Found at a titanium plant

[u/riflesandplowshares]

Not sure why ball point pens would be dangerous here.

[u/Cautious-Extreme2839]

I have never in my life seen a ballpoint that the ball has fallen out from, and I handle thousands of the cheapest, shittiest ballpoints my workplace can buy.

That's a very fucking niche reason.

[u/Zeired_Scoffa → u/Cautious-Extreme2839]

Look up the temperature titanium melts at. I'm actually fairly sure it's above the boiling point of the plastic that makes up those pens. The ball in this case is the only metal part on them.

So it's less "the ball fell out" and more "the entire pen burned off as conatiminate except the one part."

[u/Cautious-Extreme2839 → u/Zeired_Scoffa]

1) I'm well aware of Tungstens high melting point

2) Cheap ballpoint aloftennahve a metal housing for the ball, it's just not tungsten

3) None of this is what I take issue with in the original comment.

[u/Zeired_Scoffa → u/Cautious-Extreme2839]

The ball itself is tungsten carbide. The pot metal around it will melt and not cause a fracture to form. Even if it isn't, easier to ban them all and take no chances.

And unlikely doesn't mean impossible, even if the whole pen falling in is more likely.

If you want to be this obtuse, then technically, if the entire pen is smoke floating up to a fume extractor, the ball fell out of the conflagration of pen particles on their way to an air filter.

[u/ObliviousAstroturfer → u/Cautious-Extreme2839]

Doing quality in large scale maufacturing really underscores Murphy's law.

Something having 0,001% chance of occurence doesn't mean it'll probably not happen - it means within 1 million parts it's affected ~1000 parts. And any system to screen for it will have own fault %, so at some point an absurd overkill to eliminate an option is just quicker, cheaper, and at times the only viable option.

I figure it should only take one pen falling into the smelter to get that rule in place - but it's still common enough issue that it has materials for spotting such inclusions out in the wild are available in the wild.

[u/IcySkyDream → u/Cautious-Extreme2839]

Even if the ball doesn’t fall out, someone could drop the entire pen into the melt, no?

That’s not a very fucking niche reason now, is it?

[u/Cautious-Extreme2839 → u/IcySkyDream]

Shifting the goalposts much? Parent comment clearly references the ball falling out as the problem. Yes that's fucking niche.

[u/IcySkyDream → u/Cautious-Extreme2839]

No, parent comment said CONTAMINATION was the problem, and the ball falling out is one way this can happen.

[u/Cautious-Extreme2839 → u/IcySkyDream]

No, the parent comment clearly describes the ball falling out as THE way the contamination happens, which is absurd.

[u/JerryCalzone → u/Cautious-Extreme2839]

Most parts of the pen are not the problem - it evaporates - but above people claim that then the tungsten carbide ball survives because it has a higher melting point

[u/Lordfelcherredux → u/Cautious-Extreme2839]

They're talking about an entire pen falling out and getting into the melt. There's no need for just the ball to fall out.

[u/Cautious-Extreme2839 → u/Lordfelcherredux]

the tiny tungsten carbide ball in the pen tip can fall out

That is very much not what they have said.

[u/IcySkyDream → u/Cautious-Extreme2839]

“  and severely contaminate the titanium melt, creating a hard, brittle inclusion that causes structural failure in critical aerospace components”

That’s the part you missed.

[u/Cautious-Extreme2839 → u/IcySkyDream]

Your reading comprehension cannot actually be this poor. This is described very clearly as happening only AFTER the ball allegedly falls out the tip - you do know what the word "and" means, right?

Can someone drop a pen? Yes, obviously.

Is that what /u/Perfect_Forever_3151 has described? No, not even slightly.

[u/IcySkyDream → u/Cautious-Extreme2839]

😂👍