This ongoing effort was, and is, designed to deliver products that meet or exceed our customer's expectations. Scandium is an element that is located between calcium and titanium in the Periodic Table of Elements. The possibility of its existence was predicted in 1871 but it wasn't until 1879 the Swedish Chemist, Lars Nilson, actually discovered this mysterious element after refining it from the mineral Euxenite. Scandinavia so Nilson named the new element Scandium.
Pure scandium is extremely difficult to refine.
Its overall concentration in the Earth's crust is roughly 5 parts per million. That means 500 tons of material would have to be processed to obtain 5 pounds of scandium. Russia discovered a major source of scandium in the Ukraine and started the original investigations of scandium-aluminum alloys in the early 1970's. What soon became apparent to the Russian Scientists was that when very small amounts of scandium were combined with some aluminum alloys, major changes took place. The results were alloys in which there were great increases in tensile strength and enhanced superplastic performance.