Titanium was discovered in 1791 and was named after the Titans of Greek mythology in 1793. It had to wait until 1910, however, to be successfully isolated in its pure form. Only in the 1950s did serious research begin on military and manufacturing uses of titanium. Later that decade, titanium became a critical element in the development of materials and components for the space race. Today, the unique characteristics of titanium make it the preferred material for machining components and fabricating structures in which strength and light weight are required.
Although titanium is the ninth most abundant element in the Earth’s crust, the complex extraction process from the minerals or ores (mostly rutile, ilmenite, and sphene) is the primary reason for its higher cost relative to other metals. Industrial Metal Service offers machine shops in the San Francisco Bay Area and nationwide an alternative to the high cost of new titanium sourced directly from the mill by maintaining a wide selection of usable, verified remnants of titanium for sale at a significantly lower cost.
