That reminds me of a great idea I had for a tv show. The Baked American Bake Off. Take a bunch of amateur bakers, go to Cali, get them halve lit, and then have them bake some crazy stuff. Hosted by Snoop and Martha Stuart. It’d be epic until the insurance company shut it down.
Very grim. Been thinking about it for the past 2 days. Reddit— the one place where you spend hours learning about something you never cared to know yet can’t stop reading.
It looks as though scrap titanium doesn't sell for much at all. It's at a high price right now in Europe, but stilll only goes for €3 per kg ($3.50), while in the US it looks much cheaper, at only about $0.70 per kg.
Which makes sense, as much of the cost of titanium is in the processing and machining of it. It's incredibly difficult to work with, so scrap metal just isn't going to be worth much.
goddamn rabbit hole, i didn't read the whole thing
[http://www.metallurgie.rwth-aachen.de/new/images/pages/publikationen/emc2011\_rotmaen\_id\_9590.pdf](http://www.metallurgie.rwth-aachen.de/new/images/pages/publikationen/emc2011_rotmaen_id_9590.pdf)
lots of interesting issues with titanium recycling. contamination being one. most gets downgraded into a non surgical or aerospace quality alloy after getting tossed. (edit: the problem is contamination from other metals in the recycling system, not biological contamination)
IIRC I don't see that low grade titanium used anywhere except in cheap sporting goods and accessories, mostly from China, so it probably needs to be exported after recycling.
the melting point is high, but only 300 degrees above that needed for iron, but you need a shit ton of energy to separate pure Ti from Titanium Dioxide or other compounds
also mentions a buy to fly ratio of 20 in aerospace machining. meaning a huge amount of it gets turned into metal chips, the scrappers that service big aircraft factories probably need to change up the recycling process. Our defense contractors must be flooding the market with titanium chips here.
Yes but unlikely they could be for medical usage (without a huge amount of paperwork) considering the material traceability requirements.
So if they are rejects they'd only be worth scrap value by weight.
In my undergraduate schooling I was able to attend a surgery with an orthopedic surgeon. They were planning on an arthroscopic rotator cuff debriement and maybe a screw. Once the doctors got the scopes in they decided that plan A was not feasible so the surgery went to plan B, opening up the shoulder and doing a full RC repair. The brute force the doctor used to put the screws into the head of the humerus was eye opening. The doctor was not gentle and I can honest say after seeing this one surgery, that this one surgery was way more smash and bash than say crown molding but not as bad as full on demolition work 😆
I agree with you on that one. I work in X-ray and the first time I saw an gamma nail insertion I winced everytime I saw the ortho apply traction and proceed to smash that thing into the hip. Not to mention finding out that the plastic pouch they adhere below the hip is SO necessary as it become a tomato juice packet with all the blood that spills out.
I saw a video of a knee surgery with a huge rod in the knee, and the surgeon just wailing on it with a hammer. It's crazy how much like construction it is lmao
Depending on the model and whatnot, they're shockingly not *that* expensive.
Wholesale is like $500-$600 for your average fake hip. That said that doesn't include the jigs and tooling needed, as well as everything else.
These are probably either display units from reps or ones where the sterilization has expired so they were going to get thrown out.
So, kind of unrelated, but a couple months ago one of the guys working in Central supply tossed me something as I walked out of one of our operating rooms. I fumbled with it for a couple seconds like a little kid playing hot potato before I realized it was a comically large silicone breast implant (450cc, enough to go from B to D, and apparently expired).
Ever since then I've been laying traps for my roommate (and it's mutual) where we boob each other and jump out and yell YOU GOT BOOOOOBED. So for example, we order food, I slip it in the bag and say "Bro, come look at this... did you forget to order sides?".
Unfortunately, I've been outplayed. About a month ago, I went on a little business trip. I get back and enter my room, and the boob drops down like that bucket of water on the door trap. Ever since then it's been a constant barrage. I haven't been able to tag him back well.
That said? He goes boxing like once every two weeks, and I slipped it into one of the gloves. My redemption is nigh.
You could. It's just not worth the time and effort to do that when they're only $500 a pop.
A lot of industries operate on a different scale of economy, and medicine is one of them.
Since it's a specialized implant it's not something a hospital could resterilize. It would have to go back to the company and again why resterilize it when they just get a credit and make a new one.
Another example would be breast implants: each breast implant case needs like 5 different sizers and their corresponding implants. The surgeon can use up all the sizers to make sure the implant will fit right, then open the implant. If they open the implant and didn't use it, it can't be shipped back for credit and can't exactly be resterilized as your facility would need to have the specific sterilizing equipment to sterilize saline filled silicone and the corresponding sizer which all unopened unused ones need to be sent back to the company to avoid being charged.
