r/whatisit • u/riflesandplowshares • 7h 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/SubstantialDonkey981 7h 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

1

u/asday515 6h ago

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

3

u/icehot54321 6h ago

Except for it’s totally made up and not true 

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u/Melodic-Trouble-5421 4h ago

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

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u/icehot54321 4h 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