Titanium conductivity: myths and facts

[TheBhikkhu]

I am posting this hoping that someone else may chime in on the info I have. This post has mostly to do with the titanium Bagua, since I own one. Much has been said about titanium being a poor choice for a mod material due to its horrible conductivity properties. I decided to do some research and see how it scientifically stacks up against a more commonly used mod metal such as stainless steel. If copper is rated as %100 we will use that as our gauge. I have come to find that titanium rates at %3.1. Pretty low right? What I also found out is that our beloved stainless steel rates at only a mere %3.5, making it only slightly better than titanium. Granted this is 304 stainless and I presume most of our mods are 316 stainless. I am not sure how much the conductivity will vary between the two grades of steel.

So having said all that, is titanium being a poor metal choice for mods sort of a myth compared to stainless? According to what I have found, they seem to be on par with each other. If I am missing some information here, please chime in. I am trying to find data to support a conclusion about titanium one way or another. If it is similar in conductivity to SS then I'd say titanium may be superior due to its light weight, strength and thermal resistance.

Also, would silver plating actually improve the conductivity of a mod tube on an inferior metal? I know many of my mods have silver plated pins, either brass or copper, but those metals are decent conductors to begin with.


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[Bolivar]

I found this link and noticed something- titanium seems to be a little more conductive than either 316, 304 or 310 SS, but also has less electrical resistivity than SS by quite a margin. I suppose (no EE here), that would mean less heating due to resistance during use. Whether that would be a factor or not... I don't know.

As far as plating contacts- it should help conductivity, as the electrons will always take the path of least resistance. I think a lot of circuit board connectors are gold plated for that reason, as well as gold will not tarnish like silver does.

Hope this helps a little.

 

[Filthy-Beast]

The part of the equation you're leaving out is surface area. Copper is more conductive with a lower resistance than aluminum. But a larger aluminum wire tested against a smaller copper wire will have a lower resistance because of the increase surface area. With the small contact point of the battery compared to the large surface area of the mod, does the large surface area make up for the drop in conductivity. The fact that people can tell the difference with beryllium copper contacts would lead me to believe that the mod body is not the only limiting factor.

But I do believe a body out of brass, aluminum or copper will have a lower voltage drop than SS or Ti.

We need an EE with some equations to answer this.

 

[TheBhikkhu]

Bolivar, I would think as far as the mod body is concerned less resistance would be better? I am not EE either. Both replies give me something to think about. I have just seen so many people putting down the titanium Bagua based solely on the body material-titanium. We definitely need an EE to weigh in on this. I have some ideas that I am going to experiment with regarding plating and my Bagua vs my other mods. And Filthy Beast, I never took into consideration surface area. You raise a really good point there.


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[Bunnykiller]

its total volume of the conductor that makes something more efficient as far as carrying current. Yes, Cu is a better conductor than Al and Al is better than SS, but since we are dealing with low amperage operations ( less than 50A) and low voltage applications, the resistance of the general materials used wont decrease the current very much at all... maybe a few milliamps at best...

Basically... a fire hose with a few pin holes in it... the flow coming out of the nozzle is massive compared to the leaks of the pinholes...
too many people fussin about a few milliamps lost due to increased resistive qualities of various metals...

 

[Bunnykiller]

The part of the equation you're leaving out is surface area. Copper is more conductive with a lower resistance than aluminum. But a larger aluminum wire tested against a smaller copper wire will have a lower resistance because of the increase surface area. With the small contact point of the battery compared to the large surface area of the mod, does the large surface area make up for the drop in conductivity. The fact that people can tell the difference with beryllium copper contacts would lead me to believe that the mod body is not the only limiting factor.

But I do believe a body out of brass, aluminum or copper will have a lower voltage drop than SS or Ti.

We need an EE with some equations to answer this.

it will if the body tube is say 10 feet long....

 

[undeadpine]

Not an engineer but I work in the field (lineman). From school to the field on thing is consistent, copper handles better (more load) than aluminum of the same size. So say you have #4 hard drawn copper and #4 Acsr (steel core with aluminum strands) the copper will carry more load before melting out than the aluminum under normal conditions. But as someone has already stated your working with 3.7 volts and no distance to speak of so instead of conductivity you should look at the physical properties: hardness, oxidation, and how they react with other metals. That last one is a big deal. Copper and aluminum hate each other. When put together in the elements, even with conductive grease if the copper is over (on top of) aluminum the connection will not last because they will corrode quickly. The reason why gold is used for contacts is to prevent this kinda thing from happening. There are a lot of rare earth metals that have the ability to mix but there expensive and not a lot of people use them.

So a quick answer is this... If it's shiny and you like the way it looks and it has protected contacts, buy it. The metal used for the mods is unimportant because the body is just a source of ground. The center pin is the only thing that really counts a ton because that's what's being exposed to the juice and being messed with via threading, that's where harness comes in. Copper and aluminum are soft, titanium is harder than stainless steel, there all going to read accurate withing 1/100th or so of a volt and handle well under load.

Hope I helped. Have a lovely day and Vape on!

I forgot weight! Stainless steel and copper are both heavy, as in if your rocking an 18xxx your gonna wear a belt if it's in your pocket. Aluminum and titanium are both lighter, about 40% give or take. So yeah, there's that... Plus shinny... A titanium fan... Until someone makes a real Damascus mod or (drools) a Rosewood or Kingswood vv/vw pocket friendly natural finished billet box looking masterpiece. One of these days I'm going to try it on my own. Perhaps using the guts of a DNA 20/30...