Has anybody had any experience with bending titanium tubing? This is something I'm looking into for the atv drag bike market. A-arms, swingarms, wheely bars, ect. I have looked around on Google but I'm not really seeing anything about working with it. Also, what grade would be best? Seems like some people are using grade9?

 

seems like an aweful expensive alternative to using Chromoly or DOM, which are extremely well proven, however heavier. not even the trophy truck guys use Titanium, and they use like 3' of suspension travel

 

The problem with titanium is even grade 2 isn't fond of bending (larger radii required than you can use with chromoly) AND it is prone to cracking at the welds when vibrated/strained.

If its a race ATV/little use/money is no object/don't care when it cracks deal . . . go for it. Otherwise you are better off with chromoly.

Straight parts might be okay.

You see grade 9 commonly extruded because grade 5 wears the dies quickly. Grade 5 tubing is often EDM cut which is $$$$

 

Money isn't any problem. This will be for serious bikes. Generally run 1/8th mile. Most of the bikes run 5.80 and quicker et. Most of the bike are very minimalistic. So the parts that have to bolt on need to be light as possible.
I have seen some a-arms and other parts on snowmobiles made of titanium. Even a few swingarms.

 

I've done it. Grade 5 is some tough **** but i have access to a wire edm. The one rule is back purge!!!! If you don't the weld will crack and break in a heart beat. I love welding titanium its so fun.

 

Just depends on what you or your customers think the life of the parts should be. Depending on use, you may never have a problem.

The worst application IMO is wheelie bars . . . I've seen a few crack within 5-6 passes on a full-body pro-mod/pro-stock car. I also re-did a tree (holds the rear body panels up) for a guy with a top sportsman car in chromoly because he went through 2 of them in a year with ~1800HP.

Some of that is hard to say how hard they were loading the wheelie bars and how much tire shake they got into . . .

 

That's not good to hear.

 

if it cracks out in the middle, just step up to the next wall size

 

I did some testing last year for a customer with Ti 6-4 (Commonly Ti grade 5). It did not bend well out of the box. We annealed it at 1750F and it bent better, but still still wouldn't turn as tight as we needed it to. Tricky stuff.

 

What was the wall thickness? And what type of bender?

 

0.065 wall, and it was being bent on an Eagle EPT-76PA push assist cnc mandrel bender.