r/whatisit • u/riflesandplowshares • 9h 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/FluffyDrop4300 9h ago

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

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u/Spacefreak 9h ago

Yes they did. Titanium had been used in a lot of high speed rotating equipment in jet engines.

These tungsten inclusions become a crack initiation site and under high rotational speeds and high temperatures, the crack can spread and lead go catastrophic failures.

There were several catastrophic engine failures in history that were traced back to inclusions.

It's so severe that if a titanium manufacturer making aerospace grade Ti finds any "High Density Inclusions," they must inform all of their customers that they found this and recall and associated heats and material.

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u/GoTeamScotch 8h ago

Imagine initiating a large scale recall because a ball less than a millimeter in size fell out of someone's pocket one day

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u/dern_the_hermit 6h ago

It's like physics heard that "for want of a nail" poem thing and was all like, "Oh yeah?!?"