A unique material

Titanium, the 22nd element in the periodic table, is not a rare natural deposit (it is the 9th most common element accounting for 0.6% of the earth´s crust).

Since the introduction of a viable and reliable method for extracting titanium from its ore in the early 1950s, several titanium-base materials have been developed to satisfy customers´ specific needs. These can be divided roughly into two categories:

• commercially pure titanium (c.p. titanium) composed of > 99.2% titanium plus elements such as oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, iron.

• titanium alloys, i.e. titanium containing 2 - 20% or more aluminum, vanadium, tin, chromium and/or zirconium.