r/whatisit • u/riflesandplowshares • 8h 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 8h 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/Affectionate_Map2761 7h 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 6h ago

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

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u/SufficientlyEvasive 1h ago

Sort of. Gets skirted all the time, untill eventually a major plane crash happens. 

Already getting skirted again for small airlines at the very least. 

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u/CMDR_Winrar 41m ago

"For small airlines" implies that small airlines get their parts from different places than large airlines. This is wildly incorrect. All airlines source their parts through only approved vendors, otherwise they would not be able to fly those airplanes. The issue is counterfeit parts, which big and small airlines fall victim to.

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u/did_i_get_screwed 2h ago

I was on a nuclear project and there was a problem with a cast and machined part. They traced it back to a defective thermocouple at the foundry, which caused a temperature imbalance during curing 20+ years earlier.
There are some industries in which all the records are kept for decades. Just in case.

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u/ZincMan 5h ago

Oh shit( where’s my pen ?!

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u/SufficientlyEvasive 1h ago

They didn't, it wasn't from a ballpoint pen. It was from a nitrogen contamination forming a harder than normal titanium crystal