where my mind went first.
Yep. Machining it is very hard on tools and the cuttings are both flammable and toxic. On the welding front, all hi-tech welding is done under inert gas conditions, so Ti welding perhaps isnāt terribly different.
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Titanium isnāt that toxic, Iād say. Flammable, definitely. But they will have to march a long long way to reach even a visual-contact distance to the toxicity of beryllium or cadmium.
Itās a bitch to the tools, though, thatās without contest. I wonder how it would behave to electroerosive machining, though, if (or where) it could be a superior alternative to conventional chip machining.
How good is this material towards heat? Titanium isnāt a good heat conductor, plus itās weight, strength factor makes it good for certain airplane parts for supersonic speeds.
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Came here to say something like bike frames.
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Also, for joint replacement, (as I understand it having done some research before my own hip resurfacing) itās not so much that surgeons would like to see a cheaper metal to use for the stem, but rather the perfect material to use for the bearing surfaces. Something that can take the loading, not wear out too fast, and not cause sensitivity reactions in some people.
You may like to opt for Ti6Al7Nb over Ti6Al4V, as the latter may be slightly cytotoxic due to vanadium. Niobium is more bio-friendly.
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These days you can get Chinese Ti framesets for close to $500!
Donāt buy the hypeāthey havenāt figured out how to mass produce it yet. Therefore thereās no possible way they can say how the price is going to compare to other materials with known mass-production techniques. Conceivably the only solution to the problem of mass production might turn out to be disqualifyingly expensive.
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Titanium is slightly more than half as stiff as steel. And aluminum is around 1/4 as stiff as steel. In a nice coincidence, the stiffness to weight ratio for all three materials (including most of their alloys) is very close to the same. Strength to weight ratio for the strongest of each alloy is a little more different, but still not terribly different.
What distinguishes titanium is corrosion resistance and fatigue strength. Iāve stress cycled some parts over 40 billion times without damage. Same alloy is used for human implants.
Even at $50/lb, I still buy it by the ton.
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I might have it mixed up with beryllium.
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That is (or was inspired by) aluminum oxynitride.
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Interesting. I think the majority of the oldest surviving metal on metal implants are all cobalt-chromium, as is the device I got, the Birmingham Hip Resurfacing system. If you get the BHR, you donāt get a choice of materials and you donāt get to know the stoichiometry.
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Titanium machines just beautifully with proper procedures( setups, speed and feeds) but most high quality steels and alloys can be just as picky if not more. Nickle alloys like Inconel are some of the most difficult to machine, much more than titanium anyhow,
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And whatā the first thing they made with it? An iron dildo apparently.
If only it was a copper alloy, Iād be tempted to propose naming it Rearden metal. 
