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Russia had so much titanium that it used it to make razorblades and even street lamps, it had far less access to steel and especially high end steel so it exper
by dogma1138 5y ago
Russia had so much titanium that it used it to make razorblades and even street lamps, it had far less access to steel and especially high end steel so it experimented with titanium for a lot of weird applications including submarines.
It did became quite expert at machining and more importantly open air welding of titanium.
- mc32 5y agoI wonder why they didn't leverage their Ti mfg prowess into mfg'ing Ti consumer products such as Ti flashlights, Ti tools, Ti bike frames, etc. Even Apple got on the Ti bandwagon to prop up their flagging laptop line before they xitioned to Intel CPUs
- lazide 5y agoRussia has always struggled to export goods effectively due to relative lack of easy access to year round ports. They also don’t have effective investment or capital use due to corruption. Also, it’s a massive country and moving things around is hard, especially with the often unco-operative weather. So many reasons.
- dogma1138 5y agoProbably because that was during the USSR and by the 90’s everything collapsed and oil was easier to export than titanium. I don’t think much of their manufacturing capacity and institutional knowledge as far as processing titanium survived the collapse of the USSR.