So, Titanium strings

[tauzero]

Titanium is also used for F1 wheelnuts, and it's quite astonishing when you feel the weight of one of those.

If you look at the article, it's rather vague about the wound strings, and says that the plain strings are overwound with titanium. It mentions about reducing string breakage but it's unclear how that happens. Titanium is about half the density of steel, so if I've got my visualisations of what needs to be multiplied by what right, the diameter of the string would have to be double the diameter of a steel string for a string of the same tension. Aluminium falls between steel and Ti, but for some reason there is no market for aluminium strings.

[Mr. Foxen]

[quote name='tauzero' post='363475' date='Dec 26 2008, 12:08 AM']there is no market for aluminium strings.[/quote]

Thats probably a softness issue, and they would coat your fingers in nasty also.

[Lfalex v1.1]

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' post='363477' date='Dec 26 2008, 12:26 AM']Thats probably a softness issue, and they would coat your fingers in nasty also.[/quote]
That, and the fact that they'd (very obviously) mechanically give up the ghost after the right number of stress cycles.

Edited December 28, 2008 by Lfalex v1.1

[D-L-B]

[quote name='tauzero' post='363475' date='Dec 26 2008, 12:08 AM']Titanium is about half the density of steel.
Aluminium falls between steel and Ti, but for some reason there is no market for aluminium strings.[/quote]
Not really, titanium is often incorporated into an alloy to make it alot lighter whilst still retaining enough of it's original desirable properties.
Aluminuim has a far lass robust structure and so suffers from 'metal fatigue' over repeated use.

aluminium (melted) 2560 - 2640 kg/cu.m
titanium 4500 kg/cu.m
steel (stainless) 7480 - 8000 kg/cu.m