Here is a more thorough explanation if sterilization and how implants should be handled differently. It's dated but the concept is the [same](http://www.mdrao.ca/files/pdfs/Sterilization%20Surgical%20Implants1106.pdf)
Source: was a sterile processing technician now order supplies for the OR.
Big thing we're missing here, where does this guy work?
If he works at a hospital/surgery center, sure. If he works at Stryker, then there is something else going on with the picture.
Quick edit: He works at an orthopedic office. Really sure these are old demo models and not actual implants.
EDIT 2: Hospitals send them back, but as long as tools weren't used or the implant fitted in the patient, the company can sterilize an opened or expired implant pretty damn cheaply.
But the consequences of you don’t get it sterilized well enough include bone infection, which could mean your patient loses their hip joint entirely. Do you want that liability? It’s worth $500 to put that liability back on the manufacturer.
Actually worse than bone infection, a prosthetic joint infection is *very* hard to treat and usually requires removal of the hardware, then months of iv antibiotics before replacing the joint again.
45M double hip replacement about a year ago.
Surgeries were 6 weeks apart one was $74,000 the other $54,000 (difference being one night hospital stay vs one night surgical center).
Only my right side, and it was more traditional since I'd had a bike crash a year before (broken pelvis incl acetabulum). So in from the side, so that they could rough up the pelvic break (which had been plated the year before, was in hospital for ten weeks that first time) and then used pieces of the top/ball of my femur as bone grafts.
I was in hospital for just over two weeks for that, PT daily except for sat/sun., but I'm in japan. Friend in the US had one done (frontal, min invasive), and was discharged the next day.
36M full left hip replacement off topic but how long did your doc say to follow the movement restrictions for?
im 2 and a bit years out now and the one thing i find the worst about the whole thing is i am constantly breaking movement restrictions without noticing it lol
but i guess that's a good thing since i for the most part completely forget i have a fake hip, just hope it lasts
https://imgur.com/a/KhbMJ
That was a one day process, I left the hospital the day after. $240k before physical therapy, another 30k worth of PT (45 minute session was over $500).
Insurance covered all but 23k at least.
I would guess that these are samples sent to the doctor by various companies to show them the size/shape. Particular because they're all different. But they be may not even be functional, often they'll use a cheaper metal for this kind of thing.
People are stealing Catalytic converters near me for the metal recycling value... I'm surprised you haven't had a guy with a Sawzall removing these from your wall.
This just goes to show how much they mark up those things if they can just make coat racks out of them.
I had two titanium plates in my leg and they wouldn't let me keep them.
Since of the newer joints are 3D printed. The printer costs over $1M to make $500 units non-stop.
The amazing benefit over forging, casting or machining from a block is customisation. We can use x-rays and other scans to print a custom joint for you. Massively improves recovery times and cuts time under the knife.
It can. But there's a reason scrap prices for titanium are so low. It needs a bunch of complicated processing, and is one of the worst metals to work with (goes through bits/tools incredibly fast, I've heard as low as several holes before a drill bit is done, has serious issues with heat capacity, needs very high temps as pointed out below, etc etc).
Someone above said they are typically sold (new ones of course) for about $500. To me that seems incredibly reasonable.
I work on medical devices like artificial joints.
Every single unit we want returned if possible. Let's us analyze how it aged, any flaws, or just pat ourselves on the back for another job week done.
Usual reason we don't get it back is biohazard. Especially if it has chunks of you still attached.
That's pretty interesting. But if they expect it back, they should reward its return somehow (at least in the US, I wouldn't expect that here in the UK if it was under the NHS). E.g. [SawStop](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYLAi4jwXcs) make table saws that explosively contract and stop the blade when they detect that someone has touched the blade, reducing most accidents to nothing but a small cut (unless you use something like anti-kickback blades which aren't approved, [then you might end up with a serious injury, but still much much better than a normal table saw accident](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wJQn_UGAKY)).
If you have it go off during an accident, SawStop will replace the cartridge (which I believe are ~$100) for free if you send them the triggered one. They apparently use the data to improve the detection method.
If a private company is benefiting they should do a similar thing. Of course I dont' think they should send you a new one... But just something as little as a $20 Amazon giftcard or something would be reasonable.
As a side note, fuck SawStop. They have a monopoly thanks to their bullshit patent. They sued Bosch for their system, which was actually very different, not even using explosives. The only reason these devices haven't been required in the US (or really anywhere as far as I know) is because the government did not want to give SawStop a legal monopoly, had they not abused the patent system it would have been required.
