Originally Posted by
bargainguy
My understanding is that all the beam bikes they produced, including the Air Friday, were discontinued when Green Gear could no longer source those titanium beams for whatever reason: cost, availability, quality, etc. And since the titanium beam is critical to the bike's design and function, those models are gone, perhaps never to return. Glad I got one.
Now extrapolate that to an entire bike frame. As in jur's post above, titanium requires careful handling to prevent weld contamination, which could eventually lead to weld failure, and we don't want that happening.
Long story short, I don't think it's as easy to produce a titanium frame as some folks think.
Looking on Alibaba, there is now a large, growing body of titanium tube suppliers, driving the price down and availability up.
It is puzzling why Brompton have stopped doing the Ti seatpost; there are by now a number of 3rd party suppliers of Ti seatposts suitable for Bromptons. I have one.
BiFri may have stopped the Air Glide model due to demand being low? There may have been a time when Ti tubing was harder to source but it seems those days are long gone.