As a premium material, titanium alloy has gained wide application in a variety of sports equipment, such as bicycles, motorboats, tennis rackets and horse harnesses. However, in these applications, titanium alloys have not been able to match the scale and impact of their use in golf heads.
Since the late 1980s, Japan has taken the lead in researching titanium alloys for precision casting golf heads, and has achieved remarkable results. The low density and high strength of titanium alloys allow them to produce heads with a larger striking surface and volume. This characteristic makes titanium golf heads both accurate and long range when hitting the ball. What's more, when a titanium die-cast head hits the ball, the player can feel an excellent ball feel and the sound of the ball hitting the ball is pleasing to the ear. Therefore, the melt mold precision casting titanium alloy ball head has been greatly developed, in Japan, 90% of the club head are used in titanium ball head. At the same time, the titanium casting of golf head putter (commonly known as iron head) has also begun mass production.
The development of titanium golf head is inseparable from the continuous progress of titanium alloy precision casting technology. Although the internal metallurgical quality requirements of the golf head are not strict, allowing the existence of a small area of sparsity, but its requirements for the surface quality are extremely strict, and even exceed the quality standards of aerospace titanium alloy precision castings. The wall thickness of the golf ball head is usually only 1.4 mm, and some of them even reach 1.0 to 1.2 mm, which has exceeded the minimum allowable wall thickness of 1.5 mm stipulated by the international titanium alloy fine casting standard. In addition, the range of thin-walled areas of the ball head often exceeds an area of 50 mm x 50 mm, all of which poses a great challenge to casting technology.
At present, the manufacture of golf ball head titanium alloy precision castings has formed an industry with a certain production scale. The Japanese market, for example, in 1991 cast titanium golf head sales of 60,000 pieces, and in 1995, this figure jumped to 1.5 million pieces, annual sales also reached 70 million U.S. dollars. According to the United States TIMET company estimates, in 1991 the world in the field of sports in the amount of titanium alloy for 230 tons (of which cast titanium accounted for a large proportion), and in 1997, this figure surged to about 4,770 tons. Although the increase has slowed down since then, but in 2000, still increased to about 5,800 tons.
The excellent application and development of titanium alloy in the field of golf head not only improves the technical level of golf, but also promotes the continuous progress of titanium alloy material and its precision casting technology.
