Let me talk about the conclusion first. As far as titanium metal is concerned, titanium is really not expensive, but when titanium is made into jewelry, it is really expensive!
Let me talk about titanium first. The advantages of titanium are not many. First of all, titanium has the characteristics of lightness, skin-friendly, and color change, and is widely used in many fields such as aerospace, medicine, and navigation. Some internationally renowned jewelry designers, such as Wallace Chan, Cindy Chao, Cai Anhe, Liang Dazhao, etc., also started to explore titanium jewelry very early, and have very amazing titanium jewelry designs. Chen Shiying said when using titanium metal to create: "For me, the material of gold has great limitations, and you can't achieve the state you want. For example, if I make a work, if it is made of gold, its weight will be five times that of titanium. It is too heavy to wear, so I can only change the design. Under the same volume, the weight of gold and titanium is 5:1. With a lighter skeleton, I can do whatever I want. Complete more artistic creations."
Even with such high-quality characteristics, however, titanium metal has been used as jewelry in the last 20 years. In front of the three giants of gold, silver, and platinum, titanium metal is completely new in the jewelry industry.
First of all, titanium is not a rare metal, the content of the earth's crust is 0.42%. What is the concept? The total amount of copper + nickel + lead + zinc is 1/16 of it. From the point of view of being rare and expensive, such a common material should indeed be cheap.
There is only one biggest reason for not being widely used - the difficulty of smelting.
Titanium has a very high melting point. To turn titanium metal into gorgeous jewelry, it must be smelted under high-temperature conditions. However, the chemical properties of titanium at high temperatures will become very active, so one more smelting condition is added, that is, it must be carried out under the protection of a vacuum or inert gas. Moreover, oxygen-containing materials cannot appear during the smelting process, which has very high requirements for smelting technology and smelting equipment. Chen Shiying openly shared his research experience on titanium, saying: "Titanium is very human. Titanium is the metal closest to the human body. Because of this, it will resist when it is fired, and we need to overcome it, just like treating children. It’s the same as communicating with it. I spent six years exploring this technology.”
The price of jewelry is usually determined by design, craftsmanship, and materials. Just looking at the price of one of the materials is one-sided, and the value of each piece of jewelry is far greater than the price of its material. However, there are also jewelry companies doing research and development in the direction of titanium metal. When the technology is mature, the price may drop more or less.