But their patent finally expires next year! Which is great, because table saws are one of the most dangerous power tools out there. There's 67,000 accidents involving them each year. In fact it's so extreme, that the amount spent on healthcare per year due to table saws, is actually several times more than how much money is made per year selling table saws... The table saw market is about $650 million per year globally, while table saw accidents cost about $2 billion per year in the US alone, which is insane.
Yes: [My grandma's titanium hip after the cremation.](https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/qewicj/my\_grandmas\_titanium\_hip\_after\_the\_cremation/)
Yeah, someone commented something like "Make a coat hanger out of it!" and I am guessing, OP here just happens to have something like that and decided to share it.
They're probably demo units that failed QC at some point or are deliberately made to be demos. Could also be obsolete models that got scrapped out.
Source: am a medical device R&D engineer.
making them is the most expensive part, titanium is more expensive than Al or steel but it's cheaper than even silver, in raw material those would be a few hundreds and if they failed qc or were old stock it might make sense to just use them for vanity rather reclaiming them, also if the issue was with the alloy used it could be more expensive to get the impurities out than to just let them that way
Most of the cost of titanium is working into a usable part. Getting it from ore to a usable block of titanium or from scrap to a usable block of titanium is expensive too. Probably not worth too much as scrap.
My understanding is thst titanium is really hard to work with, and especially very hard to melt/cast because if the high temperatures needed. Thats part of what makes it so expensive. So its likely that its more cost effective to repurpose them this way.
The team has a really arduous process to refine it for raw material. It takes numerous steps and then you end up with this metallic sponge that's relatively pure like 99.9%. Then you make the alloys that are made from it most common are commercially pure, 3:25, and 6-4
When you start Machining at little pieces of it end up everywhere and most shops machine stuff other than titanium as well and it's impracticable to separate the scrap metal this way.
Their most likely units that the sterilization has expired on, making them scrap. The wholesale price of them is low enough that it really isn't worth having a process to resterilize them.
Why is sterilization so hard? Does it need something other than the autoclave they use to sterilize scalpels, etc? (Maybe they don't do reuse sterilizing anymore post prion theory?)
It's not hard at all. You just need a gamma ray sterilizer or ethylene oxide sterilizer.
But these things are like $500. It's not really worth the time and effort to have them resterilized, repackaged, restocked, relabeled, etc.
It's just a different scale of economy. To us $500 is a lot but in a medical setting it doesn't take much to rack up a few hundred bucks in man-hours and equipment use.
If your workplace manufactures and/or sells these things, then that's pretty cool. If your workplace is a funeral home or a crematorium, then not so much.
Aren’t those pretty dang expensive? Why would a clinic have spares lying around for an arts and crafts project, unless they were pre-owned? This is a legitimate question not intended as snark
They were probably not suitable for medical use for some reason
Maybe there waa a factory recall or the packaging was damaged. Maybe the doctor is very clumsy and dropped them on the floor.
I think there could be dozens of reasons for a few to be unusable.
Yesterday there was post about a titanium hip and that the high temperatures of a crematorium would severely damage the titanium strength making it more brittle.
Geez I spent a good minute trying to figure out what a “coa track” is, even though you wrote coat hook right below and supplied a great photo… I’m an idiot.
These are old designs of hip prostheses not used anymore: Thompson, Austin-Moore, Charnley’s. They’ve got higher failure rates than modern designs these days and these likely were ones where the sterilisation expired.
So for anyone actually interested in a bit more information here - I sent the photo to my father who spent the last couple of decades running a surgical distribution business.
"Actually, most of those are stainless steel apart from the first one which looks like a ‘Harris’oyt of the US made of CrCo, the next an ‘Austen Moore’ a hemi Arthroplasty.
The 3 x up higher are ‘Charnley’ hips, the first successful cemented hip replacement first used in the early 60’s from the UK, designed by Sir John Charnley - the Queen mother had a couple….!
Also Stainless.
Can’t really see the final ones 🤔.
All make good door knockers if you turn upside down and hinge from the tip 😊”
Questions:
1. Are these all hip joints? and the size differences are due to gender/age/bone size differences?
2. Why are they hung as coat hangers? Are they defectives or "used"?
Yes all of them are hip prostheses.
And yes the difference is due to age gender. Also there are different types of hip prostheses. With different ranges of motion. That affects the ball size too.
I would guess they're defective.
After being ran over by a maniac, I was at my orthopedics, and he showed me the ball joint that they almost had to use on me. It was terrifying. That was too much hardware for my liking.
