Costs Of Different Metals Used In Mechanical Engineering

Only used in initial design assessments. Material costs for detail design must be obtained by contacting suppliers. This page is includes information on the costs of different metals used in mechanical engineering. When producing mechanical components the material costs is generally of limited significance.Other costs should be included when comparing materials including design, procurement, production control, forming, machining, finishing, distribution, etc etc. A component lifetime costs include maintenance, corrosion protection and recovery (scrap).

The raw material cost for a particular component may be 20 times the cost if made from one material compared to another on a weight to weight basis. However the lifetime costs may be very similar if all of the other factors are also taken into consideration.

The material cost of a mass produced investment casting item may be 80% of the final cost.The material cost of a single complicated machined item may be less than 10% of the final cost. It is not possible to provide cost comparisons between different metals to any level of accuracy. Each metal is varying in price on a day to day basis and different alloys of the same metal can have significantly different costs. A grade 7 titanium alloy costs twice as much as pure titanium (grade 1,2 or 3).

Comparing costs should only be based on final installed costs. eg. for a domestic, industrial piping system a screwed steel system would cost about 40% more than a copper piping system.

Example :
The price of a titanium / titanium alloy products results from a number of factors:

In year 2000 the price of titanium was about ?3 000 to ?3 000/tonne..
In 2002 the price of raw titanium was about to ?960/tonne.
In 2005 to-date the price of titanium has varied between ?000 and ?000 /tonne
Ref 2010 ..I have enclosed a chart from the metalprices webpage to illustrate to range of titanium ingot pricing over a 12 month period

The table below can only really be used to give broad relative initial material costs. The figures are based on a reference source originating about 2002

I have tried to obtain some current (Nov 2010) metal prices from various internet sources and I list them below..These sometimes differ considerably from the table above

Prices in dollars for 25mm round bar x 300mm long (0,00015m3 ) ...November 2010 (Onlinemetals (USA)

Looking at the cost per tonne of HR steel in the form of a 1" dia bar 1 foot long at ?200 against the LME price for the raw material in bulk for at ?21/tonne illustrates the massive diiference in the price of raw materials to the actual price of materials as supplied for initial machining processes in small quantities.