Why not a titanium body ?

Rod Herdman wrote:

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

No considering the very high melting point of the element and this is the very reason it was used for some parts of military aircraft etc.

I think Titanium needs rolled and shaped etc. and is definitely not suitable for casting a camera body like Mag-alloy is.

So unless you want to subject your camera to 1200°C of so this is a silly idea.

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.

Yes that's why there never has been a pure Ti camera body.

I'm an ex bicycle racer and Titanium frames made an appearance in the 1990s and they were notorious for snapping. A friend of mine broke all 3 of his Titanum frames within months.

Aluminium and Carbon composites are now the mainstay... And Carbon is not very durable... Hence why Magnesium alloys are used for casting camera bodies... Mag-Alloy actually has a bit of give in it (ductile) to absorb impact without fracturing as do polycarbonates.

A rusty cast iron camera would be cool 😁