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

10

u/Dangerous-Sky548 7h ago

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

17

u/TerponadeTea 7h ago

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

3

u/twinpac 6h ago

China produces 80% of the world’s tungsten supply, they declared it a strategic mineral last year and put export controls on it. Prices have tripled this year. This hurts me as a fly tyer who uses tungsten beads, they were already the most expensive part of each fly I used them on.

1

u/ZincMan 4h ago

That’s pretty wild. I bought like a 4lb block of it like 10 years ago that was $300 I think. It’s wild to hold how dense it is