Titanium makes move toward mainstream Jessica Gorman Easier swinging with a titanium golf club.
Aeronautical engineers use titanium because it's strong, lightweight, and corrosion-resistant.
Golfers like titanium in their clubs for similar reasons. Now, a novel method for producing titanium could make it more competitive with stainless steel, researchers claim. The cheapest form of titanium today costs at least several times as much as stainless steel. The new process could make as much titanium in a day as the usual method does in a week and could drop its price to one-third the current cost, says Derek J. Fray of the University of Cambridge in England. Titanium's boutique status stems from its production challenges, not its availability.