VERY technical history question about ti frames.

[badgerbadger]

All the Raleigh special products ti frames were built in Nottingham. No exceptions.
The first year or so they were made just for export to USA and were welded on superb robots and had tubing made in Russia. There wasnt capacity to make enough to supply home market for a while. After this short period the material was from either IMI or later Timet made in USA or Europe but to a very high specification. If you have a uk frame it will 100% not be Russian tubes.
The robots used plasma welding - more consistent than usual tig if not as pretty.

I've got 3

 

[ishaw]

There was a thread on here a while back where an ex raleigh employee stated that the ti raleighs were made using ti from a Welsh supplier, not Russian. Can't comment from experience but I do have a dbr made by sandvik I believe.

 

[Anthony]

It has nothing much to do with welding skills as such, rather that you need to weld in an inert atmosphere free of impurities by using shielding equipment, which only specialist facilities can achieve. However proficient the welding, if there are any impurities in a ti weld, it will be liable to crack in service.

Thing is, because the gear is so costly, they'd surely only let time-served proven "good" welders on it. If all Ti Welders are "good" welders then in theory it's only the geometry and tube thickness seperating the frames

I'm sure you're right that any factory will always give its most costly and delicate work to its most skilled workers, but we had better hope that good ti welding skills aren't all that scarce as there are thousands and thousands of ti welds in any airliner that you get into.

 

[Rich Aitch]

All the Raleigh special products ti frames were built in Nottingham. No exceptions.
The first year or so they were made just for export to USA and were welded on superb robots and had tubing made in Russia. There wasnt capacity to make enough to supply home market for a while. After this short period the material was from either IMI or later Timet made in USA or Europe but to a very high specification. If you have a uk frame it will 100% not be Russian tubes.
The robots used plasma welding - more consistent than usual tig if not as pretty.

I've got 3

Raleigh tubing was Timet on the frame sticker and Timec in the catalogue or maybe the other way round, with the work being done using a Plasma welding robot at RSP [Mountain Bike Pro, April 1997, p76-78]. I don't have a scanner so I can't scan it in but I might have a go at photographing it when I get chance.

 

[mikee]

the guys that built titan bmx's apparently taught sandvik how to weld ti bike frames in the mid 70's ,so i'm told