7 ms·

Aluminum in the 1800s was more expensive than gold, and was used as jewelry, fancy cutlery, the capstone of the Washington monument, etc. https://en.m.wikipedia

Aluminum in the 1800s was more expensive than gold, and was used as jewelry, fancy cutlery, the capstone of the Washington monument, etc. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_aluminium https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_aluminium Inexpensive mass production moved it from niche prestige uses to unlock its many utilitarian applications.

scythe 9y ago
In Napoleon's day it was more expensive than gold. By the time the Washington Monument was constructed the price had dropped to roughly the level of silver. Titanium might be poised to follow in its footsteps after the discovery of electrolysis of titanium oxide in molten calcium chloride, analogous to the cryolite process.
- dmix 9y ago
  I'm curious, what are some of the places we would start to see titanium if the prices dropped?
  - matte_black 9y ago
    Cars.
  - baldfat 9y ago
    Cheap titanium bikes are high on my list but I think the killer application is titanium hinges. Springs will last a lifetime. Looks like this is starting to happen alreadt: https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/titanium-hinges.html https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/titanium-hinges.html $0.25 for a hinge Titanium is light, but my favorite thing is it is next to impossible to bend. So anything that shouldn't bend will be better with titanium.
    - nradov 9y ago
      There's very little actual titanium in titanium bike frames. Most of the cost is in the machining and labor, so I doubt prices will drop much. And the majority of riders seem to prefer carbon fiber anyway.
      - baldfat 9y ago
        That is due to tooling but it is an issue because it is rarely used. Carbon is fragile and breaks but it is cheaper to repair once again because Titanium is exotic right now. https://www.livestrong.com/article/271286-titanium-vs-carbon-bikes/ https://www.livestrong.com/article/271286-titanium-vs-carbon...
      - jdietrich 9y ago
        >Most of the cost is in the machining and labor, so I doubt prices will drop much. I'm not sure why that would be the case. Titanium alloys are only marginally more difficult to work with than aluminium alloys. The tubes are hydroformed and die cut, so the only difference is a touch more die wear. Titanium is a bit finicky to weld, but that can't possibly account for the ~500% price premium over aluminium frames. There's a tiny bit more surface preparation and your fixtures need to be more complex to provide adequate gas purging, but the differences in a mass production environment are quite marginal. >And the majority of riders seem to prefer carbon fiber anyway. Carbon is better for competition road bikes, because it offers the absolute lowest weight and can be easily formed into complex aerodynamic profiles. Entry-level bikes tend to be aluminium for cost reasons. For touring and audax bikes, many riders still prefer steel for durability and comfort. Titanium has the corrosion-resistance and light weight of aluminium but the comfort of steel, so it's considered by many to be the ideal material for non-racing bikes, but the cost is often prohibitive. As far as I can see, the bike industry would be transformed if titanium were to achieve price parity with aluminium.
        nradov 9y ago
        The point is that a modern titanium bike frame costs at least $1200 even though it contains <2kg of titanium, and high purity titanium only costs ~$50/kg. So I can't see how just cutting the cost of the raw material would have a transformative impact on the bike industry.
    - leot 9y ago
      Diamond-like carbon should be applied everywhere there's wear. It could allow drill bits, gears, bike chains, joints, etc to all last virtually forever.
    - scythe 9y ago
      I doubt it's happening already. Metalysis currently owns the patent rights to the process and is focusing on tantalum and zirconium (higher profit margins) while working on scaling it up.
