Titanium Uses: From the Seas to the Skies, to Your Wedding Ring!

Since we started working with titanium back in 1979, there has been an exponential increase in products made from this incredible metal. Just as the conquistadors in Peru around 1500 considered platinum just good enough for ballast for those ships returning to Spain, titanium was long thought to be just too difficult to work with.

Coupled with the fact that it’s never found in nature as a metal like gold, silver or copper, but has to be processed from ilmenite or rutile, we’ve heard more than one engineer comment, “Titanium, yeah, we used to call it unobtainium.”

Today, titanium is used for a myriad of scientific and consumer products. From really prosaic items like toothpaste or paint to highly-specialized medical implants such as heart valves and hip joints, titanium has become a necessary component of twenty-first century industry.

The major use of titanium ores found in the United States is for pigments, while the sheet metal used for aircraft and consumer products — including jewelry and titanium wedding rings — is from ores that originated outside the United States, primarily Australia, Canada, Sierra Leone, and Russia.

1. Jewelry and Watches
2. Submarines
3. Jet Planes
4. Pigment
5. Machine Parts
6. Body Parts
7. Elephant Hooks
8. Horseshoes
9. Water Desalinization Plants
10. Bicycle Frames and Accessories
11. Tennis and Racquetball Rackets
12. Eyeglass Frames
13. Golf Clubs
14. Chemical Refineries
15. Food Processing Factories
16. Surgical Instruments
17. Camera Bodies
18. Firing Pins for Automatic Weapons
19. Knives
20. A 1958 Thunderbird
21. Satellite Parts
22. Danish Cookware
23. Audio Equipment Parts
24. Lacrosse Stick Shafts
25. Centrifuge Rotors
26. Bone Screws and Splints
27. Rappelling Racks for Caving
28. Emery Boards
29. Nail Files
30. Toothpaste
31. Can Openers
32. The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain
33. Camping Utensils
34. Ferrari Hubcaps
35. Guided Missiles
36. Motorsport Components
37. Baseball & Softball Bats
38. Mufflers for Motorbikes
39. Dental Tools
40. Tanker Trucks
41. Heat Exchangers
42. Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) Plants
43. Operating room surfaces
44. Building Facades
45. Your Titanium Wedding Ring!

Just a peek at some of its extraordinary properties will explain why. First, it is three times stronger than steel but half the weight. It is totally bio-compatible, melts at over 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, is non-corrosive with all but a few compounds, is ductile and heat resistant.

You want more? Well how about this seemingly magical property: Titanium is now used as a photocatalyst in some operating rooms to coat surfaces because it kills germs on contact when exposed to ultraviolet light waves — in other words, it’s self-sterilizing! Also, clothing and building materials such as wall tiles become self-cleaning with the addition of titanium. Glass used in autos and bathroom mirrors that is treated with titanium resists fogging. This quality of titanium is known as superhydrophilicity.

The International Titanium Association says the “titanium industry is in the midst of a significant era of growth in all titanium consuming markets.” Bicycles, wheelchairs, rockets, watches, elephant hooks, roofs, eyeglasses, dental implants, motorcycles, automobiles, airplanes, ships, and, of course, our specialty — titanium wedding rings. Is your love that strong?

Everyone knows the huge part titanium has in the aerospace industry. But here’s one interesting fact you may not know: the wreck of the Titanic (OK, contained no titanium but was named for the root word of titanium) was explored by Dr. Robert Ballard using a bathysphere (deep-diving chamber) that was made of titanium.

From the depths of the oceans to outer space, titanium rules!

Know something that should be added to the list? E-mail us with additional uses for titanium. Then discover our catalog of titanium wedding rings and add your ring to the list!