Choosing Between Titanium and Steel for Precision Machining & Fabrication

Titanium and steel are two common metals that companies use for fabrication across industries and applications. Both are readily available, can be machined, and offer great strength. It’s the differences between these metals that will help you decide which option is better for your next project. Our experts at Rapid Axis have decades of experience with both materials, so we’ll help you understand the differences and choose the best metal for your parts.

What Is Titanium?

Titanium is an engineering material that offers an incredible strength-to-weight ratio, allowing you to cut the weight of your parts down significantly without sacrificing the strength of each part. This reason alone is why so many aerospace companies rely heavily on titanium.

Titanium is a common choice for aerospace, defense, medical, and robotics companies alike. In our shop, Grade 2 and Grade 5 are the most common options. Grade 2 is commercial pure titanium that is softer and generally easier to work with.

Grade 5 titanium improves the strength, machinability, and performance of titanium parts, and it is the go-to alloy for most applications. 

In addition, titanium is naturally corrosion-resistant, so you can introduce titanium parts to harsh environments without additional finishing steps. With good fatigue resistance, you can cyclically load a titanium part, and it will last much longer than other metals. 

It also offers great temperature stability, allowing you to utilize titanium in high-heat environments.

Pros of Titanium

Titanium has a number of benefits that can help in your application:

• With one of the best strength-to-weight ratios on the commercial market, titanium can provide a lot of strength without adding a ton of weight to your assemblies.
• The natural corrosion-resistance of titanium makes it a good choice for harsh environments, and its chemical compatibility will prevent premature fatigue due to chemical exposure.
• Since titanium has great biocompatibility, it is used for surgical implants and it’s the perfect option for medical devices and equipment. 
• Titanium is a good choice for long-lasting, durable parts since it has good fatigue resistance. 

Cons of Titanium

Titanium also has some drawbacks that are worth mentioning: 

• The biggest downside of titanium is its cost. Not only can the raw material be significantly more expensive than steel, but the added time and specialization of fabrication can increase production costs as well. 
• Fabricating titanium is easy enough to do with the right experience, but it requires specialized tooling and speed settings, adding a layer of complexity to every fabrication project. 
• In addition, titanium can be tough to weld and bend. Our experts have gone through a lot of trial and error over the years, and we know how easy it is to accidentally crack or distort a titanium part without the right setup. With inert gas shielding, our team can still weld titanium parts together, but it can be tricky to find the right machine shop to help with your more complicated titanium parts if you don’t choose Rapid Axis. 

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What Is Steel?

Steel is a broad family of iron-based alloys. It includes carbon steel, alloy steel, stainless steel, and tool steel, which make up a huge array of mechanical properties, costs, and ease of manufacturability. 

Alloying is done to change the strength, ductility, corrosion resistance, and specialized characteristics of the steel, which allows you to fine-tune how your parts operate. Steel is used in almost every industry, and it’s heavily used in the automotive, industrial equipment, and infrastructure industries. 

In general, steel has a high tensile strength and hardness, making it ideal for load-bearing and structural applications. A steel part can withstand significant forces without permanent deformation, and its elasticity allows it to return to its original shape after a huge stress. These factors make steel a great choice for dynamic or static loading conditions, often used to support entire warehouses. 

Since steel is significantly more dense than titanium, a steel part’s weight will be many times higher than the same-sized part made out of titanium. 

Pros of Steel

Steel is such a common metal because it has a lot of great benefits:

• Steel is easy to find in different thicknesses, sizes, shapes, and geometries. By starting with the right stock shape and size, you can reduce the amount of manufacturing required, saving you time and money on each project. 
• Steel is also a relatively low-cost stock metal, especially carbon steels. Stainless steel and tool-grade steel can be a bit more expensive, and specialty alloys can get really expensive, but general-use steel is one of the more affordable metals that we use in our shop. 
• In addition, steel is really easy to manufacture. We can easily machine, weld, bend, and shape steel parts without real difficulty. Stainless steel makes these operations a little harder, but we still don’t need to use specialized tooling or equipment like we might need with a Grade 5 titanium part.
• Steel has great strength, allowing it to be used in load-bearing applications without failure. It is considered a “structural material”, meaning it has the strength to support heavy structures. 
• Another big benefit of steel is that it can be heat-treated to achieve specific hardness or strength levels, giving your team a lot of flexibility in part design. With so many alloys to choose from, you can often find an option that meets all of your demands without being too specialized or difficult to manufacture.

Cons of Steel

There are some downsides to steel as well:

• Untreated steels have a high likelihood of corroding over time and will fail as a result. To avoid this issue, you’ll need to either use an alloy with corrosion resistance (like stainless steels) or apply a powder coating or other finishing operation to avoid corrosion. This can add cost and complication to your project, but it is often unavoidable. 
• Another big issue with steel is that it is heavy. Compared to titanium, steel is roughly twice as heavy. This makes it tough to use steel in applications where weight needs to be minimized. 
• Steel can fall short when it comes to extreme environments, typically failing much sooner than a titanium part would. 
• For long-term use, you might need to inspect and replace steel parts more often than titanium parts. Although steel is stronger, its inability to handle moisture and cyclic loading can lead to failures over time. 

Titanium vs Steel: Which Should You Use?

Titanium Steel Strength-to-Weight Ratio Excellent Good Weight (Density) Lowl High Corrosion Resistance Excellent Varies — must be treated or alloyed Cost High Low to moderate Machinability Difficult Easy Weldability & Forming Challenging Easy Strength High Very high Heat Resistance Excellent Moderate — varies by alloy Fatigue Resistance Excellent Moderate

Picking the right option can be easier than you might think. In our experience, steel is a good go-to material across industries, acting as a “general use” material that fits the needs of most applications without adding extra complication to the manufacturing process. It is an affordable and strong material that requires some finishing steps to achieve corrosion resistance and longevity, but it is so ubiquitous that it’s easy to find the right stock material and save time during fabrication.

Titanium is more of a specialized material, costing more but having much better mechanical properties. We suggest using titanium if you need a better strength-to-weight ratio, need to lightweight your assemblies, require better corrosion resistance, or need a part that will be cyclically loaded a lot. In other words, if the mechanical properties of steel are falling short for your project, you should look into titanium.

In some applications, there is no debate: industrial and structural projects use steel as a no-brainer option, while aerospace and medical companies have to use titanium for its biocompatibility and low density. 

Picking the right material is project-specific, and we’re here to help if the choice still isn’t clear to you. 

Conclusion

Steel and titanium are both great metals to use for any project. While titanium is more expensive, has a lower density, and is truly corrosion resistant, steel is a lower-cost option and has dozens of alloys to choose from. Depending on your application, you might choose one over the other, but both options can meet the demands of countless applications. With experience working with both titanium and steel, you can rely on our team at Rapid Axis to achieve great results. We are a premier manufacturing partner that offers multiple manufacturing services and finishing options. Ask us which metal is right for your upcoming project and reach out today for a free quote.