"Does this come in Titanium?" | A Closer Look At Mateiral Limitations In Body Jewelry

Body Jewelry is one of those topics I could probably write about for days and weeks and months and still not have covered a fraction of what there is to know. With hundreds of thousands of different designs, gemstones, dozens of different materials, and different approaches to making pieces, there's just so much to consider! But in this sea of information, one question comes up time and time again. “I love this design in gold, it’s just so expensive. Can you get it for me in titanium?”

I think it’s safe to say every piercer has been asked this at least a dozen times. And sadly, the vast majority of the time, the answer is no, it’s not possible for us to get that piece in titanium. But why can't we? Today, let’s take a deep dive into the differences between gold and titanium, and why there are limitations to what can be made with Ti.

First, we have to understand the differences in the metals to begin with. This starts at the melting point. Gold has a melting point of 1,948°F. This actually makes gold quite easy to melt and shape in comparison to other metals, which is part of why historically it’s been used for jewelry, art, decoration, and more for hundreds and hundreds of years. In comparison, titanium has a melting point of 3,034°F. Beyond that, the conditions of melting are very different. Gold can be heated over a hand torch, melted down, and worked, or melted down and poured into a casting. Titanium, however, is a very reactive metal- it requires an inert atmosphere to prevent its highly reactive nature from causing it to burn or react with surrounding air. Titanium has to be melted down in a state-of-the-art furnace that utilizes a vacuum chamber for the melting. Oxy-acetylene torches can get to temperatures that can burn titanium, but it does not sustain that when the torch is removed, making it extremely difficult to control the melt and the material.

Hardness is another major factor. Terry from Leroi says “Hardness would be a good place to start. Compared to gold, which is extremely malleable, titanium is not. Further, the type of titanium that we use, Titanium 6al-4v eli (F-136) is very rigid. This type of titanium has excellent mechanical properties that are ideal for machining. When manufacturing body jewellery designs with this type of metal we find that automated machining is the best approach. Machining allows for a variety of design options, but still has its limitations. Those limitations allow for designs to have a very geometric aesthetic. “

This leads to a distinct difference in how gold body jewelry and titanium body jewelry are made. Like we mentioned above, gold can often be worked by hand, or cast. With casting, one of the most common styles is a lost wax cast. The company can make a design in a CAD, and create a highly detailed 3d rendering that can include texture and fine details. Then, that design can be printed in wax, which is a soft material that reflects all these details. Alternatively, the design can be hand-carved in wax, to capture all these fine details. Then, from there, a process called lost wax casting is used.

Gold is perfect for this process, thanks to its lower melting point and malleability, which allows us to get those exact fine details. However, if you recall, titanium casting is an extremely difficult and cost-prohibitive process. In fact, only one company, Fractal Designs, has used cast titanium. The process was extremely complex and expensive, and the results, while gorgeous, still lacked the surface finish that machined titanium can achieve. These days a fractal captive bead ring can sell for 300-800$. And while they are beautiful pieces, that price negates the affordability of titanium. For body jewelry, titanium pieces are going to be machined. This means taking a piece of titanium rod, putting it into a machine like a lathe, and having the machine run a designated program that slowly cuts and shapes the stock into the desired final design. The possible shapes are heavily limited by the cutting tools and limitations of machining in general. “Gold is easy to design in CAD software and then cast in almost any possible shape with no tooling or specific programming.  High-quality Titanium jewelry is not made by casting; it's made almost exclusively by machining.  So, possible shapes are limited by the geometry of cutting tools and limitations of subtractive manufacturing in general.” Says Wicket, of Intrinsic Body Jewelry. Terry from LeRoi adds “Simple shapes like bezels, threaded and threadless posts, balls, discs, domes, surface anchors, threaded and threadless prongs etc. are the primary “look“ that you get from machining titanium. “

A Lathe, one of the most common machines for working with titanium

And this doesn't even touch on the process of designing and creating new pieces! "We start with the digital design process, but the machine time is of utmost importance. While prototyping, we have to use one of our many CNC (Computer Numerically Controlled)  screw machines. Those same machines are tasked with producing all the jewelry that our customers are expecting NeoMetal to have in stock, to ship in complete orders within a few days. Once we get to the prototyping phase, we need to have high confidence that a new design will be very close to production-ready. Our Quality Control team quickly checks prototypes against the specs defined in the drawings that I’ve signed off on. Then the QC team checks to make sure the dies we’ve machined (to set the gem into the end) results in a secure gem-setting. If changes are needed, quick adjustments are made to limit the screw machine down-time. Once everything checks out, and the design is approved, the same prototyping machine starts producing final production quantities. 

Gold doesn’t have the quantity limitations for the design consideration to be financially viable. A single unique design can be added to a “tree” (a rod with wax molds attached that is used to cast gold jewelry) next to any variety of other similar or different designs and cast in the same timeframe. We still must consider the need in the market, the demands on our jewelry designers and marketing team, and availability of our casting equipment, but the viability threshold is much lower than titanium – around 100+ pieces." John, Neometal

To take one of the machines that makes all their pieces out of commission to retool it for a new design, make a run of them, and then find out they potentially aren't correct? Or the design needs changes? A company could lose hours and hours of machine time on this, and fall behind on standing orders. Even just making a new design in titanium carries a much greater risk for companies, let alone full production.

When asked about the differences in working with the two materials, there was much to say.

“I would not compare them because the manufacturing strategies would be entirely different.” Wicket, Intrinsic Body Jewelry. “Possible shapes [in titanium] are limited by the geometry of cutting tools and limitations of subtractive manufacturing.  Complex shapes require a lot of programming and machine setup time.”

“Titanium, without a doubt, is harder to work with. This metal is extremely difficult to polish. Once a LeRoi titanium piece is machined, it requires a deburring process. Then it moves into a tumbling process which further reduces surface irregularities. Finally, hand polishing is what gives it the finishing touch and it’s incredible mirror finish. This is very time-consuming but an important factor in the look and cost high-quality body jewellery. We know that this type of surface finish promotes faster healing times.

Although gold has its own challenges…. Working with and polishing gold is a walk in the park compared to titanium. Both metals are important and have their place in the body jewellery industry.” Terry, LeRoi

"Titanium [is harder to work with], but that’s only because it’s very hard, unforgiving, and requires specialized equipment and a dedicated team who are intimately familiar with all its “quirks.” These quirks significantly limit the design possibilities in comparison to a soft material like gold, especially for the more intricate designs. However, when design, engineering and operations get it right, titanium is extremely dependable and durable. Titanium outperforms most other materials in strength-to-weight ratio, resistance to corrosion, and long-term reliability for daily wear." John, Neometal

The process of working with gold and titanium is so fundamentally different that it’s almost unfair to compare the two, even if we do in our cases every day in the piercing industry. The difference between needing to machine a piece rather than being able to cast or carve or work pieces by hand is massive. And this is what leads to our inability to do certain designs with titanium. While that's changing, and new pieces and styles are coming out every year, for now, there will be distinct differences in what's accessible in different materials.

“Ultimately, when we are talking about jewellery design, we are really talking about art and the world of artistic expression. In our opinion, it doesn’t really matter whether a design is made of gold, titanium or both. We love that working with these two incredible and unique metals offers us infinite design options and possibilities …There are no rules in art!” Terry, LeRoi