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Why not a titanium body ?

Started Sep 11, 2020 | Discussions thread
Rod Herdman Veteran Member • Posts: 3,494
Re: This is why...
2

Oiche wrote:

What advantage is there over a magnesium alloy body? Ah yes bragging rights and enhanced snobbery.

It's not a pure titanium body anyhow that you refer to, it is a titanium alloy where they add a small percentage of titanium to the alloy instead of magnesium.

If you knew about titanium engineering you would know a pure titanium body would be ludicrously expensive as it is very difficult to manufacture.

Such engineering applications usually include a very high melting point beyond aluminium, magnesium and others. Clearly a consumer camera does not need this.

Carbon composites were developed for the likes of fighter planes, one of the reasons was because titanium was too expensive.

I'm happy with polycarbonate myself... Light, strong and shock resistant. Carbon composites are more brittle therefore less suitable than poly composites.

I guess that casting titanium is not very easy

I expect that although it might be more expensive, if you factor that into the total cost of a complete camera body, the material cost of the titanium shouldn't make much difference. I would more expect that It's the additional manufacturing costs (machinery, processing and labour) that add more.

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All I want is a digital back for my trusty K1000 . . .

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