Originally posted by knifun
This does a disservice to metallurgy identification.
Titanium is (Ti, atomic #22)
Nickel (Ni, atomic #28)
Niobium (Nb, atomic #41 - far heavier than the above metals)
http://www.webelements.com/webelemen...xt/Nb/key.html
Usually Nickel and Titaniums are identified by either their formula or concatination of names. NiTi would be majority Nickel and minority Titanium. Titanium 6-4 or 6Al-4V is 6%Aluminum, 4%Vanadium and balance (90%) titanium.
Therefore, their definition of Nitanium would lead one to believe that this is a Nickel/Titanium alloy.
This is a disservice to consumers, bridging on false advertising.
I would agree based on the information from the nitanium alloy users in other industry. This link supports your analysis of what "most" people would believe nitanium to be -
http://www.aurumgroup.com/english/ce...ivnitanium.stm
Of course, the Ritchey nitanium is proprietary and in all likelihood has not been divulged in readily available documents from patent applications, etc.
They may have copyrighted the name for use in this particular industry. While possibly legal to do so, it certainly lends credence to your hypothesis of possible false advertising. It could very well be an issue in the US to take up with the FTC(Federal Trade Commission).
We could always find out the true makeup of the metal. One alternative is to saw off a piece of frame and have a metalurgical analysis performed. Anyone have a spare frame laying around?
The only issue might be that of how the alloy was heat treated, etc.