8 ms·

How the fuck do you counterfeit titanium it’s one of those things that is either or it’s not.

by JSDevOps 2y ago

Marazan 2y ago
If I show you a lump of metal and I tell you it is titanium how do you know I am not lying?
- DannyBee 2y ago
  1. It will be non-magnetic 2. Easiest, most accessible testing method is scratching it on tile or glass. When scratched against glass (or ceramic tile), steel will probably leave a real scratch, aluminum will do nothing, titanium will leave a pencil-like line.
  - gorbypark 2y ago
    I am guessing that it was real titanium, just a different grade/alloy/treating process being passed off as something it was not or it's possible it's even the same quality/grade, just of unknown provenance (fell off the back of a truck) and its documents were forged. Seems kinda likely as Boeing says (as I understand from the article) they have tested the parts and it's the correct grade of titanium.
    - DannyBee 2y ago
      Sure, i answered the literal question. You are correct that this is what the article says - testing suggests it is in fact titanium, just maybe not the right treatment. That would be harder, but one would think that a company making airframes for aviation, in a highly regulated environment/etc, would occasionally send off samples to double check them. Getting titanium analyzed to a degree you could tell whether it is the right grade/alloy is cheap and fast - I can get it done for <$100 per sample. Given the cost of what they are producing, how few they produce, and how much they sell them for, and how quickly you can get this kind of thing done, they could test every single lot of titanium they get and neither increase cost, nor slow down production. This also isn't a case where there are lots of people in the middle - this supplier is the ones machining and producing the final product from titanium alloys. Also, if you change suppliers, wouldn't you at least test the stuff they give you the first time?
      - icegreentea2 2y ago
        For all we know, Spirit could have had sufficient testing, and the titanium actually pass all tests. That doesn't preclude fraudulent certificates.
        DannyBee 2y ago
        Except the article says they only tested it after they found corrosion reported back to them (IE they did not discover or test it ahead of time), and that testing they have now done says it is not treated properly. So it doesn't appear Spirit has sufficient testing, or that the titanium passes all the tests.
- scherlock 2y ago
  Ohh, I've done this. I bought some titanium bike parts and I was suspicious if they were titanium. I measured the weight of the bolts then dropped them in a graduated cylinder to get the volume, mass divas by volume is density, I then looked up the density and it was the same.
  - satiated_grue 2y ago
    I see you have studied your Agrippa^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Archimedes.
- maicro 2y ago
  Another literal answer to this question - spark testing. Take a sample to a grinder/belt sander and observe the sparks coming off - fairly crude, but you should be able to tell the difference between aluminum (no sparks), steel (mostly orange-ish) and titanium (white)[0]. That's really only enough to tell you the general material type though - the alloy and temper are also extremely important, as others in this comment chain have said. [0] - https://youtu.be/GnSBSKTC834?t=504 https://youtu.be/GnSBSKTC834?t=504 - not super happy with this video for a quick overview to provide to people, but this timestamp does cover this specific discussion; if I find a different video that covers the differences more broadly, I'll link it here.
- whymauri 2y ago
  Inspections for aerospace parts are, in theory, a bit more involved than just 'looking at it.'
  - kergonath 2y ago
    Yeah. They look at it very close. And they have sensors to look at it automatically. And they also look at the paperwork.
smcin 2y ago
The article says it needs to be treated to be aviation-grade, in some Boeing-approved process.
- DannyBee 2y ago
  Depending on the alloy, they solution treat it and heat treat it.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    Some titanium is subject to repeated vacuum arc remelting (VAR).
Bad_CRC 2y ago
I have a titanium plate on my wrist and this make me very nervous...
- mrspuratic 2y ago
  the strength to weight ratio is fortuitous, but this application is for its biocompatibility.
jordanb 2y ago
Improper alloying, improper heat treating, improper rolling/forming. Trying to back out what you actually have (if you don't trust the supply chain) can be expensive metallurgical analysis involving destructive testing, spectrometers, and electron microscopes. The real way industry solves this problem is mill test reports produced by the suppliers and careful documentation of chain-of-custody. Unless you don't care, then you just buy whatever from China and pretend you trust the counterfeit documentation that comes with it.
- Arnt 2y ago
  Oddly enough, this one seems to pass at least some testing even despite the phony documentation. This seems to be about this titan: «Boeing and Airbus both said their tests of affected materials so far had shown no signs of problems.» I read this as implying that Airbus has been buying other things from the same source and done its own tests on samples: «“Numerous tests have been performed on parts coming from the same source of supply,” an Airbus spokeswoman said…» Is the documentation process expensive enough that it's worth faking it even when the tested material is OK? Weird if so.
  - Brian_K_White 2y ago
