n the 90s we bought our Titanium tubing from a mill in Detroit called Ancotech.
We flew to Detroit and took a tour of Ancotech back in the day, and learned a lot about how titanium tubing is produced.
Gary Helfrich was quite schooled on the subject (and by schooled we mean self-taught), and worked with Ancotech getting the processes down that resulted in our double-butted titanium tubeset. This was real honest to goodness butting too, internally butted with a 2:1 wall thickness differential between the fat ends and skinny middle. And it was very expensive to do.
Well share a bunch of pictures with you that will show a little bit of the process. But first, were going to bring you up to speed on the process that happens before the small ingots get to the mill and are made into tubes.
Scot and Gary Helfrich wrote this together with much of the info coming from Gary (who has been known on occasion to embellish), but for the most part verified by our contacts at Ancotech. Its been reprinted in various places over the last 15 years.
