Titanium Alpha Precipitation Hardening

Titanium can be hardened in a targeted way via heat treatment by creating specific precipitates in the structure. It all depends heavily on the exact cooling – if you don't work cleanly there, you get brittleness or cracks instead of hardness. When welding, it's tricky because the heat input locally changes the structure. So you have to control the cooling and must not let the part cool down too fast or too slowly, otherwise you lose the strength.