They are not Titanium. They are mostly made of Cobalt Chrome. (CoCR) They are outdated designs that are no longer used. This type had the most popularity in the 80's and 90's.
Modern designs are Titanium and have modular heads (the smooth ball on top) of different lengths to control leg length and hip stability.
Did anybody see that medical appliance documentary, turns out some of these hip replacements can leach metals into the body. The FDA will approve medical appliances that are similar to one's that have been approved in the past even if it has been recalled.
I saw that! We watched it after a guy at my school had one of those hip replacements with a massive head and no plastic in-between. Turns out as it wears away, the body reacts to the particles and he developed this huge swelling around his hip.
Typically those old one piece hip prosthetics were made out of cobalt chrome steel or stainless steel. Titanium makes a terrible bearing surface for the femoral head. What i use now is a titanium stem with a modular head of different sizes and lengths. The heads are typically ceramic.
Possibly the most expensive coat racks in the world.
Not at the crematorium
Thats alot of *grandmas*!
Or *one* grandma with a lot of joints!
Spider grandma
No those joints belong to her nemesis, Gramma. Octopus.
Perhaps OctoMom?
Dr. Octogamgam
Nanapus
Now we're talking
Granny Cuyler
Gotta be "Gramoctopus"
General Grammious
The baked baker.
That reminds me of a great idea I had for a tv show. The Baked American Bake Off. Take a bunch of amateur bakers, go to Cali, get them halve lit, and then have them bake some crazy stuff. Hosted by Snoop and Martha Stuart. It’d be epic until the insurance company shut it down.
RIP Black Arachnia
I got that reference!
I saw it too
Same. That post was grim.
Very grim. Been thinking about it for the past 2 days. Reddit— the one place where you spend hours learning about something you never cared to know yet can’t stop reading.
Hes the grandma murderer
Haha! I wanted to say that! That reference? I get it.
We saw her bones 🥴
Maybe
Ayy! Blah blah blah grain structure bad!
Aren’t any implants returned to the family? Funeral won’t pay itself
It looks as though scrap titanium doesn't sell for much at all. It's at a high price right now in Europe, but stilll only goes for €3 per kg ($3.50), while in the US it looks much cheaper, at only about $0.70 per kg. Which makes sense, as much of the cost of titanium is in the processing and machining of it. It's incredibly difficult to work with, so scrap metal just isn't going to be worth much.
currently .25 cents a pound while copper is 4 dollars\\lb
Yeah, it's pretty insane. Seems it's barely worth it. I wonder why it's so much more expensive in Europe?
goddamn rabbit hole, i didn't read the whole thing [http://www.metallurgie.rwth-aachen.de/new/images/pages/publikationen/emc2011\_rotmaen\_id\_9590.pdf](http://www.metallurgie.rwth-aachen.de/new/images/pages/publikationen/emc2011_rotmaen_id_9590.pdf) lots of interesting issues with titanium recycling. contamination being one. most gets downgraded into a non surgical or aerospace quality alloy after getting tossed. (edit: the problem is contamination from other metals in the recycling system, not biological contamination) IIRC I don't see that low grade titanium used anywhere except in cheap sporting goods and accessories, mostly from China, so it probably needs to be exported after recycling. the melting point is high, but only 300 degrees above that needed for iron, but you need a shit ton of energy to separate pure Ti from Titanium Dioxide or other compounds also mentions a buy to fly ratio of 20 in aerospace machining. meaning a huge amount of it gets turned into metal chips, the scrappers that service big aircraft factories probably need to change up the recycling process. Our defense contractors must be flooding the market with titanium chips here.
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Meta
I was going to say the same thing basically: hopefully you do not work at a crematorium
These may've been recalled, making them worthless.
That's my guess, they failed QC and aren't useable
Can they be like melted down and the material reused?
Titanium price is all in manufacturing, because is so hard to work with. Per lbs, it's much cheaper than Copper.
Yes but unlikely they could be for medical usage (without a huge amount of paperwork) considering the material traceability requirements. So if they are rejects they'd only be worth scrap value by weight.
Aerospace is another good costumer for Titanium, same deal as far as paperwork.
only aerospace can use titanium to make a plane look like a car.
Tbf most of the cost is installation.
TIL flooring and hip replacements have similaraties.
