Kickstarter: New Startup Launches World’s First Titanium Tripod & Ballhead

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New York — A new startup – Colorado Tripod Company – today announced the world’s first titanium tripod and ballhead. “Although the process of extracting titanium from its ore is costly, designers consider it valuable enough for specialty applications such as aerospace, where its combination of strength-to-weight and corrosion resistance is unrivalled.” says mechanical engineer Nikki Gantos.
Learn more about the Colorado Tripod Company on Kickstarter
The product line features a number of improvements including a titanium hollowball that the tripod company claims will reduce the ball weight by 52%. Other highlights include ballheads with a maximized range of motion and tripods built to streamline parts and materials...

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Aug 23, 2016
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"A Unique Approach to Tripod Design.
Magnesium casting has long been the favorite process for mass production of industry leaders such as Manfrotto, Gitzo, Induro, Vanguard and many others. Compared to CNC machining, cast molding is significantly less expensive and the manufacturing time is greatly reduced."

Far from unique. Every start-up that needs to render structural parts in metal but can't afford the tooling for casting or forging (both have high start-up costs, but low material waste and per-unit costs) resorts to CNC machining (low-to-no start-up costs, i.e. can be easily outsourced, and high material waste and per-unit costs).

https://diecasting.com/blog/2018/06/05/die-casting-vs-machining/

It's like boasting about being "hand-made" when in-reality you simply don't have enough capital to mass-produce.
 
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Del Paso

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"A Unique Approach to Tripod Design.
Magnesium casting has long been the favorite process for mass production of industry leaders such as Manfrotto, Gitzo, Induro, Vanguard and many others. Compared to CNC machining, cast molding is significantly less expensive and the manufacturing time is greatly reduced."

Far from unique. Every start-up that needs to render structural parts in metal but can't afford the tooling for casting or forging (both have high start-up costs, but low material waste and per-unit costs) resorts to CNC machining (low-to-no start-up costs, i.e. can be easily outsourced, and high material waste and per-unit costs).

https://diecasting.com/blog/2018/06/05/die-casting-vs-machining/

It's like boasting about being "hand-made" when in-reality you simply don't have enough capital to mass-produce.

It's also true that CNC machining sound "sexier" than vulgar casting, yet pressure die-castings can nowadays attain an incredibly high precision.
As you wrote, tooling costs are much too high for small companies or start-ups, but no reason to discredit castings!
 
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Ozarker

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I own a titanium bike frame, and while it is light and strong, the tubing also dents rather easily. Which isn't a huge problem for a bike if you baby it (and try not to crash too much), but could be for a tripod. Carbon fiber's just better all around.

Bought my daughter a Dean Scout and Lightspeed gave her a road frame back when she was racing. Gotta love Ti. She did crash the mountain bike a lot, but never had any denting problems. Here it is 20 years later and the Ti frames are incapable of rusting like steel or pitting like aluminum. Fantastic stuff. I think a Ti tripod is more for "status" than anything else. However, carbon fiber can get gouged. I'll be keeping my carbon fiber tripod. :)
 
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I've specified precision diecasting of titanium parts for very exacting aerospace use. They were used in a super hot and exceedingly high vibration area where reduced mass was a benefit over other high temp materials like stainless steel.
I have used quite a bit of it myself too in spacecraft applications (very small runs, so always machined or EMD, never cast). I’m in a different industry now where its cost doesn’t make sense, but the current additive manufacturing capabilities are really neat.
 
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Is titanium really better at vibration dampening than aluminium? I believe that they both are about the same, vastly inferior to carbon fiber.

When I changed to carbon from aluminum, vibration reduced from 6-7 to 2 seconds. Are Gitzo and RRS legs designed for better dampening than Manfrotto, is it the carbon or both?
 
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When I changed to carbon from aluminum, vibration reduced from 6-7 to 2 seconds. Are Gitzo and RRS legs designed for better dampening than Manfrotto, is it the carbon or both?

Indeterminate; not enough information is given.

Chances are the RSS legs are stiffer, and thus have a higher natural frequency, so maybe it’s vibrating but you don’t notice. It would be interesting to instrument various tripods with accelerometers and quantify damping relative to various inputs.
 
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Maximilian

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I own a titanium bike frame, and while it is light and strong, the tubing also dents rather easily. Which isn't a huge problem for a bike if you baby it (and try not to crash too much), but could be for a tripod. Carbon fiber's just better all around.
AFAI understood the HP, they use carbon tubes for the tripod legs but Ti for the joints, fittings and the tripod head. And this shall give some additional weight saving.
Of course it is up to the customer to decide if that is worth north 1k bucks with tripod and ballhead made out of Ti.
 
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