Breaking down titanium curls into flake titanium

@Josh_Melnick do you or the science committee know of a way to break down titanium into a powder? I have a bunch of titanium curls from a machine shop and want to use them as a metal additive to my black powder rockets to give them a bright white tail effect. But, I need to be able to turn the titanium into flake. Is that a process that can be done to powder the titanium possibly through a chemical reaction to make it brittle enough to break apart easily?

Just burn it and crush it. It will be all sparkly in your compositions.

If you want to convert it back to pure Titanium, here’s the process:

Titanium is extracted from its ore, rutile - TiO2. It is first converted into titanium (IV) chloride, which is then reduced to titanium using either magnesium or sodium. The ore rutile (impure titanium (IV) oxide ) is heated with chlorine and coke at a temperature of about 1000°C.

Beware; pure Titanium in a conflagrating compound is EXTREMELY EXOTHERMIC!

Have you considered Aluminum powder? You can buy 5um Al powder from Ebay. This is a 16% Aluminum mixture with a 50% perchlorate oxidizer and urethane binder:

Could you be a bit more specific as to the process here? I’ve read that titanium becomes very brittle when frozen below 150C and possibly can be broken up at those temperatures. But, I’ve also read that it is very strong up to 1600C so I’m not sure how burning it is going to help in breaking the curls down into a powder for adding to rockets.

Use a butane torch. Your pure metal Titanium will oxidize in a dazzling display. Now you have Titanium Dioxide, crush it with a hammer. When it gets burned in your rocket fuel, the heat will free the Titanium from it’s oxide, and the heated atom will again oxidize milliseconds later, giving off lots of sparkly light.

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Thanks,

Totally get it now, oxidized titanium is so brittle it is nearly useless in building materials and is the main issue avoided when producing the stuff. I’ll give this a try in small scale and hope the reaction to burning is controllable enough for the many pounds of curls I have to process.

Next question, any one ever made magnalium? I have access to free Magnesium shavings if I want. But, I haven’t taken any given easy of lighting the shavings and difficulty of putting them out.

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I’ve made some magnalium. Was a nice little sensitiser for normal aluminum mixtures however I wouldn’t call the effort to make it out of curls productive for the given results.

I at least have a nice spot with a good bit of clearance around it for storage that’s not with any other materials . My guess is your source is the same as mine :stuck_out_tongue:

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Horn sonication treatment (we don’t have this but should, $500-4K) would give you TiO2 (or any powder… just about) nanoparticles of a controlled and uniform size. All the magic of nanotechnology comes from unique properties and material behaviors that arise from nanoscale phenomena that are lost at the microscopic scale.

Here’s a google of “nanoparticles fireworks”. Interesting stuff

Definitely interesting, but increased sensitivity is a big negative in many cases. In fact some in the industry are working towards less sensitive mixtures for many comps. Like using Blue Aluminum (mixed particle size aluminum) in Flash. Adding larger particles of aluminum makes the mixture much less reactive and thus safer to handle. I’ve seen examples where Blue Aluminum Flash is not even ignitable by a torch when unconfined. But, get it in proper confinement and it pops like flash.

So it is a double edged issue. Make the comps harder to light so they only go off in the scenarios you want, or make the comps better mixed and you gain the same effect with less, but the mixture is much more dangerous to handle in manufacturing and storage. But interesting to think about.

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I nominate this for most interesting thread of the summer award.

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You’re just digging the sound of “Blue Aluminum Flash”.

Those were the days my friend…

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Can’t wait to do a side by side comparison between blue aluminum and dark aluminum. I have a sound pressure meter but it is often overwhelmed by the sizes made for pyro events. Need to devise an experiment to control as many variables as possible. Maybe we can involve @Josh_Melnick in doing some actual science instead of googawwing at the activities. :wink:

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Oppps, back on topic. I’d be happy to try a cryogenic method, we can get LN2 at a more local place in McKinney. Try embrittlement and pound method!

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Blue Aluminum Flash! Isn’t that a new Marvel character?

Doesnt titanium react in nitrogen more readily?

Titanium does burn in pure Nitrogen. We should ask SpaceX. :wink:

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Freeze it down with liquid CO2 and then stick it in a ball mill with stainless steel balls.

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