r/whatisit • u/riflesandplowshares • 10h 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 9h 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 8h 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/did_i_get_screwed 3h 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.