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We believe that false marketing and claims that  “Copper Titanium tools are superior to Aluminium Bronze are causing additional headaches for safe operations and maintenance in the wider industry”.   Copper Titanium tools are known to be highly brittle and do not perform for their intended applications. The common problems faced by the operator when using these tools are: 

  1. Open spanners, ring spanners, pipe wrench, and adj wrench do not have the grip required in operation and hence tends to either slip or not offer enough grip to perform the necessary operation
  2. There is excessive wear and tear of tools in a very limited amount of time rendering the said tools useless to the operator
  3. Screwdriver tips are known to chip off when used for simple operations
  4. Plier jaws do not align and the handles are of very poor quality
  5. Spanners either crack or break into several pieces during normal operations

The above problems are widely reported by many end-users of Copper Titanium non-sparking tools. This creates an additional safety risk in the plant where this is used.  

  1.  There is a risk of injury due to slippage or tool breakage and have been reported to us several times by end-users. Operator risks falling from heights or the broken tool pieces flung in the air causing injury to nearby operators 
  2.  Because of excessive wear and tear operators may fall back to using regular steel tools which re-introduce the risk non-sparking tools are expected to mitigate 
  3.  The same risk exists because operators do not feel confident in using non-sparking tools of Copper Titanium 

 Since Copper Titanium creates more problems and does not solve any existing issues its use in plants diminishes the overall safety.
  We recommend all Copper Titanium non-sparking tool users to get regular feedback from their operators about the tools they are currently using and if they are facing the above-mentioned issues they should replace the tools with reputed non-sparking tools 

 

 

Copper Titanium Non-Sparking Tools – Is It Really Revolutionary?

We have been in the business of non-sparking tools for over 10 years. Non-sparking tools have traditionally been made in 2 copper alloys – Aluminium Bronze and Beryllium Copper. In 2016 we read about a *revolutionary* alloy –    Copper Titanium.  We were curious and hence decided to reach out to the manufacturer about the possibility of supplying Copper Titanium tools. 

Copper Titanium alloy for non-sparking tools was touted as nothing short of revolutionary. On paper, it has properties that would catapult it past both Aluminium Bronze and Beryllium Copper 

We embarked on marketing and selling these Copper Titanium tools in India in 2017. We made a lot of effort in introducing these tools to our existing customers. Due to our long-standing relationship with our customers in providing them with great quality tools, we found it relatively easy to market and sell Copper Titanium as a superior alternative. In the first year itself, we had booked many orders for these tools, and supply was done in a prompt manner. 

As soon as tools were sold we started receiving complaints from various users that the tools were breaking. We reported this to the manufacturer and provided replacements. We were led to believe that being new to manufacturing there would be a few kinks in the design and as continuous improvements are made quality issues would disappear. However, quality issues never disappeared. 

We continued to give the manufacturer of Copper Titanium the benefit of doubt hoping that the quality would catch up. This continued into the years 2018 and 2019. By end of 2019, we were quite sure that in spite of numerous tweaks being made by the manufacturer there was no abatement in the no of complaints. We strongly protested that Copper Titanium alloy was very brittle and that it offers no advantage over Aluminium Bronze alloy (let alone Beryllium Copper). However, our protest was met with a categorical denial of the facts, and a proclamation was made that Copper Titanium tools are the best quality tools in the world by the manufacturer.    

There were endless complaints from customers ranging in these 3 areas –

  • There was very high wear and tear in these tools
  • Tools were slipping
  • Tools were breaking

Most end users complained that the tools were highly brittle. All the complaints had one general theme – issues were seen as soon as the tool was put to use.  

Curiously we also received the following feedback consistently from our end users in the last 4 years – our Sparkless ™ Aluminium Bronze tools supplied to them prior to 2016 were still in use and the operators were quite happy with the performance and were confident in using it for their daily operations. 

We have come to believe that Copper Titanium tools are over-hardened using a process that causes the alloy to achieve higher hardness. However, this makes the tool very brittle unable to withstand the impact forces when it is put into normal use. The strength of these tools only lies in the marketing material and in actual use is a liability for the operator for these reasons: 

  • Tool breakages can cause injury 
  • If a tool were to break the operator may not have a spare tool and may resort to using steel tools to complete the job thus making their operation unsafe 
  • Tool slippages can also result in injury 

Our conclusion is that Copper Titanium is   highly inferior to the 2 alternatives in non-sparking i.e. Aluminum Bronze and Beryllium Copper. It offers no benefits in actual usage – in fact, it creates safety risks – either due to non-usage of tools or by way of injury 

Copper Titanium Non-Sparking Tools – Failure #1 (CSO # 60)
 
Client Name: PSU Refinery
Location: Assam
Date of Supply: Jan 2019

The date on which the issue was reported: 17  th Oct 2019

Tools detail: 4 spanners 

  1. Slugging wrench (ring type) 50 mm 02 nos
  2. Double-ended ring spanner   ( 28 X 25) mm   01 nos
  3. Double-ended ring spanner ( 29 X 26)     01 nos.

Excerpts of the issue reported:
 “Crack developed at the ring part of Hammering/Striking wrench (Ring Type); Size: 65mm. This situation was observed at the SDU unit. Attached herewith photograph of the same in JPG format.”