[Animats]

Titanium is metallurgy on hard mode.[1] Iron and steel behave in a much more consistent way.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09215...

[dr_orpheus]

And even after you get past the manufacturing, titanium also seems to have some weird corner cases. I learned recently about metal induced embrittlement of titanium [0]. The Wikipedia article mentioned cadmium embrittlement of titanium, but is also possible with copper and silver. So if you have a silver plated washer pressed in to titanium it can cause issues.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal-induced_embrittlement

[justin66]

If I remember correctly, in Ben Rich's book he mentioned that LA's water in the summertime was chlorinated enough that the titanium welds on the early A-12 would sometimes fail because of a chemical reaction they didn't anticipate - they were embrittled because they were flushed with that water, I think?

[hinkley]

This year I learned titanium shavings are at least as dangerous as magnesium shavings.