4 ms·

Probably that it uses the common definition of toughness an article about metallurgy while metallurgy has a special definition of that word.

VLM 10y ago
Even worse, using real metallurgy words, titanium is really strong per volume and doesn't care about high heat and is practically corrosion proof and a couple other weird properties... ironically what its NOT known for is its rather pedestrian hardness and toughness specs. There's a lot of reasons to talk up titanium and they carefully sidestepped around each of them LOL in favor of talking up two things titanium is fairly worthless at (at least worthless at per dollar or whatever). If you want something tough that can absorb surprising amounts of energy without breaking there are exotic nickel steels that require exotic heat treatment, or maybe some of the military armor plates from the old days (before HEAT rounds forced other criteria as a figure of merit). Maybe a chunk of battleship armor plate or maybe the crankshaft from an old diesel ship engine. If you want something hard there are some oxidized titanium coatings that are somewhat hard and industrially useful but nothing unusual or worth writing home about. Besides that's cheating because its a titanium containing compound, kinda like saying coal cures scurvy because vit C is merely a peculiar arrangement of carbon atoms much like coal. Industrial diamonds are not going to be replaced by titanium rod anytime soon...
- ghaff 10y ago
  It sort of plays to a very simplified layman's understanding of structural metals as following some sort of uni-dimensional good/better/best scale with titanium being on the best end of the spectrum. (And, hence, "titanium" being used in all sorts of product names, such as clothing, which have absolutely to do with metal except insofar as the production equipment has metal parts--though probably not many titanium ones.)

VLM 10y ago

Even worse, using real metallurgy words, titanium is really strong per volume and doesn't care about high heat and is practically corrosion proof and a couple other weird properties... ironically what its NOT known for is its rather pedestrian hardness and toughness specs. There's a lot of reasons to talk up titanium and they carefully sidestepped around each of them LOL in favor of talking up two things titanium is fairly worthless at (at least worthless at per dollar or whatever). If you want something tough that can absorb surprising amounts of energy without breaking there are exotic nickel steels that require exotic heat treatment, or maybe some of the military armor plates from the old days (before HEAT rounds forced other criteria as a figure of merit). Maybe a chunk of battleship armor plate or maybe the crankshaft from an old diesel ship engine. If you want something hard there are some oxidized titanium coatings that are somewhat hard and industrially useful but nothing unusual or worth writing home about. Besides that's cheating because its a titanium containing compound, kinda like saying coal cures scurvy because vit C is merely a peculiar arrangement of carbon atoms much like coal. Industrial diamonds are not going to be replaced by titanium rod anytime soon...

ghaff 10y ago
It sort of plays to a very simplified layman's understanding of structural metals as following some sort of uni-dimensional good/better/best scale with titanium being on the best end of the spectrum. (And, hence, "titanium" being used in all sorts of product names, such as clothing, which have absolutely to do with metal except insofar as the production equipment has metal parts--though probably not many titanium ones.)