      - vbezhenar 9y ago
        Not everyone cares about patents. I think Chinese factories do not care and who cares whether the result product was patent-free or not.
      - philipkglass 9y ago
        Tantalum ore concentrate currently sells for over $150/kg. Making metallic tantalum powder from the oxide is barely interesting even if the FFC process works quite well. Tantalum would remain an expensive specialty metal. Titanium dioxide, OTOH, is closer to $150 per tonne. A cheap process to convert that inexpensive raw material to metal would be one of the most impressive advances in industrial metal production in decades. There's an ugly licensing fight in the history of the FFC Cambridge process. See the section "Commercial challenges" in this article: http://www.saimm.co.za/Journal/v111n03p199.pdf http://www.saimm.co.za/Journal/v111n03p199.pdf In 2000 Cambridge University Technical Service issued a sub-license for the technology that British Titanium Plc used for the purpose of producing bulk titanium and titanium alloys. BTi worked closely with researchers from the Fray group (one F of the Fray, Farthing, Chen inventors whose names make up "FFC.") The US Office of Naval Research issued contracts to BTi for R&D work in 2000 and 2002. In 2002 DARPA started funding more expensive scale-up work also associated with BTi. In 2004 NASA issued an even larger contract to BTi. Cambridge spun off Metalysis in 2002 with another license, but Metalysis didn't seem to be making much progress compared with BTi. In 2005, CUTS revoked the sub-license granted to BTi and made all of the IP exclusive to Metalysis. The license revocation destroyed BTi. My interpretation: CUTS crippled BTi because Metalysis wasn't making enough progress on implementation to compete against BTi. But CUTS really crippled the whole concept because the experts that had been working for and with BTi didn't want to work with Metalysis after getting screwed by CUTS. Metalysis "pivoted" to tantalum and has failed to make notable progress there, too. Maybe the application to titanium will finally resume progress toward industrialization after the patents expire.
    - at-fates-hands 9y ago
      > Titanium is light, but my favorite thing is it is next to impossible to bend. This gives an insane amount of tensile strenght since it always wants to retain its shape. TBH I have no idea why we haven't seen Titanium in things like golf clubs, hockey sticks, baseball bats, tennis rackets, snowboards etc, where you could really use its springy characteristics to a huge advantage. I've always felt like it has a huge potential for widespread use in sports.
      - robotsonic 9y ago
        As far as I know, they are used quite heavily in golf and tennis equipment. Hockey sticks tend to be carbon fiber. <s>I think the baseball wood/aluminum debate can't handle another metal </s> Snowboards and such do benefit from being able to bend. I could see it more in alpine snowboard equipment, but again, I'm not sure that carbon fiber wouldn't be the better bet.
        bhewes 9y ago
        Baseball has been moving away from lively metal bats. Too dangerous for the infield. Never ending debate when I played 6A baseball in HS. Now, slow pitch softball had Ti bats in the early 90's that added 10 mph. Even then some of the new composite materials out hit Ti.
        baldfat 9y ago
        > Even then some of the new composite materials out hit Ti The issue is one PEOPLE DIE because of these bats and balls. (I'm old but I was one of maybe three people that could hit a home run now all 10 players can) 1) The other bats were so thin that you had to rotate the bat when you hit because the bats bend or will break. The ti bats are durable and you can still sue them. The issue is nothing really is better than ti but ti has a cost.
        baldfat 9y ago
