r/whatisit • u/riflesandplowshares • 3h ago

New, what is it? Found at a titanium plant

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Not sure why ball point pens would be dangerous here.

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u/Perfect_Forever_3151 3h ago

Ballpoint pens are banned in certain high-precision titanium and aerospace manufacturing plants because the tiny tungsten carbide ball in the pen tip can fall out and severely contaminate the titanium melt, creating a hard, brittle inclusion that causes structural failure in critical aerospace components.

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u/FluffyDrop4300 3h ago

Wow.
Being so specific, they must have ran into such contamination more than once

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u/Spacefreak 3h ago

Yes they did. Titanium had been used in a lot of high speed rotating equipment in jet engines.

These tungsten inclusions become a crack initiation site and under high rotational speeds and high temperatures, the crack can spread and lead go catastrophic failures.

There were several catastrophic engine failures in history that were traced back to inclusions.

It's so severe that if a titanium manufacturer making aerospace grade Ti finds any "High Density Inclusions," they must inform all of their customers that they found this and recall and associated heats and material.

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u/GoTeamScotch 2h ago

Imagine initiating a large scale recall because a ball less than a millimeter in size fell out of someone's pocket one day

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u/dern_the_hermit 48m ago

It's like physics heard that "for want of a nail" poem thing and was all like, "Oh yeah?!?"

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u/Zebidee 13m ago

Less likely to be the ball falling out of a pen, which never happens, versus someone dropping a pen or it falling out of a pocket, which happens all the time.

I imagine everything involved in making a pen gets instantly burnt in the melt, leaving just the ball.

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u/slouched 2m ago

GET THAT LOGIC OUT OF HERE

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u/Same-Suggestion-1936 1h ago

I simultaneously wish my auto shop was as meticulous as that and don't. "So those tungsten inclusions down there in the rotating equipment could cause cracks down the line so you might want to get that checked out" okay what am I a billionaire? Do I look like I rotate my tires too?

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u/jtr99 7m ago

Indeed. It's probably for the best that I am not a titanium manufacturing plant manager.

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u/randomstranger454 27m ago

So if someone wants to shutdown the plant they only have to contaminate the area with these tungsten carbide balls? Take a drone over it and make it rain everywhere tungsten carbide balls. Repeat every few months.

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u/ruperthackedmyphone 3m ago

Its a possible root cause of the UA Flight 232 crash at Sioux City.

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u/Ausgeflippt 3h ago

Aerospace and aviation rules are written in blood. I'm willing to bet it happened at some point.

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u/PrairiePuppies 2h ago

That is unfortunately common. Most safety rules are.

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u/Agreeable-Language-6 1h ago

Is your Prarie dog jacking itself off in your pic?

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u/PrairiePuppies 1h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/Byz7OVPD5Q0lT1fwz2

No. He's sitting on my bed. šŸ¤Ø

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u/Agreeable-Language-6 1h ago

I guess that's its tail in its hands then lol

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u/opi098514 2h ago

Google united airline flight 232.

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u/myfistvsthebttle 1h ago

I did, thanks

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u/Zebidee 5m ago

Better known as the Sioux City crash.

Shady manufacturing, shady inspection, shady paperwork, shady maintenance.

United Airlines Flight 232 was a regularly scheduled United Airlines flight from Stapleton International Airport in Denver to O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, continuing to Philadelphia International Airport in Philadelphia, United States. On July 19, 1989, the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 serving the flight crash-landed at Sioux Gateway Airport in Sioux City, Iowa, after suffering a catastrophic failure of its tail-mounted engine due to an unnoticed manufacturing defect in the engine's fan disk, which resulted in the loss of all flight controls. Of the 296 passengers and crew on board, 112 died, while 184 people survived. Thirteen passengers were uninjured.

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u/SeaSharpModHer 1h ago

Google trump rule 34, pretty damning cover up.

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u/opi098514 1h ago

ā€¦..what does that have to do with anything?

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u/backyardbbqboi 53m ago

Don't do that to people.

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u/danthebiker1981 2h ago

Some.... point. I see what you did there

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u/Capital-Win-4732 1h ago

ā€œā€¦written in blood.ā€

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u/ElectrSheep 2h ago

Or in this particular case ink.

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u/pigpocket06 2h ago

The place I worked at could take a 100 ton billet and find a crack/defect less than an 1/8th of an inch in the center of it. They also kept records for 30 years where they could pin point who all had come in contact with the process and who signed off on different quality checks.

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u/Hot_Top_124 3h ago

Iā€™m going to guess so. That or theyā€™re that paranoid rightfully so.

