Titanium Extrusion Manufacturing Process

Watch as Plymouth Engineered Shapes extrudes a billet into a near-net shape.

[@TheExplosiveGuy]

I have three parts I saved from the scrap pile at my old machine shop job (scrapped for mismatch between cutter transitions), made from extruded Titanium T-shaped bar. The material cost for each part was $1000, despite the finished part weighing 26.8 grams. Each foot of the Titanium extrusion cost $10,000, my boss was _pissed_ at the guy who did the first part run, he didn't put any negative comps on his cutters on his first part run then creep into tolerance after measuring like he was supposed to, he just ran it as-is and scrapped $3000 worth of material. Each finished part cost $2500 bucks and I got three of them for free lol.

[@tl1539]

Hi bro, are you still doing ti related works? I'm at a Ti mill makes the billets/forgings for processors like Plymouth, the upper stream is expensive already (raw material for Ti64 range from 15 to 50 per lb) but yeah I agree the down stream processes make Ti super expensive. The T shapes you mentioned might be the aircraft cabin application.

[@TheExplosiveGuy]

@@tl1539 No, as much as I wish otherwise I can't work in machine shops anymore, I ended up developing a rather severe allergy to water-soluble machining coolants after working in machine shops for 17 years, it's a real bummer having to give up the career I invested so much into but ohh well, when life throws lemons at you throw them back and all 😆. But yeah, raw Ti is already expensive, when you add in the extrusion process it gets an order of magnitude worse. Though based on my stress testing of the extruded Ti versus standard billet Ti it definitely adds a huge amount of strength to it, there's a reason _some_ people will pay the premium for it, I can't think of another material that's as light and strong as extruded Ti, if cost isn't an issue it's the way to go. And I wouldn't be surprised if you're right about their application (for aircraft anyways, I don't know exactly where they went), we made them for Systema which has a lot of Boeing and DOD contracts for military planes.

[@runcycleskixc]

Sorry to hear that you got allergic to the very thing that you had you career based on! I have had a similar experience (but as a biochemist working with chemicals). Was the 10K per foot price due to the low-volume production? Do they make round Ti tubes the same way? Ti tubes are costly, but not at 10K per foot. I stopped by this video to see if standard Aluminum T-profiles (like 2020 or 4040) might be available in Ti... apparently noT. I was willing to pay 10x the price, but not 1000x the price. :)

[@19cmurry85]

Can you do Ti 6-4 into 2" seamless tubing?

[@BenRasmussen-c3u]

awesome

[@bigdude382]

And I thought aluminium extrusion was wild

[@kinnikuzero]

Wouldn't it be draw forging at this point?

[@TheExplosiveGuy]

Nope, there's nothing pulling the end of the extruded bar, it just gets squirted out of the die at ridiculous pressures.

[@Convolutedtubules]

​@@TheExplosiveGuycasually squirting red hot titanium lol

[@beachboardfan9544]

Do you guys do DOM Ti tubing? Grade 5?

[@PlymouthTubeCo]

Hi there - at this time we do not manufacture Ti Tubing.

[@deivissondasilvadeoliveira7737]

E vamos aos estudos... ✌😁

[@Dryootube]

Awesome

[@MegaJohnhammond]

can you extrude Inconel?

[@cptcolo]

It can be cold drawn into shapes

[@wabisabi6802]

Extruded titanium for? Military application?

[@TheExplosiveGuy]

Military, aerospace, space, medical industry, stuff like that, any industry with an unlimited budget (the small T-shaped bar they were straightening near the end costs about $15,000 per _foot,_ so imagine the cost of those big thick complex shapes they showed on the racks). I used to make parts from extruded Ti at a CNC machine shop, the strength of the stuff is beyond insane. The extrusion process aligns the grain of the Ti in one direction which makes it far stronger than billet Titanium (which is saying something), I have a few scrapped parts that are 1/16" thick but I cannot physically deform them by hand, which I can do with any other metal of that size and thickness, the strength-to-weight ratio is mind boggling.

[@godsloveministry4195]

I didn't know titanium can be extruded like that, maybe it's aluminum.

[@agentorange153]

Titanium is actually MORE ductile than steel, especially when red-hot!

[@RemotoFilm]

Aluminum doesn't change color when is hot.

[@markokelly2494]

I didn't know aluminum "can" (actually, could) be extruded like that. Maybe it's Play-Do. After all, the company doing the work and selling the product might not know what material they're working with, right? Perhaps they forgot to read the label.

[@christopherschein]

The Ti will Crack/Rip if you go slow

[@MrMrwilem]

dayuuummm.

[@akhilgupta1671]

Amazing

[@rosewhite---]

British Engineers were extruding toolsteel 40 years ago.

[@nick4819]

Titanium is whole different ball game.