Fancy something in Titanium?

[ovenpaa]

http://nemoarms.com/

A bargain at USD96k..... for S/No 1 or you can have the cheap and nasty production version for less than USD50k. Personally I am not sure I like the colour so I am going to give it a miss..

[Christel]

It would look nice on the wall I guess...

[dromia]

It would look nice on the wall I guess...

Aye somebody else's wall!

Gosh that is ugly. :G

[Porcupine]

I'm not sure I understand the point, aluminum is lighter than titanium!

[Dellboy]

Titanium is surely much stronger

[ovenpaa]

Using Ti means you could in theory make it lighter than an aluminium alternative as titanium is generally stronger and harder than aluminium, if it was steel you could probably quarter the weight by manufacturing from Ti.

Which reminds me, I need to order some titanium wire

[meles meles]

Yes, but speaking as a metallurgist, steel has so many other benefits over things like aluminium and titanium. Because one can make a rifle out of such metals doesn't mean one should. Yes, both aluminium and titanium are lighter than steel, but are they tougher ? Do they resist stress corrosion cracking so well ? Do they fret and gall ? Strength isn't everything, and those alloys of say, aluminium, that are strong tend to have weaknesses in other areas. An AA 7075 aluminium in the correct temper state can be every bit as strong as an ordnance grade of steel, but is it actually in the correct temper after it has been machined? How much fatigue life does it have left ? What safety margins are you eating into on order to get that 600 MPa strength ?

Steel, oomans, steel. It's an amazing alloy in its own right.

[Porcupine]

Titanium is surely much stronger

True, but how often do aluminum guns break? I've never felt like ARs are unsafe - SGC unicorn notwithstanding! There's even plenty of polymer guns around now (G36, F2000 etc) and I've not heard of any problems.

[Dougan]

There was a very interesting program on about metals the other night on BBC4 - I like chemistry, but they were doing things with steel I didn't realise was possible...like growing 'single steel crystals' into moulds to make turbine blades

[meles meles]

As a rough guide, titanium has 1/2 the density of steel and 1/2 the tensile strength. Aluminium has approximately 1/3 the density and 1/3 the strength of steel. Now the obvious conclusion that one can draw from this is that a component of aluminium or titanium should end up weighing the same as a steel component for equivalent strength. Thus when a component of Al or Ti is advertised as weighing less than a steel component even a small brained kreecher like a Badger can figure out what that means about the strength of the component. A big brained ooman would have no problem recognising that steel is the better option...