    You can't really test. The tests you can do don't actually tell you what you really need to know. You can't prove the material is good, you can only trust that the material is good, and 50 years later observe how it held up. You can't find out the distribution of the alloy ingredients, or detect voids, or crystal structures, or traces of other elements, except by sawing the part in half and looking at the cut surface. You can't find out the critical properties by looking at it. All you can do is be sure you know the full truth of the history of the material and the part. You only know that if a certain recipe is followed, then the material will be good. You have to trust that the supplier did do the recipe exactly as specified. You can't look at the part after the fact and tell that. Even stress testing to failure doesn't tell you that because the material may pass the test today but fail from fatigue over time. The only empirical test is actual use in actual conditions for the full actual time. You can accelerate some tests, and failing an accelerated test obviously proves the material was bad, but it doesn't go the other way. Passing an accelerated test does not prove that the material is good for actual use in actual conditions for the full normal time. The end of the article has it right, if the parts seem ok from what testing is possible, then they are probably ok for this minute, and it's probably good enough to just replace them at the first opportunity during routine maintenance.
mk_stjames 2y ago
When you hear 'Titanium' mentioned in an engineering sense, rarely is this a reference to elemental titanium alone; structures use alloys of titanium which means small percentages of other metals are added (aluminum and vanadium for example are the two principle alloying metals in Grade 5 titanium, 6AL4V, probably the most common in aerosapce applications), and then the wrought products are even further processed through solution heat treating, etc. The same goes for aluminum, steels, etc. This is the purpose of the entire field of metallurgy.... Your comment would be like the equivalent in computer science of saying "Why do you need to write a computer program; the computer either works or it doesn't..."
- mrspuratic 2y ago
  recent: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38394635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38394635 The story of titanium
- zardo 2y ago
  In addition to the actual alloy the paperwork could cover x-ray inspection for defects.
- Animats 2y ago
  Titanium is metallurgy on hard mode.[1] Iron and steel behave in a much more consistent way. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921509397008101 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09215...
  - hinkley 2y ago
    This year I learned titanium shavings are at least as dangerous as magnesium shavings.
  - dr_orpheus 2y ago
    And even after you get past the manufacturing, titanium also seems to have some weird corner cases. I learned recently about metal induced embrittlement of titanium [0]. The Wikipedia article mentioned cadmium embrittlement of titanium, but is also possible with copper and silver. So if you have a silver plated washer pressed in to titanium it can cause issues. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal-induced_embrittlement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal-induced_embrittlement
rjsw 2y ago
People designing and using CAD systems don't care about materials, it is just "stuff" with a name.
shrubble 2y ago
Most titanium has a small amount of ruthenium alloyed with it, which greatly increases corrosion resistance. So there should be chemical ways to test for it.
bell-cot 2y ago
Answer I: Real-world materials are vastly more complex than "it's titanium, or it's not". Not that our craptastic modern educational system teaches such things, unless you're taking specialized engineering courses or technical training. For a skim, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallurgy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallurgy Answer II: In theory, the headline should have said something like "Components which had falsified documentation to assert that they fully complied with Aerospace Engineering Specifications [long list of cryptic technical specification codes here] for Titanium...". But, outside of Ph.D.-authored articles in the (fake name) Journal of Aerospace Engineering Research, that's not how mass-market modern journalism works.
carabiner 2y ago
What is it with SWE's and binary thinking? No, titanium and any metal alloy is a huge spectrum of materials. There are thousands of steels, aluminums and so on.
- robocat 2y ago
  > What is it with SWE's and binary thinking? That looks like a binary split (All SWEs think in binary) therefore you are a SWE and should answer your own question.
dr_orpheus 2y ago
Treatment, alloyed metals along with it, grain structure, manufacturing process. If you want an easily accessible intro to how metal treatment affects it's material properties go watch Forged in Fire. It is a blacksmithing game show where they make knives/swords but they go in to some of the reasons on why heating/cooling/forging metal in different ways can affect the structure of the metal and the strength of it with the exact same materials.
patmorgan23 2y ago
You falsified documentation about the titanium's quality. Side note: some things never change. Here's an ancient tablet, From someone complaining about the quality of copper they were sold. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-n%C4%81%E1%B9%A3ir https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-n%C4%...
qwerpy 2y ago
“JavaScript engineer confidently makes assertion about actual engineering”

How the fuck do you counterfeit titanium it’s one of those things that is either or it’s not.

