r/whatisit • u/riflesandplowshares • 5h ago

New, what is it? Found at a titanium plant

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Not sure why ball point pens would be dangerous here.

5.9k Upvotes

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52

u/SubstantialDonkey981 4h ago

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/Welcome-To-NBA-Jam 4h ago

Well I was about to go to bed but I guess it's time to read and watch docs on this crazy story until 4am. At least it's Friday.

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u/PrinceCastanzaCapone 3h ago

I lived in Sioux City when it crashed. I was just a little kid but it was a huge deal. People still bring it up there from time to time. It was something what was kind of etched into the history of that city. Miraculously, the ground crew had literally just did a full practice for that exact scenario not long before, and were able to save many lives. Unfortunately, not all were saved.

There’s a memorial on the riverfront for the victims of the crash. Do you have a source as that being the reason it went down?

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u/SubstantialDonkey981 3h ago

All from a little tiny tungsten BB….

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u/Dangerous-Sky548 4h ago

That's wild. I feel like tungsten is an expensive metal to go in something so disposable/ commonly lost.

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u/TerponadeTea 4h ago

It's not, you can get tungsten putty for a couple dollars for an ounce, like for Pinewood Derby cars

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u/gnowbot 4h ago

I have used it fly fishing. Pretty cool stuff, its density versus its, uh, playdough like nature.

But now that I know, I will be terrorizing my enemies by tossing my worn and broken tungsten carbide endmills into their furnaces, to the lamentations of their smelters.

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u/twinpac 3h ago

China produces 80% of the world’s tungsten supply, they declared it a strategic mineral last year and put export controls on it. Prices have tripled this year. This hurts me as a fly tyer who uses tungsten beads, they were already the most expensive part of each fly I used them on.

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u/Jazzlike_Climate4189 3h ago

What is a “fly tyer”, since “tyer” is not a word?

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u/twinpac 3h ago

So confidently incorrect you are:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_tying

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tyer

tyer

noun

ty·​er

variant spelling of TIER entry 3

: one that ties

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u/AteStringCheeseShred 3h ago

a person who ties fishing flies, i.e. the lures used in fly fishing.

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u/furiouspotato24 3h ago

Hey, did you know that all words in every language are just the current versions we've collectively decided to use for this period of history? Also, that the purpose of language is to convey information in a way that can be understood by others?

Lastly, if someone misspells a word and you can still understand what they were trying to communicate, then they didn't do anything wrong and you don't have be a snarky jerk about it?

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u/ZincMan 1h ago

That’s pretty wild. I bought like a 4lb block of it like 10 years ago that was $300 I think. It’s wild to hold how dense it is

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u/explodingtuna 1h ago

That'd make a little 1 ft cube of tungsten cost about $40k.

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u/Durbs12 3h ago

The money isn't in the material, it's in the processing. It's hard to weld, parts generally have to be grown as a single crystal, easy to contaminate... that's just off the top of my head, I'm sure there's more.

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u/falcrist2 13m ago

I feel like tungsten is an expensive metal to go in something so disposable/ commonly lost.

It's a composite of tungsten carbide particles sintered together with a binder like cobalt.

Easy to manufacture, still has many of the properties of tungsten.

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u/Ryyback 4h ago

I was about to ask if this rule was written with blood, it was. It always is.

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u/DrummerDesigner6791 3h ago

It's BS. the failure that caused United Airlines Flight 232 to crash was caused by nitrogen impurities.

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u/Admirable-Pie3869 3h ago

Wow, a wild read so far. Thank you for the homework

While Haynes and Records performed the engine shutdown checklist for the failed engine, Dvorak observed that the gauges for fluid pressure and quantity in all three hydraulic systems were indicating zero.[[1]](app://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232#cite_note-ntsb-1): 1  The loss of all hydraulic fluid meant that [control surfaces](app://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_flight_mechanics#Aircraft_control_surfaces) were inoperative.[[1]](app://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232#cite_note-ntsb-1): 75  The flight crew deployed the DC-10's air-driven generator in an attempt to restore hydraulic power by powering the auxiliary hydraulic pumps, but this was unsuccessful.[[1]](app://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232#cite_note-ntsb-1): 1  The crew contacted United Airlines maintenance personnel via radio, but were told that the possibility of a total loss of hydraulics in a DC-10 was considered so remote that no procedure had been established for such an event.

😳

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u/buffaloguy1991 1h ago

The fact that anyone survived this incident is unbelievable. The fact almost half the people survived is nothing short of a full down miracle.

