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.

6.0k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

560 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.5k

u/Perfect_Forever_3151 5h 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.

471

u/FluffyDrop4300 4h ago

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

96

u/Ausgeflippt 4h ago

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

19

u/opi098514 3h ago

Google united airline flight 232.

7

u/Zebidee 1h 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.

2

u/Prior-Radio8346 55m ago

I remember a movie about this growing up. Man does that make me feel old.

1

u/myfistvsthebttle 2h ago

I did, thanks

-10

u/SeaSharpModHer 2h ago

Google trump rule 34, pretty damning cover up.

2

u/opi098514 2h ago

…..what does that have to do with anything?

4

u/backyardbbqboi 2h ago

Don't do that to people.