Marazan 2y ago

If I show you a lump of metal and I tell you it is titanium how do you know I am not lying?

DannyBee 2y ago
1. It will be non-magnetic 2. Easiest, most accessible testing method is scratching it on tile or glass. When scratched against glass (or ceramic tile), steel will probably leave a real scratch, aluminum will do nothing, titanium will leave a pencil-like line.
- gorbypark 2y ago
  I am guessing that it was real titanium, just a different grade/alloy/treating process being passed off as something it was not or it's possible it's even the same quality/grade, just of unknown provenance (fell off the back of a truck) and its documents were forged. Seems kinda likely as Boeing says (as I understand from the article) they have tested the parts and it's the correct grade of titanium.
  - DannyBee 2y ago
    Sure, i answered the literal question. You are correct that this is what the article says - testing suggests it is in fact titanium, just maybe not the right treatment. That would be harder, but one would think that a company making airframes for aviation, in a highly regulated environment/etc, would occasionally send off samples to double check them. Getting titanium analyzed to a degree you could tell whether it is the right grade/alloy is cheap and fast - I can get it done for <$100 per sample. Given the cost of what they are producing, how few they produce, and how much they sell them for, and how quickly you can get this kind of thing done, they could test every single lot of titanium they get and neither increase cost, nor slow down production. This also isn't a case where there are lots of people in the middle - this supplier is the ones machining and producing the final product from titanium alloys. Also, if you change suppliers, wouldn't you at least test the stuff they give you the first time?
    - icegreentea2 2y ago
      For all we know, Spirit could have had sufficient testing, and the titanium actually pass all tests. That doesn't preclude fraudulent certificates.
      - DannyBee 2y ago
        Except the article says they only tested it after they found corrosion reported back to them (IE they did not discover or test it ahead of time), and that testing they have now done says it is not treated properly. So it doesn't appear Spirit has sufficient testing, or that the titanium passes all the tests.
scherlock 2y ago
Ohh, I've done this. I bought some titanium bike parts and I was suspicious if they were titanium. I measured the weight of the bolts then dropped them in a graduated cylinder to get the volume, mass divas by volume is density, I then looked up the density and it was the same.
- satiated_grue 2y ago
  I see you have studied your Agrippa^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Archimedes.
maicro 2y ago
Another literal answer to this question - spark testing. Take a sample to a grinder/belt sander and observe the sparks coming off - fairly crude, but you should be able to tell the difference between aluminum (no sparks), steel (mostly orange-ish) and titanium (white)[0]. That's really only enough to tell you the general material type though - the alloy and temper are also extremely important, as others in this comment chain have said. [0] - https://youtu.be/GnSBSKTC834?t=504 https://youtu.be/GnSBSKTC834?t=504 - not super happy with this video for a quick overview to provide to people, but this timestamp does cover this specific discussion; if I find a different video that covers the differences more broadly, I'll link it here.
whymauri 2y ago
Inspections for aerospace parts are, in theory, a bit more involved than just 'looking at it.'
- kergonath 2y ago
  Yeah. They look at it very close. And they have sensors to look at it automatically. And they also look at the paperwork.

smcin 2y ago

The article says it needs to be treated to be aviation-grade, in some Boeing-approved process.

DannyBee 2y ago
Depending on the alloy, they solution treat it and heat treat it.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  Some titanium is subject to repeated vacuum arc remelting (VAR).

Bad_CRC 2y ago

I have a titanium plate on my wrist and this make me very nervous...

mrspuratic 2y ago
the strength to weight ratio is fortuitous, but this application is for its biocompatibility.

jordanb 2y ago

Improper alloying, improper heat treating, improper rolling/forming. Trying to back out what you actually have (if you don't trust the supply chain) can be expensive metallurgical analysis involving destructive testing, spectrometers, and electron microscopes. The real way industry solves this problem is mill test reports produced by the suppliers and careful documentation of chain-of-custody. Unless you don't care, then you just buy whatever from China and pretend you trust the counterfeit documentation that comes with it.