        Since someone is doubting what I said here is SBNations take on Ti Bats. >"The pitcher’s mound for amateur slow-pitch softball varies according to the field and age of players, but is generally between 40 and 50 feet from home. This means that after a ball is hit, assuming an exit velocity of between 78 and 102 mph, the pitcher has between 0.456 and 0.350 seconds to react to a batted ball. Adding exit velocity shaves precious micro-seconds off that time. That was what made titanium bats so dangerous. Softballs became missiles and pitchers became targets. And the dangers are real. Players have lost teeth, eyesight, motor function, IQ points and even their lives when struck by balls hit off hot bats." https://www.sbnation.com/2015/8/5/9041099/the-bat-doctor-is-in https://www.sbnation.com/2015/8/5/9041099/the-bat-doctor-is-...
    - akgerber 9y ago
      You can already buy a titanium bike (sourced from China) for a very reasonable place from Bikesdirect.com— mine was cheaper than a steel Surly Straggler for similar specs. Habanero also sells them for low, but not quite as low, prices: https://www.habcycles.com/ https://www.habcycles.com/ There seem to be a bunch of low-cost titanium manufacturers in China selling directly on eBay.
      - baldfat 9y ago
        Ti bikes are all over a thousand on bikesdirect. I am thinking that ti bikes will cost just a hundred more than steel when ti becomes common.
  - scythe 9y ago
    I think pipes might be a strong contender. Currently titanium is roughly the same price as copper, but harder to machine -- and it's produced in ugly forms by the Kroll process. Electrolysis produces a metal powder using less energy. Titanium is practically immune to chloride corrosion but is slowly worn down by fluoride, although fluoride is typically present at just 1 PPM in tap water (anything higher is toxic) so Ti pipes should last quite a while. Boats can also be made of titanium alloys. Anything dealing with water gets easier when titanium is in play, for the most part; one of the few things that really affects it is lactate (biofouling), but even that can be inhibited with the right alloying additives. More speculative uses might include offshore wind turbines and underwater (isobaric) compressed-air energy storage equipment.
- brilee 9y ago
  IIRC the difficulty with titanium was not in the production, but rather the difficulty in machining the metal afterwards.
  - jwatte 9y ago
    Titanium isn't worse to machine than stainless steel. Sure, it's not as straightforward as mild or annealed steel, and not as buttery as aluminum, but the "hard to machine" rep is fairly overstated. Titanium stock is at least 5x more expensive than steel at retail, so I think the material scarcity is still the major problem.
intrasight 9y ago
Iron was more expensive than gold at the dawn of the iron age. The only way humans obtained iron was from meteorites.
- peatmoss 9y ago
  This is so incredibly badass. I mean, just imagine that the only practicable place to get this new, incredibly strong material, was from space. On the topic of found vs made materials: I’ve read that shipwrecks are getting mined as a source of steel because it’s more or less impossible to make new steel that isn’t contaminated by trace amounts of radiation from 20th century nuclear testing. While not a problem for skyscrapers, certain lab equipment requires the relatively more rare variety of found steel.
  - hdkrgr 9y ago
    More on the latter point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel The same effect was also used in understanding brain development by looking at Carbon isotopes in brains of people born before WW2 to determine which cells were formed when.
    - LMYahooTFY 9y ago
      That's fascinating to me, I didn't realize anthropogenic radiation levels were significant enough to offer a control for molecular examination of human brains in the general population. It's almost a bit unnerving.
      - jacobolus 9y ago
        It’s not “radiation levels” per se. Nuclear bomb testing in the mid 20th century dramatically increased the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere, which has subsequently been gradually declining. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-14#Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-14#Origin
  - intrasight 9y ago

