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How to Choose a Titanium Machining Supplier: A Checklist for Your RFQ

Titanium punishes the wrong supplier harder than aluminium does. A scrapped aluminium blank is an annoyance. A scrapped Grade 5 billet with a mill certificate attached is a real loss, and the replacement bar may not be on a shelf anywhere nearby.

So the question is not whether a shop can cut titanium. Most shops can, once. The question is whether they do it often enough that your part is routine.

Here is the checklist, in the order the answers matter.

1. Ask what they cut last month, not what they can cut

This is the whole interview compressed into one question.

A shop in titanium production answers immediately and with specifics. “Grade 5 brackets, about 80 off, 200 by 120 by 60, and a batch of Grade 2 flanges.” A shop that is reaching answers in the conditional: “we can run titanium, we have the machines for it.”

Listen for grades by name, for part sizes and for quantities. Anyone who says “we machine all materials” and stops has told you something.

2. Machines and rigidity

Titanium is cut slowly and with heavy chip loads. That combination wants mass and torque, not spindle speed.

Ask about:

• Spindle power at low rpm. A 12,000 rpm spindle with no torque at 1,200 rpm is an aluminium machine. Titanium roughing lives low in the rev range.
• Through spindle coolant, and at what pressure. 70 bar and up is a real advantage in deep pockets and drilling. Flood alone works, it just works slower.
• Machine mass and age of the way covers. Chatter in titanium is a rigidity problem long before it is a programming problem.
• Bar capacity and work envelope, against your actual part size plus fixturing.

3. Tooling and cutting data

You are not auditing their tool crib. You are checking that somebody in the building owns the cutting data.

Ask	A good answer sounds like
Who sets speeds and feeds for titanium?	A named programmer or an engineering lead, working from tool supplier data and their own logs
Which insert grades do you run in Ti-6Al-4V?	Specific grades and coatings, usually AlTiN or TiAlN, and a reason
How do you track tool life?	Counted parts or minutes in cut, with a change interval, not “when it sounds wrong”
Do you avoid interrupted cuts in titanium?	Yes, and they explain how they program around them

The last one matters more than it looks. Titanium work hardens and welds to the cutting edge. A tool that dwells or rubs instead of cutting fails fast, and the part surface goes with it.

4. Fixturing and thin walls

Ask how they would hold your part specifically. The answer tells you whether they have read the drawing.

Good signs: soft jaws cut for the part, sacrificial tabs, a vacuum plate, talk of a second operation on a dedicated fixture, a plan for supporting a thin wall during the finishing pass.

Warning sign: a shrug and “we will put it in the vice.”

5. Inspection

Titanium moves with heat, and it springs back. Measurement is not an afterthought.

• Do they have a CMM, and is it in a temperature controlled room?
• Who writes a first article inspection report, and have they written one to AS9102?
• How do they measure surface finish, and do they report Ra?
• Do they inspect in process on long cycles, or only at the end?

If your drawing carries a tolerance tighter than ±0.02 mm anywhere, ask how they plan to prove it.

6. Certificates and traceability

This is where shops quietly differ.

• Mill certificate to EN 10204 3.1. Can they supply one with the parts, tied to the heat number?
• Heat lot traceability. When they cut a bar into six blanks, how does the heat number follow each blank? Transfer marking and a segregated storage process, or a pen and good intentions?
• ISO 9001 is the baseline. AS9100 for aerospace, ISO 13485 for medical devices, NADCAP for special processes like heat treatment and non destructive testing.

Ask only for what your customer requires. Every certificate on the list narrows the field and raises the price.

7. Stock and lead time

Half of titanium lead time is material, not machining.

• Do they buy the bar or do you supply it?
• What do they hold on the shelf, and in which grades and sizes?
• Who is their mill or distributor, and what is the current lead time on your size?
• If your size is unusual, will they propose an alternative that is in stock?

A shop that answers this well is a shop that has been caught by it before.

8. Red flags

• A quote that arrives with no questions attached.
• A yes to every tolerance on the drawing, including the one you added by accident.
• No mention of stock or material lead time anywhere in the quote.
• A price far below the others, which usually means they have quoted it as if it were stainless.
• Unwillingness to say which grades they run regularly.

A scoring sheet you can reuse

Ten questions, three points each, thirty available. Below twenty, keep looking.

#	Question	3 points
1	Titanium cut last month	Specific grades, sizes and quantities
2	Spindle torque at low rpm	Knows the number
3	Through spindle coolant	Yes, with a pressure
4	Cutting data ownership	A named person and a method
5	Tool life tracking	Counted, with a change interval
6	Fixturing plan for your part	Specific to the drawing
7	CMM and first article capability	Yes, with AS9102 experience if you need it
8	EN 10204 3.1 certificates	Routine, supplied with parts
9	Heat lot traceability process	Transfer marking and segregation
10	Material stock and lead time	Names the supplier and the current lead time

The shortcut

Most buyers do not have time to run that interview three times for one part. That is the reason this site exists. You send one RFQ, we read it against shops that already answer those questions the right way, and up to three of them come back to you directly.

Frequently asked questions

Keep reading

• Drilling Titanium: Speeds, Heat and Why Holes Fail First
• Welded Titanium Assemblies and the Alpha Case Problem