Arnt 2y ago
Oddly enough, this one seems to pass at least some testing even despite the phony documentation. This seems to be about this titan: «Boeing and Airbus both said their tests of affected materials so far had shown no signs of problems.» I read this as implying that Airbus has been buying other things from the same source and done its own tests on samples: «“Numerous tests have been performed on parts coming from the same source of supply,” an Airbus spokeswoman said…» Is the documentation process expensive enough that it's worth faking it even when the tested material is OK? Weird if so.
- Brian_K_White 2y ago
  You can't really test. The tests you can do don't actually tell you what you really need to know. You can't prove the material is good, you can only trust that the material is good, and 50 years later observe how it held up. You can't find out the distribution of the alloy ingredients, or detect voids, or crystal structures, or traces of other elements, except by sawing the part in half and looking at the cut surface. You can't find out the critical properties by looking at it. All you can do is be sure you know the full truth of the history of the material and the part. You only know that if a certain recipe is followed, then the material will be good. You have to trust that the supplier did do the recipe exactly as specified. You can't look at the part after the fact and tell that. Even stress testing to failure doesn't tell you that because the material may pass the test today but fail from fatigue over time. The only empirical test is actual use in actual conditions for the full actual time. You can accelerate some tests, and failing an accelerated test obviously proves the material was bad, but it doesn't go the other way. Passing an accelerated test does not prove that the material is good for actual use in actual conditions for the full normal time. The end of the article has it right, if the parts seem ok from what testing is possible, then they are probably ok for this minute, and it's probably good enough to just replace them at the first opportunity during routine maintenance.

mk_stjames 2y ago

When you hear 'Titanium' mentioned in an engineering sense, rarely is this a reference to elemental titanium alone; structures use alloys of titanium which means small percentages of other metals are added (aluminum and vanadium for example are the two principle alloying metals in Grade 5 titanium, 6AL4V, probably the most common in aerosapce applications), and then the wrought products are even further processed through solution heat treating, etc. The same goes for aluminum, steels, etc. This is the purpose of the entire field of metallurgy.... Your comment would be like the equivalent in computer science of saying "Why do you need to write a computer program; the computer either works or it doesn't..."

mrspuratic 2y ago
recent: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38394635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38394635 The story of titanium
zardo 2y ago
In addition to the actual alloy the paperwork could cover x-ray inspection for defects.
Animats 2y ago
Titanium is metallurgy on hard mode.[1] Iron and steel behave in a much more consistent way. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921509397008101 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09215...
- hinkley 2y ago
  This year I learned titanium shavings are at least as dangerous as magnesium shavings.
- dr_orpheus 2y ago
  And even after you get past the manufacturing, titanium also seems to have some weird corner cases. I learned recently about metal induced embrittlement of titanium [0]. The Wikipedia article mentioned cadmium embrittlement of titanium, but is also possible with copper and silver. So if you have a silver plated washer pressed in to titanium it can cause issues. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal-induced_embrittlement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal-induced_embrittlement

rjsw 2y ago

People designing and using CAD systems don't care about materials, it is just "stuff" with a name.

shrubble 2y ago

Most titanium has a small amount of ruthenium alloyed with it, which greatly increases corrosion resistance. So there should be chemical ways to test for it.

bell-cot 2y ago

Answer I: Real-world materials are vastly more complex than "it's titanium, or it's not". Not that our craptastic modern educational system teaches such things, unless you're taking specialized engineering courses or technical training. For a skim, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallurgy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallurgy Answer II: In theory, the headline should have said something like "Components which had falsified documentation to assert that they fully complied with Aerospace Engineering Specifications [long list of cryptic technical specification codes here] for Titanium...". But, outside of Ph.D.-authored articles in the (fake name) Journal of Aerospace Engineering Research, that's not how mass-market modern journalism works.

carabiner 2y ago

What is it with SWE's and binary thinking? No, titanium and any metal alloy is a huge spectrum of materials. There are thousands of steels, aluminums and so on.

robocat 2y ago
> What is it with SWE's and binary thinking? That looks like a binary split (All SWEs think in binary) therefore you are a SWE and should answer your own question.

dr_orpheus 2y ago

Treatment, alloyed metals along with it, grain structure, manufacturing process. If you want an easily accessible intro to how metal treatment affects it's material properties go watch Forged in Fire. It is a blacksmithing game show where they make knives/swords but they go in to some of the reasons on why heating/cooling/forging metal in different ways can affect the structure of the metal and the strength of it with the exact same materials.

patmorgan23 2y ago

You falsified documentation about the titanium's quality. Side note: some things never change. Here's an ancient tablet, From someone complaining about the quality of copper they were sold. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-n%C4%81%E1%B9%A3ir https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-n%C4%...

qwerpy 2y ago

“JavaScript engineer confidently makes assertion about actual engineering”