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I have been asked to look at building a lightweight titanium version of our F/TR bipod, is this something anyone else would be vaguely interested in? The bipods would be supplied in the white so just bare titanium which would look spectacular however they could also be anodised or satin blasted if required. Each bipod would be individually numbered.

These will be the lightest and widest F/TR bipods in the world and I will only build the single run of 6 units. These bipods will be known as the ‘Støtteben Letvægt' (Lightweight)

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James

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Bet they are not cheap. How difficult is titanium to machine.

Titanium is quite tough and I prefer to use carbide cutters when machining it, the good news is you can get a very nice finish if you persevere with the job however I have smashed a few cutters in the past which can be very costly. Tapping titanium is fun, especially smaller holes.

The real problem is finding material stock as close to the finished item as possible to minimise machining time and I tend to design my parts to material stock sizes less 0,1mm or similar so I can put a minimum cut across it to ensure it is true and clean. Certainly I try to avoid vast amounts of roughing out if possible.

ovenpaa wrote:Certainly I try to avoid vast amounts of roughing out if possible.

That's where you are going wrong, ooman. Received wisdom is to try light, fast cuts on titanium: in reality you are generally far better taking big, slow cuts. You don't have to believe us, these clever people http://www.amrc.co.uk/ have produced loads of erudite papers on the subject. Rolls-Royce do it their way.

What I mean is I try to design to material stock dimensions, no point in spending ages making swarf. With 6082 T6 this is not such a problem as it is a relatively cheap material and easy to machine, titanium is a lot tougher and expensive especially if a mistake is made...

We have used titanium in the past to make small vessels etc a very expensive option for some of our experimental work. We also use titanium fittings such as valves threaded caps and small bore pipe fittings. We also use micro bore Titanium pipework and Titanium wire on some of the rigs. I believe that most of the bits went in the scrap bin when the experiment proved not to be viable. Research is a expensive business.