Vacuum Formable Titanium Foil?

I know exactly what you need but it will cost you %10 of your multimillion dollar soon to be company.

Go on….. ;O)

Well I wish I did… Lol

At least we're keeping this thread top-side so hopefully someone that does know will see it and reply. :O)

Hi Ken

I have worked with a fair bit of titanium. Lovely stuff, but …

Yes, you could vaccuum form thin titanium foil to some degree, but you would have to do it red hot. The chances of finding a company currently able to do (anywhere in the world) this are not good.

The chances of doing it with Ti 'sturdy/stiff enough for holding a pressure fit over something' are very slim however. My guess is no. Drawing through carbide-faced molds are what is normally used, and it is a very specialised art.

Cheers

You could always look at explosion forming ;-)

http://bulletin.incas.ro/files/victor_ghizdavu_v2no4_full.pdf

Perhaps aluminum may be in order then, since this will be a part that will not see any significant action. Even if it did get dented slightly, it'd still serve it's purpose.

Decisions, decisions. I'm positive I could find a shop that could vacuum form the part from aluminum, but it would be great just to keep everything Ti.

Would any of you cringe at seeing something that had 95% of its parts made of titanium, and one part aluminum? Would this be a backpacking faux pas?

TIA!

KJ

Nice! My grandfather developed one of those (and the first) shuttle engines shown in the article.

Jetboil's Ti Sol has an aluminum flux ring, so the precedent has been set. I think you're good.

You might want to look at a material called Timetal 21s. It was made by a company called Timet and is a high Mo alloy – this is used to stabilize the beta phase which is more formable that the more common alpha or alpha/beta (6-4) like structures. There is a small density penalty (relative density around 5) but it had excellent mechanical properties and good corrosion resistance. I know it was available as a foil.
You specified vacuum forming which is going to be tough because you only have 15 psi to play with. As Roger states you can get it hot although you need to be careful as 'red hot' (which is typically above 700C) will cause the Ti to absorb atmospheric oxygen and generate a brittle surface layer called 'alpha case'. In practice this is what limits Ti alloys to about 650C upper use temperature in gas turbine engines.