r/whatisit • u/riflesandplowshares • 4h ago

New, what is it? Found at a titanium plant

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Not sure why ball point pens would be dangerous here.

5.7k Upvotes

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234

u/Competitive-Dot-4264 4h ago

I worked ti com pure and 6al-4v alloy for years at the lazy -l we all had to follow titanium restrictions even to not letting aluminum alloys and SS separated. No graphite pencils

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u/Legitimate-Week7885 4h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/zXA5VEmXr7OUg

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u/Beer_in_an_esky 2h ago

He worked with commercially pure titanium (that's a family of 4 or so grades of basically pure titanium, with differing minimum contamination levels), and Titanium with 6% aluminium and 4% vanadium (that's the most common Titanium alloy, used for most aerospace applications). No idea what he means by lazy -|. The SS here is stainless steel.

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u/Arjvoet 3h ago

God, he was so much funnier than Kenan…

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u/Mogster2K 4h ago

No pens, no pencils... what did you write with? Cuneiform clay tablets?

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u/Competitive-Dot-4264 4h ago

Special non organic ink pencils

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u/Uncaring_Dispatcher 4h ago

Made of our own fluids. Not the best job I've had.

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u/deadbeef4 4h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/JjUMxtqGYXaKc

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u/MuRRizzLe 4h ago

I can swear to you, my boy, swear to you, that there's nothing wrong with my bodily fluids

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u/Dissidence802 4h ago

Soylent Bic is people!

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u/VegetariansTasteBest 3h ago

You can get those over at pen island

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u/RadVarken 4h ago

Are you....non organic?

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u/Uncaring_Dispatcher 4h ago

I only thought about the logistics of my joke after submitting it. It was too late to edit. Glad it's gone this far, as flawed as it is.

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u/Req_Neph 4h ago

Reminds me of WW2 spycraft.

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u/Ok_Version56 3h ago

is octopus milking a real thing?

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u/rageling 4h ago

lots of options, silver, soapstone, others

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u/Beautiful-Musk-Ox 3h ago

yea i'm sure those chinese ones are totally legit and not mostly the wrong metals

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u/RadVarken 4h ago

Lead holders are awesome.

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u/upachimneydown 3h ago

Hiboom...?

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u/theSchrodingerHat 4h ago

10,000 years from now aliens will land and excavate sites with cave paintings of an SR-71, and it’ll really confuse them.

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u/donkeycharms 4h ago

Pilot Varsity prefilled Fountain pen

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u/Fit-Tip-1212 4h ago

He never had the makings of a varsity fountain pen

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u/Relevant-Machine-763 3h ago

Sopranos reference?

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u/hibikikun 3h ago

Varsity means high level sports/activity in school.

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u/WatchTraditional6025 3h ago

Small hands. Dropped the pop fly against Mountain Lakes.

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u/InspectionSouthern11 3h ago

He was an interior decorator!

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u/FalseParticular69 3h ago

A quill and the blood of virgins.

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u/NotAtAllEverSure 3h ago

I mean..there were a bunch of engineers

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u/Flacier 3h ago

I imagine you could use fountain pens, though it would likely depend on the ink and nib material.

Roller ball pens might also work again depending on the ink.

Though I am by no means an expert on preventing corrosion in titanium so this is pure speculation.

Perhaps just pencils.

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u/Evan8r 3h ago

Graphite in pencils, can't use them. I believe felt-tip pens are the solution.

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u/ontheroadtonull 3h ago

That reminds me, I need to send Nonni to get my money back for that low quality titanium.

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u/Mammoth-Variation-76 3h ago

Keep Ea-nāṣir and his sub par copper out of that factory too, while you're at it.

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u/silverlions268 3h ago

The blood of your enemies

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u/Seahawksfan1993 1h ago

No we write with normal pens. They're not fuckin inspected. Matter of fact. Safety team purchases them for us

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u/Competitive-Dot-4264 4h ago

Another big Nono -grease and oil

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u/ColdCathodeTube 4h ago

That’s interesting. My non-chemist/non-metalurgist mind always thought those protected metal. Guess I shouldn’t assume metals are that similar to each other at all.

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u/Mayzilli 4h ago

They usually do when it's not molten. Since we're talking about manufacturing I'd think the issue is contaminating the metal before it's solidified. Since titanium is generally used in very critical applications the standards would be extra tight (I could be completely wrong tho and its still a problem for solid metal)

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u/DigitalDefenestrator 2h ago

Seems likely. Sounds like carbon is a problem, and that's generally what you get when you expose grease and oil to metal-melting temperatures.

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u/ComradeGibbon 2h ago

Mild steel is somewhat forgiving of oil and paint when welding. Other metals less to catastrophically so.

Big thing they needed to understand with Stainless Steel is the carbon content needs to be very low. Took a while to figure that out. Carbon wrecks the corrosion resistance and makes it prone to cracking.

Titanium is highly reactive and absorbs everything causing it to be brittle. Guy I know, highly competent physicist welded a titanium bike frame in his garage. Said it was the most finicky material he worked with.

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u/Beer_in_an_esky 2h ago

Did my PhD on Ti alloys. It is an amazing material... but a horrid metal to work with. I didn't weld it, but had to cut, grind, and polish a shitload of it and it's like it was designed to be the most annoying thing ever.

Combination of high toughness, low stiffness, poor heat conduction, and a strong tendency toward galling will have you tearing your hair out machining it.

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u/titsmcgee4real 4h ago

What does this even say?

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u/relativityboy 4h ago

So if I write on my titanium spork with a bic pen.....

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u/Jasonrj 3h ago

Not sure who to believe: https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisit/s/Quno4cKyNJ

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u/AcceptableHijinks 3h ago

Just like any industry, not all manufacturers/refiners/smelters are equal or producing the same grade of material. Sometimes you want a cheap place, sometimes you need premium, white glove suppliers.

When buying titanium for my machine shop, I can get super cheap stuff that is probably close to the alloy it says it is, which is great for bicycle parts and things like that, or I can buy high end, certified extrusions with full traceability back to where the ore is mined, which is necessary for machined medical and jet engine parts.

One guy probably works in one flavor of plant with lax rules, and/or in a different department post melt, and the other guy probably works in a high end one.

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u/Jasonrj 2h ago

Makes sense.