Titanium material in barrel

[fledge]

Not sure if this has been posted but F1 has a "coming soon" barrel that uses titanium in the process. I've never heard of this and am curious of opinions. I figured this was a appropriate WEVO topic.

Link: http://f-1firearms.com/titanium-coming-soon/


Using the F-1 Firearms state-of-the-art barrel cell, blanks are drilled, reamed and button rifled in-house to ensure quality, straightness of the boreline, and QA/QC. The blanks are then contoured in house and sent to our partner who applies a patented Cold Spray Titanium to the OD of the 416RSS pencil barrel. The Titanium is actually metallurgically bonded to the 4164SS. The Barrels are brought back in-house and contoured to the F-1 Firearms Med Contour standard yielding up to 45% in weight reduction while maintaining a full-auto rating.

[SINNER]

Aesthetic coating.

[Aberration79]

Aesthetic coating.

Just like chrome lining is an aesthetic coating. I mean chrome. Bling bling.


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[SINNER]

The "OD" is a clue...

[BoilerUp]

I was just thinking to myself the other day, "I wish there was a more expensive way to make barrels"

[Aberration79]

The "OD" is a clue...

So they apply the titanium, then bring it back in house to machine the profile down, removing the titanium they just applied? Does that make sense to you?


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[fledge]

So they apply the titanium, then bring it back in house to machine the profile down, removing the titanium they just applied? Does that make sense to you?

That confused me too.

Seems the benefit they boast is a pencil barrel weight that stands up to heat. But it's not clear to me what exactly is going on.

[Aragorn]

Be interesting to read initial reviews...

I guess Proof needed a competitor lol

[alamo5000]

I was just thinking to myself the other day, "I wish there was a more expensive way to make barrels"

HAHAAA!!!

Exactly!

[SINNER]

So they apply the titanium, then bring it back in house to machine the profile down, removing the titanium they just applied? Does that make sense to you?


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It's likely a dynamic gas deposition spray so it's basically a surface treatment. Think shooting metal so hard at another metal it bonds. That description of their process makes no sense at all. Says they profile it twice for instance. And it would make no sense to apply a surface treatment just the machine it off. If they expect me to believe it's affecting the parent metal deep enough to cut a standard profile down to a pencil after application I'd like to see the proof. i won't hold my breath waiting.

[JGifford]

It sounds like a really pathetically worded way of saying "We wrap a steel liner in Ti for weight reduction".

Think aluminum .22 barrels from Tac
Think CF wrapped barrels from PROOF
This sounds like "Ti sleeved" to me.

Might be wrong though.

[FortTom]

I was just thinking to myself the other day, "I wish there was a more expensive way to make barrels"
[:D] Ha...ha..ha..ha.. I ask myself that question about a lot of gun stuff. To feed the insatiable desire of gun people, and lacking any real improvement over existing products, how do the aftermarket folks come up with something obscure, is this weeks hot topic, yesterday's news, and cost 50% more than the product they are replacing.[:D]

[Thompson]

Just like chrome lining is an aesthetic coating. I mean chrome. Bling bling.
I thought chrome lining is used for corrosion resistance?

[Pyzik]

I thought chrome lining is used for corrosion resistance?

It is. Pretty sure that was sarcasm. What good would it do to provide aesthetics where you can't see it?

[SINNER]

Chrome lining is used for increased bore hardness, and therefore a longer lasting barrel.

[Chui]

Lighter weight, better heat transfer.


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[JoshAston]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xs4sjIu7HM

They're taking a pencil barrel and using the procedure shown in this video to add Titanium to it. Once the Ti is added they turn it back down to a medium contour. It's a pretty cool what they're doing, but they could be going a lot lighter than a pencil profile with the steel. I'd cut it down to just a liner, maybe .100" over bore/chamber diameter.

There was another company making composite barrels similar to this, but they were using explosive welding to combine stellite liners with aluminum, titanium, or steel barrels.

[GOST]

Why not a full titanium barrel?

[JoshAston]

Because Titanium makes really, really horrible barrels.

Here's a quote from McMillan when they tried it.


I fail to see any advantage in this projectile but can relate a story
that might give a little light on what could be expected.

A few years ago when the light rifle craze started I built a complete
rifle out of titanium. It was chambered for 308. I had to use a steel
bolt to bring the rifle up to 5lbs. We tested it for accuracy with 10
rounds which was OK and then I borescoped the barrel and found that most
of the rifling and some of the bore was missing for the first 8 inches.
We tried another 10 rounds and an other 8 inches shed the rifling.
Titanium is the worst metal I know of to gall. The barrel was galling
to the bullet jacket and was ripping it out with every round. You could
picture a titanium bullet galling to the steel rifling and doing the
same thing.

Gale McMillan

[JoshAston]

Steel isn't the ultimate barrel material, but the few metals that could outperform it are prohibitively expensive. No one, not even the military, wants to pay thousands of dollars for a single AR barrel.

[Joelski]

This is not the gun of rambo.

[JoshAston]

Here's the company making composite barrels with explosive welding. (http://www.tplinc.com/Barrel_Cladding.html)

[GOST]

Because Titanium makes really, really horrible barrels.

Here's a quote from McMillan when they tried it.

Could you chrome line it? Wouldn't think it would make much difference what metal is under the chrome lining.

[JoshAston]

Could you chrome line it? Wouldn't think it would make much difference what metal is under the chrome lining.

From what I understand Titanium has some other properties that make it less than ideal, even if it was chrome lined. Supposedly it like to return to its original shape when heated. It also loses strength rapidly when subjected to elevated temps.

[GOST]

Don't know that, I'm not very well read on metal properties or very much else.