The Latest Trend - Titanium

Initially used exclusively in the aerospace industry, Titanium today is employed in a wide range of applications — including, most importantly for our purposes, for jewelry.

Advantages of Titanium

Titanium exhibits a number of unique properties, among them:

• the highest ratio between strength and density of all metallic structural materials
• extreme mechanical and thermal loading capacity
• extreme high tensile strength (stronger than steel but 42% lighter)
• high corrosion resistance, particularly against oxygen
• tissue-compatibility and vital and elastic attributes, making it extremely bio-compatible.

In a nutshell: Titanium is light, strong, corrosion-resistant and bio-compatible.

Pure vs. Alloys

You should be aware of the difference between pure and alloyed titanium. Pure Titanium is preferred by the jewelry industry. Pure forms of Titanium are more hypo-allergenic and have proven to have a good combination of workability and longevity.

Titanium alloys — i.e. those containing 2–20% or more aluminum, vanadium, tin, chromium and/or zirconium — are more commonly used in the defense industry. A lesser purity of Titanium will generally increase strength; however, the purity effect, always a strong selling point for the jewelry business, gets watered down.

Commercially pure Titanium is already the strongest substance used in the jewelry business, so why use Titanium alloys? Beware of jewelry companies selling via the Internet who focus on these Titanium alloys and call them "aircraft-grade" Titanium. In fact, the use of these alloys brings about greater difficulties in cutting, milling, sawing and drilling — so despite the descriptive language, it is not actually the best choice for jewelry.

Use in the Jewelry Industry

It is possible to process Titanium by all methods used in the manufacturing of jewelry: sawing, punching, filing, milling, planing and drilling. Within the jewelry trade, however, due to the lack of necessary equipment Titanium is typically not soldered. For ring sizing purposes, compression and stretching is a frequently used method. Due to the pronounced springback (memory effect) after cold-working Titanium, ring-sizing is only possible for all-Titanium styles. This excludes pieces that are joined with other metals.

Investment-cast Titanium has so far been limited to the production of watch casings in large quantities. Anodizing Titanium, a special surface treatment used to achieve variations of attractive surface colorations, has been a popular trend for the past decade.

Due to Titanium's extreme strength, workability has been limited to companies with a solid basis of knowledge and experience in Titanium metal-working, while expensive high-tech machinery and equipment remains a constant necessity.

The positive attributes and properties of Titanium rings also make them ideal for outdoor use. They can be comfortably worn as the indestructible partner ring or as the "backup ring" during sports activities. Titanium rings are also worn by single people who simply understand the complexity of Titanium, its properties and required high-tech manufacturing process.