Titanium sheet supplier | OCAU Forums

Hi. I am in need of a supplier for 3mm titanium sheet and was hoping someone knew of any. I am near melbourne so closer is better but if I can only find ones interstate so be it. I have googled but only found 1 so would like a bit of options to find a good price. I need sheets 400xmm and some bar etc later.
Thanks heaps.

The only titanium I've dealt with, I think was like 2mm sheet and you would not be able to bend the stuff unless you had a hydraulic press or mechanical assistance - it was that hardcore... I tried to bend it over my knee and on the side of a desk with all my weight and it didn't budge.

So yeah I don't know what you're planning to do or if you've dealt with titanium before - but it is not your average metal in terms of its properties...

Also FWIW titanium work hardens when cut, which means unless you have a laser cutter or something similarly hardcore (fast mechanical cutter), you ain't going to be cutting it... this especially goes for a dremel and any kind of hand tool (don't even try!).

I used to work with titanium on a daily basis, it's not like any other metal you've dealth with before, it's volitile to cut and a pain in the arse to weld. You need special cutters etc for machining it as it fucks anything that touches it thats not made to specifically cut it, the shit also throws sparks way more than normal metal when cutting it.

The place where i used to work was an american compnay here in australia we used to make custom parts for nuclear reactors and alot of mining machinery parts, and the odd massive gas tank, all our machine bar the normal plasma cutters and CNC's etc were designed and built by us along with the computer programming, it was interesting i'll give it that...but very long hours and bloody filthy.

Good luck with your titanium, oh yeah also...you do realise how much sheet and bar is gonna cost you right? $$$$$$

what are you trying to make? i'm struggling to think of anything that needs to be Ti short of a jet fighter, spaceship or racing car.

In my limited experience I found Titanium not too bad to work (in 0.5mm sheet) as i just cut it with scissors and used a linisher to clean it up/sharpen it, thicker sheet will be a bit harder to work with.

Its worth working with just to see the volume of pure white sparks that come off it!

Got a CAD render/screenshot of your chassis design? It might be worth going for a composite structure as opposed to merely titanium.

Note most places won't laser cut titanium, as it can't be done with the usual methods. The only place I found that said they would, but there'd be a huge set up charge, as they had to change their shield gas from nitrogen to helium (cutting Ti in nitrogen will rapidly oxidise it - i.e. burn).

I instead found a water jut cutting place, they didn't have a problem with it.

Brake pad thermal shims. Ti is a good insulator.

I sourced 0.5mm sheet from AEmetal, great service, but don't think they do Ti in the sizes OP is after.

As suggest above, go composite, you can buy CF in 2-5mm thick sheets from hobby stores, cut to size/shape (note you'll destroy many blades/bits in doing so), or go custom made. 2mm thick titanium for a RC car *cough* overkill *cough*. For that purpose any grade Ti will do the job.

Data_mine you turkey!

I used to have access to a heap of scrap where I used to work but it was only .032" thick..

Waterjet dominates titanium, and it still sparks while you cut it.. We used to get some titanium parts for 777...

Welding it is a major PITA, you obviously need a TIG, titanium filler and you have to purge weld it as it reacts with the air too much..

edit: pic related, titanium scrap from my old work..



edit2: titanium bonnet patch on my Falcon (dont ask why)




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I'll also add, to OP, have you considered getting some thick Aluminium milled out to make it stronger, leaving ribs/webs in the material? If you go the thick CF route, waterjet also kicks ass for cutting that stuff with no special setup/tooling/whatever

They already make ribbed aircraft grade aluminium chassis and they bend them. I have already contacted a laser cutting place that is reasonably priced and can cut it. I have connections through dads business to large laser cutting places. It doesn't have to be 3mm I was more leaning to 2mm but people on a rc forum thought 3mm would be better. I'll post a screen shot when I'm home. The already make carbon fibre chassis for racing but isnt it brittle? Not very knowledgable on cf though.
Thanks.

Better decide if you need 3mm, no point making it 33% heavier if you don;t have to.

not really, less brittle than glass but more brittle than copper. If they make racing chassis out of it then it mustn't be too bad, unless you plan on running it in to things all the time.

Racing is lots easier on most parts. The aim for this is bashing which basically is driving into whatevers there. I think some of you might be under estimating these things. They are pretty fast and they do break stuff pretty easy hence using titanium so it's basically impossible to break. Yer I think I'll go with 2mm. 2mm should be stronger than 4mm aircraft grade Alu right?
Also about the bar. It isn't very big bar. At a guess I would say 5x5x100mm with very little machining on it.
Thanks.

aircraft grade? what, ? ? There are about a thousand and one aluminium grades that are used, and many of them are selected for corrosion resistance rather than strength. Are you even using heat treated material, or just using the crappy off the shelf stuff?

That being said, are we to take it that you need straight modulus and yield stress because you have no space to put appropriate stiffening in?

Because if you are bending a stiffened structure, you didn't do it right!

Aircraft and the last bastion of lightweight stiffened aluminium structures - right the way up to jet fighters. When talking about bending, choosing stiffer materials or just thickening flat sheets is a really crap way of dealing with it. That's the reason why we have I, C and H shaped structural beams for bending loads rather than solid flat sections.

Carbon fibre with polyester or epoxy resin is also brittle in a bulk sense, but quite good for impact resistance because of the interlaminar fracture mechanics. It will absorb lots of impact energy, but you'll need a replacement afterwords. If you want serious performance out of them however you need to investigate metal matrix carbon fibre composites, but that's outside your budget.

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