Thanks Peter. I think the person we both know (and love!) just buys rods. If it's that difficult to cut, I think I'll just wait till I can get the real thing.
I won't bother with the tweezers then Dennis.
Thanks Peter. I think the person we both know (and love!) just buys rods. If it's that difficult to cut, I think I'll just wait till I can get the real thing.
I won't bother with the tweezers then Dennis.
Grade 5 is the tough stuff - grade 1 should be much easier to deal with. Slightly thinner wouldn't go amiss either.
I wouldn't recommend Ti tweezers either Carole, for exactly the same reason......(and yes, think he's only into rods!!)
I have the Ti 6Al-4V type stuff at about 1.5mm thickness - either way Ti is notoriously awkward to cut and machine for those even well equipped to cut other metals - feed rates, cuttings angles and tool pressure etc. all need to be different to just about every other metal.
For the smaller general workshop it is suggested a blunt hacksaw blade be used with higher pressure and speeds (seriously!) - the blade teeth heat and the Ti heats at the contact points and you essentially melt/burn (friction cut) your way through - hard to maintain accuracy (for me anyway), but cutting is way faster than with a sharp blade and normal hacksaw practices.
I'd just like to mirror what another member had noted - Ti tends to get very soft/ductile when heated to glowing and with my clamps I found it hard to maintain pressure on the workpiece, although admittedly I was performing a rather hot operation - I'll stick to Ti for solder picks and similar but I think I'll look at using some SS alloy for my clamps, and have shelved my idea of cutting out some Ti tweezers too.
Shaun.
Bookmarks