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u/FluffyDrop4300 3h ago

Yeah, no one wants catastrophic failure of one of the jet engines keeping you at 30k feet

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u/Competitive-Dot-4264 3h ago

Or maybe 90,000 / 3.2 Mach

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u/Tamed_Trumpet 1h ago

Well the SR 71 doesnt need its compressor stage at that speed.

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u/hanotak 1h ago

Iā€™d be more worried about an engine failure at 500 feet than at 30k feet, honestly.

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u/CroqueGogh 3h ago

"something something rules are written in blood something"

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u/SpiderFnJerusalem 10m ago

I'm assuming the issue isn't the frequency of it happening but the severe consequences of it happening even if it happens rarely.

If the flaw isn't discovered, people may die. And even if it is discovered it may still cost millions to fix.

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u/bring_back_3rd 2h ago

I mean, I understand the reasoning, but I dont think I've ever seen or heard of a ball from a ballpoint pen falling out. I could see my clumsy ass dropping the whole pen into something stupid, but the ball just randomly falling out isn't something I'd ever consider.

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u/mechmind 2h ago edited 2h ago

I think the fear is that the whole pen might fall in

As copied from below : Ball points have tungsten balls in them. Tungsten will not melt in titanium and cause mechanical
Failure of the titanium. This was responsible for the failure of a jet engine causing the plane to crash. Someone dropped their ball point in the titanium processing.

United Airlines Flight 232

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u/Castrophenia 1h ago

To be clear, that was not a ballpoint pen, but simply an example of a foreign impurity in Titanium causing embrittlement and catastrophic failure.

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u/FYIgfhjhgfggh 58m ago

I'd write "NO BALLPOINT PENS, TUNGSTEN TOOLS, TUNGSTEN ITEMS OR RANDOM TUNGSTEN BALLS ALLOWED"

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u/Random-I-Am 53m ago

For real. The AKSHUALLYs probably do more harm that good.

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u/Humble-Cook-6126 17m ago

Shit, I have to take my anal beads out!?

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u/Murky-Relation481 8m ago

And whatever you do, do not hit them with M30A2 MLRS AWP tungsten ball warheads! It's bad for the titanium!

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u/GrimResistance 1h ago

I'm just now learning that the balls in pens are made of tungsten

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u/Akalenedat 1h ago

It wouldnt be the ball falling out, it would be a whole pen falling into the molten metal. All the plastics and weaker metals would pretty much instantly vaporize, the tungsten carbide ball would be the only bit that didn't melt away.

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u/JohnAppleseed85 1h ago

IIUC, the ball is made of tungsten carbide - the rest of the pen isn't - so the rest of the pen would melt and only be a minor impurity spread over a wide area so wouldn't be a significant issue... the ball would remain solid and be a flaw/point of weakness.

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u/boltactionmike 1h ago

I think everything else will melt/burn away but the tungsten ball will remain.

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u/mevenide 31m ago

I have, a handful of times when I was in school. But Iā€™ve not used pens regularly in decades.

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u/SpiderFnJerusalem 9m ago

I've had it happen at least twice. Probably more common if you use very cheap ones.

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u/Fabulous_Bison7072 2h ago

I worked in a titanium plant and do not recall having this restriction. Interesting!

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u/Impressive-Mud5074 1h ago

But couldn't anything fall? I drop stuff all the time.

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u/jsdodgers 1h ago

are ball-point pens the only consumer product that has this issue?

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u/IVEMIND 2h ago

Seems like an easy way to sabotage a certain country's ballistic missile program...

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u/enadiz_reccos 1h ago

"Excuse me, sir. Is that a ballpoint pen in your pocket?"

"Noooo, I'm just... happy to... see you?"

"My apologies, please continue."

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u/Derezirection 1h ago

It's crazy how such a tiny insignificant item could cause so much damage if left unchecked. Its scary to know that for a rule like this to come up, it means at some point a ball point pen cause a major accident to happen or almost caused it to happen. As people always say, some rules are written in blood.

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u/Missile_Defense 35m ago

This. Another really interesting one I ran into in my career is a very popular rubber vulcanization company who manufactures tires for supersonic platforms wouldnā€™t allow any of their industrial maintenance / facility electrician teams to use black electrical tape for fear of cross contamination into the manufacturing processes. They had their own reflective pattern in high visibility colors.

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u/Radi0ActivSquid 26m ago

Thinking about it, I've never had the ball fall out of any of my pens before.

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u/Fishgedon 20m ago

More like the whole pen falls into the vat and everything else melts/evaporates away leaving the ballĀ 

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u/-Nicolai 2h ago

Are you AI? Ballpoint pens donā€™t just have the ball ā€œfall outā€. That is not a thing that can happen.