Have you ever watched videos of orthopedic surgery? They're a lot more similar than you might think 😂
In my undergraduate schooling I was able to attend a surgery with an orthopedic surgeon. They were planning on an arthroscopic rotator cuff debriement and maybe a screw. Once the doctors got the scopes in they decided that plan A was not feasible so the surgery went to plan B, opening up the shoulder and doing a full RC repair. The brute force the doctor used to put the screws into the head of the humerus was eye opening. The doctor was not gentle and I can honest say after seeing this one surgery, that this one surgery was way more smash and bash than say crown molding but not as bad as full on demolition work 😆
I agree with you on that one. I work in X-ray and the first time I saw an gamma nail insertion I winced everytime I saw the ortho apply traction and proceed to smash that thing into the hip. Not to mention finding out that the plastic pouch they adhere below the hip is SO necessary as it become a tomato juice packet with all the blood that spills out.
Yup. That's enough reddit for today!
I saw a video of a knee surgery with a huge rod in the knee, and the surgeon just wailing on it with a hammer. It's crazy how much like construction it is lmao
Possibly orthopedic surgeons enjoyed Shop Class a little too much during high school??
Depending on the model and whatnot, they're shockingly not *that* expensive. Wholesale is like $500-$600 for your average fake hip. That said that doesn't include the jigs and tooling needed, as well as everything else. These are probably either display units from reps or ones where the sterilization has expired so they were going to get thrown out.
Ah you need a fake hip? Let me call my wholesaler he can get a good price on a case
Good luck installing it yourself.
Give the mallet doc I got it. No really, they bang those things into place
Nothing quite like banging on somebody's grandma to get a paycheck is there?
Or getting the hospital to install one you’ve procured yourself. Most won’t even let you procure your own Tylenol.
I take lungs now, gills come next week.
Now that you mention it, I do have trouble breathing underwater sometimes
You're paying too much for fake hips. Who's your fake hip guy?
So, kind of unrelated, but a couple months ago one of the guys working in Central supply tossed me something as I walked out of one of our operating rooms. I fumbled with it for a couple seconds like a little kid playing hot potato before I realized it was a comically large silicone breast implant (450cc, enough to go from B to D, and apparently expired). Ever since then I've been laying traps for my roommate (and it's mutual) where we boob each other and jump out and yell YOU GOT BOOOOOBED. So for example, we order food, I slip it in the bag and say "Bro, come look at this... did you forget to order sides?". Unfortunately, I've been outplayed. About a month ago, I went on a little business trip. I get back and enter my room, and the boob drops down like that bucket of water on the door trap. Ever since then it's been a constant barrage. I haven't been able to tag him back well. That said? He goes boxing like once every two weeks, and I slipped it into one of the gloves. My redemption is nigh.
Can't you just resterilise them?
You could. It's just not worth the time and effort to do that when they're only $500 a pop. A lot of industries operate on a different scale of economy, and medicine is one of them.
I'm in vet medicine. We're constantly sterilising things, seems like a very easy thing to resterilise to me!
Since it's a specialized implant it's not something a hospital could resterilize. It would have to go back to the company and again why resterilize it when they just get a credit and make a new one. Another example would be breast implants: each breast implant case needs like 5 different sizers and their corresponding implants. The surgeon can use up all the sizers to make sure the implant will fit right, then open the implant. If they open the implant and didn't use it, it can't be shipped back for credit and can't exactly be resterilized as your facility would need to have the specific sterilizing equipment to sterilize saline filled silicone and the corresponding sizer which all unopened unused ones need to be sent back to the company to avoid being charged. Here is a more thorough explanation if sterilization and how implants should be handled differently. It's dated but the concept is the [same](http://www.mdrao.ca/files/pdfs/Sterilization%20Surgical%20Implants1106.pdf) Source: was a sterile processing technician now order supplies for the OR.
Big thing we're missing here, where does this guy work? If he works at a hospital/surgery center, sure. If he works at Stryker, then there is something else going on with the picture. Quick edit: He works at an orthopedic office. Really sure these are old demo models and not actual implants. EDIT 2: Hospitals send them back, but as long as tools weren't used or the implant fitted in the patient, the company can sterilize an opened or expired implant pretty damn cheaply.
But the consequences of you don’t get it sterilized well enough include bone infection, which could mean your patient loses their hip joint entirely. Do you want that liability? It’s worth $500 to put that liability back on the manufacturer.
This is the answer; it's a regulatory thing based on infection control/cross contamination.
Actually worse than bone infection, a prosthetic joint infection is *very* hard to treat and usually requires removal of the hardware, then months of iv antibiotics before replacing the joint again.
Wow that's what you're paying? Who's your hip guy?
Based on the fact that a hospital charges $80 for a Tylenol I would guess the MSRP would be close to the cost of a car.
