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From someone in the product design/manufacturing space - this wouldn't change much. The problem with titanium isn't the material cost (which is expensive, but c

From someone in the product design/manufacturing space - this wouldn't change much. The problem with titanium isn't the material cost (which is expensive, but could be justified in a variety of scenarios) but rather everything else about it. Its an absolute pain in the rear to work with, your manufacturing base is tiny, specialized equipment and tooling is needed, it makes tiny little incendiary devices when being cut, etc. Its cool, and it has plenty of applications where it is the only choice. But those applications already use it, and lowering the material cost isn't going to make more designers decide to just start using it on a whim. (PS - This could be more useful if titanium 3d printers start becoming more accessible. But again, that's a low volume manufacturing process so the material costs still don't play much into final part cost.)

Animats 1y ago
With lower material costs, more mundane applications might appear, but probably not all that many. 3D printed titanium eyeglass frames are already a thing, though. Here's three generations of Space-X's Raptor engine.[1] The last one is mostly 3D printed. There are layers of different materials, and one is a titanium layer. Notice how the plumbing was simplified for each generation. Rocket engines are mostly plumbing. The fuel is used to cool the engine bell before it is used for power. Everything has cooling cavities inside. All that interior geometry is ideal for 3D printing. In the NASA glory days, those things were built by hand welding large numbers of machined pieces into an engine. Look at that Raptor engine on the right. Everything below the pumps is all one big part. No joints, no welds, no brackets, no plumbing fittings. Nice. [1] https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/08/spacex-reveals-raptor-3-engine-and-specifications.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/08/spacex-reveals-raptor-...

Animats 1y ago

With lower material costs, more mundane applications might appear, but probably not all that many. 3D printed titanium eyeglass frames are already a thing, though. Here's three generations of Space-X's Raptor engine.[1] The last one is mostly 3D printed. There are layers of different materials, and one is a titanium layer. Notice how the plumbing was simplified for each generation. Rocket engines are mostly plumbing. The fuel is used to cool the engine bell before it is used for power. Everything has cooling cavities inside. All that interior geometry is ideal for 3D printing. In the NASA glory days, those things were built by hand welding large numbers of machined pieces into an engine. Look at that Raptor engine on the right. Everything below the pumps is all one big part. No joints, no welds, no brackets, no plumbing fittings. Nice. [1] https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/08/spacex-reveals-raptor-3-engine-and-specifications.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/08/spacex-reveals-raptor-...