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dyrodium
Experienced Roboteer
Joined: 24 Aug 2004
Posts: 6476
Location: Sydney
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Working with Titanium
Aright, many people may now, with all these nasty spinners around, may be considering using titanium (and other high strengh alloys like hardox or bizalloy) as armour on their bots. I for one have some experience with titanium, but would like to hear the tricks some people have found useful regarding cutting drilling and even tapping it.
Some of the things I have found that people may find useful:
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When you drill it, it's almost impossible to use anything other than a drill press, the force at a perfect angle you can get with a drill press makes it by far the most easy drill tool to drill titanium (unless you're nick and get holes waterjet cut!). Also with powerdrills it's tempting to use a high speed when drilling it, and this is a very bad idea, as i've experienced! Titanium needs a slower feed speed than steel if you value your drill bits and tools!
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In my opinion expensive bits such as carbide are not really nesisary unless you're doing heaps and heaps of holes. Cheapo bits tend to work ok, but they recieve a huge amount of wear none the less, so be prepared to need new bits soon!
And in my experience
AVOID TITANIUM COATED BITS WHEN DRILLING TITANIUM!!!
They're a gimmik anyway, but not only are do they seem to be less sharp than normal bits, and take longer, I had a nasty experience with one where friction generated from the titanium drilling really screwed it over, doing the "glowing metal" phenomenon and sending shreds of the drill bit everywhere! Don't use em, they're crappeh .
<> EDIT: And another thing, not sure if people know this but it scratches REALLY easily, which is odd as it's a very strong material in its alloyed state, and whilst it will completley trash carbide tipped saw blades, they can do a fair amount of damage to the titanium before they're destroyed (fair amount as in 1mm max deep scratches on corners...).
That's all from me at the moment, but perhaps Nick could shed some tips on this subject? I will need to cut my large Ti sheet soonish, and am not allowed to own an angle grinder, so that leaves jigsaw. I've heard horror stories in this department! _________________ ( •_•)
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YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
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Thu Jun 29, 2006 4:19 pm |
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