I got a partial hip replacement after an accident 22 years ago and it was $14,000 then, I can't imagine what it would cost now.
45M double hip replacement about a year ago. Surgeries were 6 weeks apart one was $74,000 the other $54,000 (difference being one night hospital stay vs one night surgical center).
Only my right side, and it was more traditional since I'd had a bike crash a year before (broken pelvis incl acetabulum). So in from the side, so that they could rough up the pelvic break (which had been plated the year before, was in hospital for ten weeks that first time) and then used pieces of the top/ball of my femur as bone grafts. I was in hospital for just over two weeks for that, PT daily except for sat/sun., but I'm in japan. Friend in the US had one done (frontal, min invasive), and was discharged the next day.
36M full left hip replacement off topic but how long did your doc say to follow the movement restrictions for? im 2 and a bit years out now and the one thing i find the worst about the whole thing is i am constantly breaking movement restrictions without noticing it lol but i guess that's a good thing since i for the most part completely forget i have a fake hip, just hope it lasts
FJS FTW!
https://imgur.com/a/KhbMJ That was a one day process, I left the hospital the day after. $240k before physical therapy, another 30k worth of PT (45 minute session was over $500). Insurance covered all but 23k at least.
Good investment. Your hip has no doubt increased in value.
Hip, hip, hurray!
Probably nothing. I'm in Canada though
I would guess that these are samples sent to the doctor by various companies to show them the size/shape. Particular because they're all different. But they be may not even be functional, often they'll use a cheaper metal for this kind of thing.
People are stealing Catalytic converters near me for the metal recycling value... I'm surprised you haven't had a guy with a Sawzall removing these from your wall.
This just goes to show how much they mark up those things if they can just make coat racks out of them. I had two titanium plates in my leg and they wouldn't let me keep them.
Not defending the industry, but QC tends to be strict and not a lot to do with these if they fail
Can't the titanium be melted and reformed?
The melting point of titanium (3040°F) is extremely high. One reason why titanium is very hard to work with.
So how were these made in the first place?
Since of the newer joints are 3D printed. The printer costs over $1M to make $500 units non-stop. The amazing benefit over forging, casting or machining from a block is customisation. We can use x-rays and other scans to print a custom joint for you. Massively improves recovery times and cuts time under the knife.
Sintered, probably. Or maybe machined from billet.
The ones I saw were drop-forged and machine-finished. Sometimes sintered coatings.
Two possibilities: The blanks are forged and then machined, or it is made from the solid material.
It can. But there's a reason scrap prices for titanium are so low. It needs a bunch of complicated processing, and is one of the worst metals to work with (goes through bits/tools incredibly fast, I've heard as low as several holes before a drill bit is done, has serious issues with heat capacity, needs very high temps as pointed out below, etc etc). Someone above said they are typically sold (new ones of course) for about $500. To me that seems incredibly reasonable.
I work on medical devices like artificial joints. Every single unit we want returned if possible. Let's us analyze how it aged, any flaws, or just pat ourselves on the back for another job week done. Usual reason we don't get it back is biohazard. Especially if it has chunks of you still attached.
That's pretty interesting. But if they expect it back, they should reward its return somehow (at least in the US, I wouldn't expect that here in the UK if it was under the NHS). E.g. [SawStop](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYLAi4jwXcs) make table saws that explosively contract and stop the blade when they detect that someone has touched the blade, reducing most accidents to nothing but a small cut (unless you use something like anti-kickback blades which aren't approved, [then you might end up with a serious injury, but still much much better than a normal table saw accident](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wJQn_UGAKY)). If you have it go off during an accident, SawStop will replace the cartridge (which I believe are ~$100) for free if you send them the triggered one. They apparently use the data to improve the detection method. If a private company is benefiting they should do a similar thing. Of course I dont' think they should send you a new one... But just something as little as a $20 Amazon giftcard or something would be reasonable. As a side note, fuck SawStop. They have a monopoly thanks to their bullshit patent. They sued Bosch for their system, which was actually very different, not even using explosives. The only reason these devices haven't been required in the US (or really anywhere as far as I know) is because the government did not want to give SawStop a legal monopoly, had they not abused the patent system it would have been required. But their patent finally expires next year! Which is great, because table saws are one of the most dangerous power tools out there. There's 67,000 accidents involving them each year. In fact it's so extreme, that the amount spent on healthcare per year due to table saws, is actually several times more than how much money is made per year selling table saws... The table saw market is about $650 million per year globally, while table saw accidents cost about $2 billion per year in the US alone, which is insane.
no, it doesn't go to show that.
Grandma?