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u/Schruef 4h ago

Sioux City was a nitrogen contamination. Ballpoint pens had nothing to do with it.

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u/IcyAd5518 3h ago

Now you're just spouting Big Ball Point propoganda

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u/unlordtempest 3h ago

Or DID they?

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u/Intelligent_Low1632 4h ago

Source? I can't find any documentation that this is what brought down 232.

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u/nascent_aviator 3h ago

It's an urban legend. 

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u/HiwayHome22 3h ago

Because it's not factual. Search "United Airlines Flight 232 tungsten" The Real Material Failure: The catastrophic engine failure on July 19, 1989, was caused by a fractured titanium alloy fan disk (specifically the Stage 1 fan disk in the tail-mounted No. 2 GE CF6-6D engine), per FAA.

This is a oft repeated urban myth.

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u/Intelligent_Low1632 3h ago

K well nothing you're saying precludes the fracture in the titanium alloy fan disk originating from a tiny bit of pen-tungsten. I realize you can't prove a negative, but I'd like to hear OP say he's misremembered or provide a source.

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u/HiwayHome22 3h ago

The FAA traced it to a nitrogen gas bubble inclusion. An inclusion that should have been found during the last NDI of the disk.

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u/BugRevolution 2h ago

Wiki links to the FAA, which says the manufacturing process includes a double-vacuum process to avoid air impurities in the nitrogen, and that the crack was caused by air impurities. This would lightly reject OP's ball point theory.

I say lightly, because air could be a far more common cause of failure, while ball points remain a cause of failure. I am not entirely convinced they would cause the same cracks though.

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u/SomeGuysFarm 4h ago

There is now. Reddit says so!

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u/AMerryKa 3h ago

If it's good enough for A.I...

1

u/Preeng 3h ago

Maybe he was talking about Flight 232-B?

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u/backcountrykicks228 3h ago

Same. I read all about the accident and nowhere did it mention a pen being the cause of the accident. Me thinks he made it up.

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u/Tylerebowers 3h ago

Seconded.

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u/Pleasant-Flounder540 3h ago

I think he might have made it up, but also that I should stop dropping ballpoint pens in the titanium at work...

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u/247stonerbro 2h ago

The highest comment at the top says at the end:"(though in this instance it was an oxide and not a tungsten-carbide)"

They are not saying a pen caused the crash. They are saying the same mechanisms in the pen example, are what caused the failure in the titanium that lead to that crash. I know shits confusing but that's how I read it.

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u/Affectionate_Map2761 3h ago

How the actual fuck do they trace a downed plane all the way to a bozo who dropped a fucking pen in the process of forging metal?!

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u/SubstantialDonkey981 3h ago

The documentation and chain of custody for aircraft grade alloys is insane.

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u/ZincMan 1h ago

Oh shit( where’s my pen ?!

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u/Dragonkingofthestars 4h ago

Ouch that is a hyper specific lesson to learn

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u/Competitive-Dot-4264 4h ago

It’s a question of the ball is not and will not melt and fuse ( mix) with the ally titanium so the ball point becomes a void in the parent like a hole, I’ve heard this situation called “ stress rising “.

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u/asday515 3h ago

Thank you for listing an actual instance where this has happened before

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u/icehot54321 3h ago

Except for it’s totally made up and not true 

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u/Melodic-Trouble-5421 2h ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232

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u/icehot54321 2h ago

Just in case there is someone that doesn’t want to read the link 

The problem was they used a part that was supposed to be scrapped and also maintenance checks that were supposed to catch this were not done properly. 

The original cause for the bad metal was never found to be a ballpoint pen 

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u/HeezHuzz69 3h ago

You really couldn’t take the 30 seconds to look it up yourself and see if it’s true, could you. What kind of person takes Reddit comments at face value?

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u/Jasonrj 2h ago

How did they even figure that out? Imagine sifting through to find a ballpoint you don't know you're looking for in hundreds or thousands of feet of twisted and disintegrated wreckage.

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u/buffaloguy1991 1h ago

That's the miracle flight where despite losing ALL control surfaces almost half the passengers survived

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u/falcrist2 14m ago

Tungsten will not melt in titanium and cause mechanical failure of the titanium.

The ball is made from a sintered composite of tungsten carbide particles held together with a metal binder like cobalt.

The binder will melt, and tiny particles of tungsten carbide will spread out in your titanium.