scythe 9y ago

In Napoleon's day it was more expensive than gold. By the time the Washington Monument was constructed the price had dropped to roughly the level of silver. Titanium might be poised to follow in its footsteps after the discovery of electrolysis of titanium oxide in molten calcium chloride, analogous to the cryolite process.

dmix 9y ago
I'm curious, what are some of the places we would start to see titanium if the prices dropped?
- matte_black 9y ago
  Cars.
- baldfat 9y ago
  Cheap titanium bikes are high on my list but I think the killer application is titanium hinges. Springs will last a lifetime. Looks like this is starting to happen alreadt: https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/titanium-hinges.html https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/titanium-hinges.html $0.25 for a hinge Titanium is light, but my favorite thing is it is next to impossible to bend. So anything that shouldn't bend will be better with titanium.
  - nradov 9y ago
    There's very little actual titanium in titanium bike frames. Most of the cost is in the machining and labor, so I doubt prices will drop much. And the majority of riders seem to prefer carbon fiber anyway.
    - baldfat 9y ago
      That is due to tooling but it is an issue because it is rarely used. Carbon is fragile and breaks but it is cheaper to repair once again because Titanium is exotic right now. https://www.livestrong.com/article/271286-titanium-vs-carbon-bikes/ https://www.livestrong.com/article/271286-titanium-vs-carbon...
    - jdietrich 9y ago
      >Most of the cost is in the machining and labor, so I doubt prices will drop much. I'm not sure why that would be the case. Titanium alloys are only marginally more difficult to work with than aluminium alloys. The tubes are hydroformed and die cut, so the only difference is a touch more die wear. Titanium is a bit finicky to weld, but that can't possibly account for the ~500% price premium over aluminium frames. There's a tiny bit more surface preparation and your fixtures need to be more complex to provide adequate gas purging, but the differences in a mass production environment are quite marginal. >And the majority of riders seem to prefer carbon fiber anyway. Carbon is better for competition road bikes, because it offers the absolute lowest weight and can be easily formed into complex aerodynamic profiles. Entry-level bikes tend to be aluminium for cost reasons. For touring and audax bikes, many riders still prefer steel for durability and comfort. Titanium has the corrosion-resistance and light weight of aluminium but the comfort of steel, so it's considered by many to be the ideal material for non-racing bikes, but the cost is often prohibitive. As far as I can see, the bike industry would be transformed if titanium were to achieve price parity with aluminium.
      - nradov 9y ago
        The point is that a modern titanium bike frame costs at least $1200 even though it contains <2kg of titanium, and high purity titanium only costs ~$50/kg. So I can't see how just cutting the cost of the raw material would have a transformative impact on the bike industry.
  - leot 9y ago
    Diamond-like carbon should be applied everywhere there's wear. It could allow drill bits, gears, bike chains, joints, etc to all last virtually forever.
  - scythe 9y ago
    I doubt it's happening already. Metalysis currently owns the patent rights to the process and is focusing on tantalum and zirconium (higher profit margins) while working on scaling it up.
    - vbezhenar 9y ago
      Not everyone cares about patents. I think Chinese factories do not care and who cares whether the result product was patent-free or not.
    - philipkglass 9y ago
      Tantalum ore concentrate currently sells for over $150/kg. Making metallic tantalum powder from the oxide is barely interesting even if the FFC process works quite well. Tantalum would remain an expensive specialty metal. Titanium dioxide, OTOH, is closer to $150 per tonne. A cheap process to convert that inexpensive raw material to metal would be one of the most impressive advances in industrial metal production in decades. There's an ugly licensing fight in the history of the FFC Cambridge process. See the section "Commercial challenges" in this article: http://www.saimm.co.za/Journal/v111n03p199.pdf http://www.saimm.co.za/Journal/v111n03p199.pdf In 2000 Cambridge University Technical Service issued a sub-license for the technology that British Titanium Plc used for the purpose of producing bulk titanium and titanium alloys. BTi worked closely with researchers from the Fray group (one F of the Fray, Farthing, Chen inventors whose names make up "FFC.") The US Office of Naval Research issued contracts to BTi for R&D work in 2000 and 2002. In 2002 DARPA started funding more expensive scale-up work also associated with BTi. In 2004 NASA issued an even larger contract to BTi. Cambridge spun off Metalysis in 2002 with another license, but Metalysis didn't seem to be making much progress compared with BTi. In 2005, CUTS revoked the sub-license granted to BTi and made all of the IP exclusive to Metalysis. The license revocation destroyed BTi. My interpretation: CUTS crippled BTi because Metalysis wasn't making enough progress on implementation to compete against BTi. But CUTS really crippled the whole concept because the experts that had been working for and with BTi didn't want to work with Metalysis after getting screwed by CUTS. Metalysis "pivoted" to tantalum and has failed to make notable progress there, too. Maybe the application to titanium will finally resume progress toward industrialization after the patents expire.
  - at-fates-hands 9y ago
