Personally, I'd use coolant but otherwise I don't see a problem. Yes, it will burn under a blowtorch but I would hope that no one would get it that hot during machining.

Without non-water bearing coolant machining mag-alloy can cause some equally brown trouser moments too.

I regularly turn Titanium dry with carbide insert tooling, if you crank up the speed and feed too far you can cause a fire, if you avoid large buildups of swarf under the work and use common sense with your feed & speed you will not have problems.

On the other hand why not listen to those who have not had any actual experience machining Titanium, Google it a bit and then go with the alarmist Bla-Bla-Risk, Bla-Bla-Scary, Bla-Bla-Bla-Expensive, Bla-Bla-Extinguisher, Bla-Bla-Bla approach and not bother?

I'll quote you for it, it's a piece of piss 😀

– Nick

As with magnesium, feather-fine shavings and dusty-fine particles of titanium will ignite more readily than serious-size chips.



Also as with magnesium, letting dull tools rub is a good way to start a blaze.

Best to keep coolant running and keep the heat down.

A friend of mine used to run a business making dental implants from grades 2 and 5 Titanium. He had three (!!!) Schaublin 70s, which with a 70mm centre height makes them smaller than a lot of hobby lathes. He didn't use any coolant, but did use warm coconut oil as a lubricant when cutting threads. The biggest part he made was probably about 13mm long by 5mm diameter. Obviously the swarf load wasn't huge. For what it's worth he used HSS tooling, and was very careful to keep a really sharp cutting edge

As far as I know he didn't have any problems with fires.

cheers

Bill

Before i got into this hobby I did buy a piece of titanium sheet for a project. I was getting no-where cutting it with the tools I had then and hit it with my angle grinder (in a garage full of woodworking shavings and sawdust). Cutting it was even slower going with the grinder and by the tiem I;d gone an inch along (2-3mm thick) the edges were dark blue- black. Lots of sparks as you'ld expect off an angle grinder but no fire.

However having read up on cutting titanium after the event I wouldn't go that route again.

The only tricks I know of is to keep it cool cutting. Ie slow surface speeds, high feedrates relatively . I treat it like stainless steel, so 1/2 to 1/3 the speed of steel but 2x the feedrate of steel. It very quickly work hardens, and I find that a geometry for cutting Aluminium works really well. There are Ti specific cutting fluids , in both neat oils and soluble oils. Carbide Ti geometry drills are really neat, but expensive of course. The coated drills last quite along time. If they are resharpend, they really are the same as a std HSS or carbide drill, once the coating has gone. When tapping, sharp taps are best. I find using series taps are better than regular taps. I find that if you keep going slowly it works better than start stop approach. Series taps are smaller in the overall diameter, and you tap in a series of sized taps. Or I have ground down the outside diameter of the tap, and then relieved the od of the tap to the cutting edge. House keeping ie tidy as you go with the chips in the tray is essential.

Neil

You could turn titanium with positive rake carbide tips on a small machine, I can't see how that would be a problem. Just careful not to get too carried away with the cut and keep the speed up on variable DC motors to get the torque you need. You might get blue chips flying off it so you'll need to be careful. Coolant is recommended!

The answer is most definitely yes if you come prepared with the tooling. Video shows a 1.27mm cut on titanium with a sherline lathe, and a 1/4" HSS tool.

This video comes from a very interesting article written on behalf of sherline that I found that demonstrates this small lathe taking cuts at different materials, it gave me a very good idea of what to expect on different materials when I first got this lathe;http://sherline.com/test-cuts/

Michael W

Edited By Michael Walters on 19/12/2016 13:44:01

Edited By Michael Walters on 19/12/2016 13:47:30

Wow. This forum is about sharing stuff.

Steve

.

Thanks for that link, Michael … Impressive stuff:

I would say that Sherline sets the standard for [affordably priced] small machines.

MichaelG

My pleasure, Thanks for saying so. When I first obtained the lathe, it came with a CD of "useful stuff" and contained that webpage as a document, otherwise it's almost impossible to find by accident when navigating their site because it's so tucked away!

I also got a file full of training manuals on G-code and how to use it in this free cnc software, I may upload some of it someday, but there's a lot of it!

Michael W

Ignorance is bliss! I have had two experiences with titanium. I asked a local engineering company who specialise in exotic metals to roll a cylinder for the smokebox of the loco that I was building. I gave them the choice of brass or stainless steel. When I collected it they told me that they had neither of those metals in 1/8" so had used titanium as that was all they had. In later years I realised that it was not titanium as it was very soft and sticky to cut and tap. I have no idea what it was. Recently I used some titanium sheet to make some camera parts (it's all I had at the correct size). I cut it with a cutting disc on a Dremel. If I had seen the video of it burning I would have thought twice about using it. Anyway, all was well, but it does tend to crack when you bend it.