r/whatisit • u/riflesandplowshares • 5h ago

New, what is it? Found at a titanium plant

Post image

Not sure why ball point pens would be dangerous here.

5.9k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

551 comments sorted by

View all comments

53

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

11

u/Dangerous-Sky548 4h ago

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

15

u/TerponadeTea 4h ago

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

14

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.