    > Titanium is light, but my favorite thing is it is next to impossible to bend. This gives an insane amount of tensile strenght since it always wants to retain its shape. TBH I have no idea why we haven't seen Titanium in things like golf clubs, hockey sticks, baseball bats, tennis rackets, snowboards etc, where you could really use its springy characteristics to a huge advantage. I've always felt like it has a huge potential for widespread use in sports.
    - robotsonic 9y ago
      As far as I know, they are used quite heavily in golf and tennis equipment. Hockey sticks tend to be carbon fiber. <s>I think the baseball wood/aluminum debate can't handle another metal </s> Snowboards and such do benefit from being able to bend. I could see it more in alpine snowboard equipment, but again, I'm not sure that carbon fiber wouldn't be the better bet.
      - bhewes 9y ago
        Baseball has been moving away from lively metal bats. Too dangerous for the infield. Never ending debate when I played 6A baseball in HS. Now, slow pitch softball had Ti bats in the early 90's that added 10 mph. Even then some of the new composite materials out hit Ti.
        baldfat 9y ago
        > Even then some of the new composite materials out hit Ti The issue is one PEOPLE DIE because of these bats and balls. (I'm old but I was one of maybe three people that could hit a home run now all 10 players can) 1) The other bats were so thin that you had to rotate the bat when you hit because the bats bend or will break. The ti bats are durable and you can still sue them. The issue is nothing really is better than ti but ti has a cost.
        baldfat 9y ago
        Since someone is doubting what I said here is SBNations take on Ti Bats. >"The pitcher’s mound for amateur slow-pitch softball varies according to the field and age of players, but is generally between 40 and 50 feet from home. This means that after a ball is hit, assuming an exit velocity of between 78 and 102 mph, the pitcher has between 0.456 and 0.350 seconds to react to a batted ball. Adding exit velocity shaves precious micro-seconds off that time. That was what made titanium bats so dangerous. Softballs became missiles and pitchers became targets. And the dangers are real. Players have lost teeth, eyesight, motor function, IQ points and even their lives when struck by balls hit off hot bats." https://www.sbnation.com/2015/8/5/9041099/the-bat-doctor-is-in https://www.sbnation.com/2015/8/5/9041099/the-bat-doctor-is-...
  - akgerber 9y ago
    You can already buy a titanium bike (sourced from China) for a very reasonable place from Bikesdirect.com— mine was cheaper than a steel Surly Straggler for similar specs. Habanero also sells them for low, but not quite as low, prices: https://www.habcycles.com/ https://www.habcycles.com/ There seem to be a bunch of low-cost titanium manufacturers in China selling directly on eBay.
    - baldfat 9y ago
      Ti bikes are all over a thousand on bikesdirect. I am thinking that ti bikes will cost just a hundred more than steel when ti becomes common.
- scythe 9y ago
  I think pipes might be a strong contender. Currently titanium is roughly the same price as copper, but harder to machine -- and it's produced in ugly forms by the Kroll process. Electrolysis produces a metal powder using less energy. Titanium is practically immune to chloride corrosion but is slowly worn down by fluoride, although fluoride is typically present at just 1 PPM in tap water (anything higher is toxic) so Ti pipes should last quite a while. Boats can also be made of titanium alloys. Anything dealing with water gets easier when titanium is in play, for the most part; one of the few things that really affects it is lactate (biofouling), but even that can be inhibited with the right alloying additives. More speculative uses might include offshore wind turbines and underwater (isobaric) compressed-air energy storage equipment.
brilee 9y ago
IIRC the difficulty with titanium was not in the production, but rather the difficulty in machining the metal afterwards.
- jwatte 9y ago
  Titanium isn't worse to machine than stainless steel. Sure, it's not as straightforward as mild or annealed steel, and not as buttery as aluminum, but the "hard to machine" rep is fairly overstated. Titanium stock is at least 5x more expensive than steel at retail, so I think the material scarcity is still the major problem.

intrasight 9y ago

Iron was more expensive than gold at the dawn of the iron age. The only way humans obtained iron was from meteorites.

peatmoss 9y ago
This is so incredibly badass. I mean, just imagine that the only practicable place to get this new, incredibly strong material, was from space. On the topic of found vs made materials: I’ve read that shipwrecks are getting mined as a source of steel because it’s more or less impossible to make new steel that isn’t contaminated by trace amounts of radiation from 20th century nuclear testing. While not a problem for skyscrapers, certain lab equipment requires the relatively more rare variety of found steel.
- hdkrgr 9y ago
  More on the latter point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel The same effect was also used in understanding brain development by looking at Carbon isotopes in brains of people born before WW2 to determine which cells were formed when.
  - LMYahooTFY 9y ago
    That's fascinating to me, I didn't realize anthropogenic radiation levels were significant enough to offer a control for molecular examination of human brains in the general population. It's almost a bit unnerving.
    - jacobolus 9y ago
      It’s not “radiation levels” per se. Nuclear bomb testing in the mid 20th century dramatically increased the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere, which has subsequently been gradually declining. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-14#Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-14#Origin
- intrasight 9y ago