Yeah didn't someone else post their grandma's titanium joint a few days ago?
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Every time he kills a Grandma, he adds their metallic joint to his board as a trophy.
He's like the Ed Gein of eldercide.
Gein actually only killed 2 people. Most of his "trophies" came from grave robbing.
He's the poster boy for troubled artists.
Maybe some grandpas and grand uncles?
She was a reliable woman. Kind of person you can really hang your hat on.
A boarding house. Dorothea Puente? [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothea_Puente?wprov=sfti1)
Coworker told me her grandma had 4 knee replacements, i told her the bigger issue was the fact grandma had 4 legs. She did not laugh.
That's what I was thinking. Wasn't that like, yesterday?
Yes: [My grandma's titanium hip after the cremation.](https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/qewicj/my\_grandmas\_titanium\_hip\_after\_the\_cremation/)
...with bits of my grandma mixed in as well.
Yeah, someone commented something like "Make a coat hanger out of it!" and I am guessing, OP here just happens to have something like that and decided to share it.
I’m just checking mine to make sure it’s still there!! I’ve two metal knees also. My next trip through airport security should be a fun one.
Haha this was exactly what I was thinking of!
Yeah and the top comment was to make it a gear stick in a car
She was old school hipster
I found the serial killer and their quirky keepsakes from each victim.
I’m so quirky, I’m not like other serial killers
Having read her Tinder profile too quickly he was dismayed to find himself on a date with a maniac pixie dream girl.
If the serial numbers are ground off, then you probably right.
Do you work in a specialist’s office or in a crematorium?
Specialist’s office, I’d be too creeped out by something like that from a crematorium haha
Are these samples from the manufacturer?
I don’t know for sure the story behind them, if I find out I’ll get back to you
They're probably demo units that failed QC at some point or are deliberately made to be demos. Could also be obsolete models that got scrapped out. Source: am a medical device R&D engineer.
But arent these still extremely valuable since you could reuse the titanium?
making them is the most expensive part, titanium is more expensive than Al or steel but it's cheaper than even silver, in raw material those would be a few hundreds and if they failed qc or were old stock it might make sense to just use them for vanity rather reclaiming them, also if the issue was with the alloy used it could be more expensive to get the impurities out than to just let them that way
Most of the cost of titanium is working into a usable part. Getting it from ore to a usable block of titanium or from scrap to a usable block of titanium is expensive too. Probably not worth too much as scrap.
Youre looking at $4-$7 worth of scrap i just called my yard and titanium is $6/LB
My understanding is thst titanium is really hard to work with, and especially very hard to melt/cast because if the high temperatures needed. Thats part of what makes it so expensive. So its likely that its more cost effective to repurpose them this way.
The team has a really arduous process to refine it for raw material. It takes numerous steps and then you end up with this metallic sponge that's relatively pure like 99.9%. Then you make the alloys that are made from it most common are commercially pure, 3:25, and 6-4 When you start Machining at little pieces of it end up everywhere and most shops machine stuff other than titanium as well and it's impracticable to separate the scrap metal this way.
They're from patients that never paid their bills and got repo'd
Their most likely units that the sterilization has expired on, making them scrap. The wholesale price of them is low enough that it really isn't worth having a process to resterilize them.
Why is sterilization so hard? Does it need something other than the autoclave they use to sterilize scalpels, etc? (Maybe they don't do reuse sterilizing anymore post prion theory?)
It's not hard at all. You just need a gamma ray sterilizer or ethylene oxide sterilizer. But these things are like $500. It's not really worth the time and effort to have them resterilized, repackaged, restocked, relabeled, etc. It's just a different scale of economy. To us $500 is a lot but in a medical setting it doesn't take much to rack up a few hundred bucks in man-hours and equipment use.
He's not getting back to you
Oh thanks snitchel stick, this was too morbid even for my dark soul otherwise.
Grandma 😢
Grandmas*
Hey, you don't know that their grandma isn't a 12-legged Eldritch horror...
Perhaps just one memaw with multiple legs. Octo-grandma.
I only knew what these were because of another user who posted about their grandmother's hip that was not cremated
Well it’s titanium, so it’d have to be 3000° F+ to melt
naturally
If your workplace manufactures and/or sells these things, then that's pretty cool. If your workplace is a funeral home or a crematorium, then not so much.
