Modern watches are made of Titanium from time to time. When it comes to titanium, the material was first discovered in Britain in the 18th century. The appearance of titanium is silver and white, and its characteristics include high strength, light weight, high corrosion resistance, extreme temperature resistance, strong acid and alkali resistance, etc. The density of titanium is half that of steel, and it has excellent strength retention. Environmental corrosion resistance is much higher than other metals. Titanium is not a rare metal; it ranks ninth in the earth's crust. Because of these advantages, it is widely used in aerospace, automotive, military, industrial, medical, outdoor products and jewelry and other fields. Of course, watch is also one of the applications of the titanium industry. This is Titanium seamless Tube.
The supply of titanium ore should last for at least another 10,000 years. It has been found in meteorites, moon rocks, the sun and other planets. But titanium is a relatively slow and expensive process to extract, making it expensive. For years, high prices limited the use of titanium in military and aerospace applications.
In watchmaking, titanium is lighter and more corrosion-resistant than stainless steel watches. Compared with steel, the main advantages of titanium alloy are low density and strong corrosion resistance; white metal watches in metal and platinum are hot right now. The number of titanium watches and fine steel watches is not much, but we now see more titanium watches than ever before, and more and more.
Titanium has many properties that make it extremely valuable for industry and commerce:
- Hard: titanium is 30% harder than steel;
- Light texture: At 47.90 atomic scales, titanium is nearly 50% lighter than steel;
- Corrosion resistance: When exposed to air, titanium forms a tight and strong oxide film that resists the attack of other metals by different substances. Especially effective against salt water erosion.
Titanium is lighter and less dense than stainless steel, but the strength of grade 5 titanium, for example, can reach 1000MPa, which is five times that of stainless steel. Titanium has a density of about 4.5g/cm3 and stainless steel has a density of 8g/cm3.
Today, the popularity of titanium watches is getting higher and higher, and there are more detailed classifications, titanium metal after refining, and other metals or elements can be mixed into alloys. According to the American Society for Materials and Testing International Organization (ASTM) standards, titanium metal can be divided into 38 grades. The most commonly used for tabulating is often the second and fifth grade titanium metal. Grade 2 titanium has characteristics such as light weight and corrosion resistance, but grade 5 titanium is stronger (composition of 6% aluminum and 4% vanadium, etc.), but because it is difficult to make, so the use of grade 5 titanium made of watches, usually the price will be a little higher.
Here we use some well-known brands of watches as an example, to see what kind of titanium metal they use.
Take the 2022 watches as an example. Some models of Octo Finissimo series of Bulgari are made of Grade 5 titanium metal. This alloy consists of 6% aluminum, 4% vanadium, 0.25% iron and 0.2% oxygen, etc. It not only has high strength, but also the appearance color is not too sharp, giving people the impression of being easy to get close to. This type of grade 5 titanium metal is also a high proportion of applications in the bezel.
As for Pelagos 39, the case is made of secondary titanium, a type of "commercial pure titanium" with excellent oxidation resistance and corrosion resistance, while the strength is medium.
On the other hand, you occasionally hear of titanium at level 23. People like Campbell's Air Command and Bathyscaphe's at 50 Fathoms are using this titanium. The metal has no iron and up to 0.13% oxygen, and because it is inert, it will also be used as biomedical implants by the medical community. It is conceivable that this material will be used to make tabulating, which must be very skin-friendly, but usually tabulating enterprises will use less titanium metal.
In addition to the titanium metals described above, Japanese watch brands often have a unique understanding of titanium. For example, GRAND SEIKO, the high-end brand of Seiko Watch, has an exclusive "white titanium" material. The brand uses special processing technology to treat titanium. Its luster is also brighter than the general titanium metal, wear resistance is also higher. As for the Casio G-SHOCK, it comes with its own titanium, including Ti64 titanium (twice as hard as pure titanium) and DAT55G(vanad-free titanium, three times as hard as Class 5 titanium).
Others in the watchmaking industry, such as West Iron City or German watch SINN, are focused on developing titanium coatings to improve the hardness and scratch resistance of the material. The former has TEGIMENT technology, while the latter has Super Titanium ™ material, which uses Duratect technology to increase the hardness of titanium to over 1000. The hardness is 3 ~ 5 times that of grade 2 and grade 5 titanium.
After reading the discovery of titanium metal case is really a broad and profound knowledge, sometimes is also titanium metal case, but because of different levels, alloy proportion, processing modification and special coating, derived from the appearance and characteristics of each, if you start with titanium metal watches, may as well know more about it, And don't think it is only high strength, light weight and skin - friendly advantages.