Ten questions to ask a titanium shop before you send a drawing

You can learn a lot about a shop from how it answers a short list of questions. These are the ones that matter most for titanium, with what a good answer tends to sound like.

1. When did you last cut this grade? A good answer gives a recent month and a rough part type. “We can do it” is not an answer.
2. What is the largest and smallest part you have cut in this material? It tells you whether your part sits inside their experience.
3. How do you fixture thin walls? A shop with real experience talks about support and chatter, not only about machines.
4. What happens to the swarf and coolant? Titanium chips are a fire risk if handled badly. A specific answer shows discipline.
5. Do you buy material with a mill certificate and keep heat lot traceability? Ask how, not whether. Material certificates and traceability lists what to expect.
6. What inspection equipment will measure my part, and who signs the report? A named process beats a general promise.
7. Have you declined a titanium job recently, and why? A shop that never says no is guessing.
8. How is my drawing stored and who sees it? The answer should describe practice, not only willingness to sign.
9. Who quotes and who runs the job? If they are different people, ask how the details travel between them.
10. What would make you miss the date? A shop that names a real risk is one you can plan around.

How to read the answers

The ten questions are deliberately practical. A shop that cuts titanium every week has answered all of them on its own floor already: which insert grade it runs on Grade 5, what coolant pressure the machine delivers through the tool, how it holds a thin wall during the finish pass, when it sends a part for stress relief, what it measures a bore position with, and what it does with a part that fails. A shop that cuts titanium twice a year has to think about each one, and the pause is the answer.

Two more things are worth asking that are not technical at all: whether the lead time quoted starts when the material arrives or when the PO lands, and who you will be talking to in week four. On titanium the material is usually the long pole, and a named contact who answers inside a business day is worth more than a brochure. The long form of these checks, as we apply them on the floor before an order is placed, is in how a titanium shop gets vetted.

You are not looking for the most impressive shop. You are looking for one whose answers are specific, whose limits are named and whose replies arrive on time. The most common red flag is an answer that stays general: a shop that cuts titanium regularly can name a recent job, a tooling approach or a limit it holds. The same questions work for any hard alloy, and they sit inside the wider choice described in our guide to the exotic alloy machining supplier.

If you would rather not run the checks yourself, most of them are part of the shop audit standard a shop has to clear before we place an order with it. We are a trading company: you buy the finished part from us, and the engineer on your order has already asked these questions on the shop floor. Get a quote and ask what the shop running your order evidenced.