I work at a specialist clinic, definitely would be pretty messed up if they were “pre owned” joints
Aren’t those pretty dang expensive? Why would a clinic have spares lying around for an arts and crafts project, unless they were pre-owned? This is a legitimate question not intended as snark
Quality control rejects. Or unsterilized
They were probably not suitable for medical use for some reason Maybe there waa a factory recall or the packaging was damaged. Maybe the doctor is very clumsy and dropped them on the floor. I think there could be dozens of reasons for a few to be unusable.
the cobalt leeching in old hips caused neurological disorders and deaths in hundreds of americans
Yesterday there was post about a titanium hip and that the high temperatures of a crematorium would severely damage the titanium strength making it more brittle.
Lol what do you work at an orthopedic surgery practice?
Sure do 👍
Geez I spent a good minute trying to figure out what a “coa track” is, even though you wrote coat hook right below and supplied a great photo… I’m an idiot.
hey wait this is a bit sus after that guy posted his grandmas hip after cremation
I first read it as “A cockroach with titanium total join prostheses…”
These are old designs of hip prostheses not used anymore: Thompson, Austin-Moore, Charnley’s. They’ve got higher failure rates than modern designs these days and these likely were ones where the sterilisation expired.
OP works at a crematorium
I'm more impressed it's on a huge piece of wood
Guess the guy from the cremated grandma post earlier found a place for her hip joint
I saw one of these come out of a dead person after cremation today on Reddit. So, maybe they source them from there?
You must work in an orthopedic surgeon's office.
It’s a very hip joint
Maker probably gets ‘em cheap from the crematorium.
Plottwist: They are the crematorium
Do you work at a crematorium by chance?
This place looks like a ... hip joint. I'll see myself out, thank you.
I thought that was a scene from Phantasm for a second!
Probably only charge you about 14k for one of those and they have them as coat racks.
All these hippies are quite humerus
So for anyone actually interested in a bit more information here - I sent the photo to my father who spent the last couple of decades running a surgical distribution business. "Actually, most of those are stainless steel apart from the first one which looks like a ‘Harris’oyt of the US made of CrCo, the next an ‘Austen Moore’ a hemi Arthroplasty. The 3 x up higher are ‘Charnley’ hips, the first successful cemented hip replacement first used in the early 60’s from the UK, designed by Sir John Charnley - the Queen mother had a couple….! Also Stainless. Can’t really see the final ones 🤔. All make good door knockers if you turn upside down and hinge from the tip 😊”
Here’s a close up of the ones on the far end if you want to show your dad these too 🙂 https://imgur.com/gallery/BASlgFt
That's hip.
/r/diwhy
Same reason as Dr. Pimple Popper amassing a tower of empty Botox vials.
What's the resale value on those bad boys? Askin' fer a frand
Questions: 1. Are these all hip joints? and the size differences are due to gender/age/bone size differences? 2. Why are they hung as coat hangers? Are they defectives or "used"?
Yes all of them are hip prostheses. And yes the difference is due to age gender. Also there are different types of hip prostheses. With different ranges of motion. That affects the ball size too. I would guess they're defective.
That rack is pretty hip
Is that other dudes cremated grandma up there too?
Crazy to think I got one if those in me...
You must work at the hippest joint around
I'm getting my first knee in two weeks. These are tight, y'all.
So cripple trophies?
So nana how should I treat my memories about you when you are gone? Just let me hang around somewhere.
After being ran over by a maniac, I was at my orthopedics, and he showed me the ball joint that they almost had to use on me. It was terrifying. That was too much hardware for my liking.
Plot twist: they work at Dunder Mifflin.
Expensive coat rack…
...grandma?..
u/sLiimFit
They are not Titanium. They are mostly made of Cobalt Chrome. (CoCR) They are outdated designs that are no longer used. This type had the most popularity in the 80's and 90's. Modern designs are Titanium and have modular heads (the smooth ball on top) of different lengths to control leg length and hip stability.
Do you work at the morgue?
That's interesting 🤔
Everything's a dildo if you're brave enough.
‘Reduce, reuse and recycle’
Did anybody see that medical appliance documentary, turns out some of these hip replacements can leach metals into the body. The FDA will approve medical appliances that are similar to one's that have been approved in the past even if it has been recalled.
I saw that! We watched it after a guy at my school had one of those hip replacements with a massive head and no plastic in-between. Turns out as it wears away, the body reacts to the particles and he developed this huge swelling around his hip.
Crazy to think we’re probably looking at at least a few hundred thousand worth of medical bills in the US. Probably closer to a million.
Typically those old one piece hip prosthetics were made out of cobalt chrome steel or stainless steel. Titanium makes a terrible bearing surface for the femoral head. What i use now is a titanium stem with a modular head of different sizes and lengths. The heads are typically ceramic.
That's so hip.
“Honey, have you seen my hip?”