What Are the Types of Trekking Poles Materials?

Trekking poles are one of the essential tools for mountaineering. Poor quality trekking poles can directly cause your trip to be abandoned halfway. Therefore, the choice of trekking poles is very important, especially the material. So, do you know what materials the trekking poles are made of?

What are the types of trekking poles materials?

1️⃣Titanium alloy

Titanium is an important structural metal developed in the 1950s. It is widely used in various fields because of its high strength, good corrosion resistance and high heat resistance. Titanium alloys are mainly used to make aircraft engine compressor parts, followed by rockets, missiles and structural parts of high-speed aircraft.

Titanium alloy has high strength and low density, much larger than other metal structural materials, and because of its good mechanical properties, toughness and corrosion resistance, it is especially suitable for making trekking poles. However, due to the poor technological performance of titanium alloys and the difficulty of cutting, it is very easy to absorb impurities such as hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and carbon during hot processing, and the production process is complicated. So the price is more expensive.

2️⃣Carbon fiber

Carbon fiber is a new type of fiber material with high strength and high modulus fiber with a carbon content of more than 95%. Its mass is lighter than that of metal aluminum, but its strength is higher than that of steel, and it has the characteristics of corrosion resistance and high modulus. It is an important material in national defense, military industry and civilian use. It not only has the inherent intrinsic properties of carbon materials, but also has the soft processability of textile fibers. It is a new generation of reinforcing fibers. Trekking poles made of carbon fiber have the characteristics of light weight, pressure resistance and wear resistance.

3️⃣Aluminum alloy

Aluminum alloy is the most widely used non-ferrous metal structural material in the industry, and has been widely used in aviation, aerospace, automobile, machinery manufacturing, shipbuilding and chemical industries.

Aluminum alloys are currently the most widely used alloys. Aluminum alloys have low density but relatively high strength, approaching or exceeding that of high-quality steel.

Aluminum alloy trekking poles are generally made of 6061 and 7075 aluminum alloys. Their characteristics are different, and they also determine the performance of trekking poles.

• 6061: In the 6061 specification aluminum alloy, aluminum alloy elements account for 97.9%, magnesium elements account for 1%, silicon elements account for 0.6%, and 0.28% copper and 0.2% chromium are added.

• 7075: In the 7075 aluminum alloy, the main metal elements of aluminum and zinc account for 90% and 5.6%, respectively, the other elements are magnesium 2.5%, copper 1.6%, chromium 0.23%, silicon, manganese, Metal elements like titanium… take up the rest.

After comparison, 7075 has significantly higher measurement data than 6061 aluminum alloy in all aspects, and this is mainly because the content of aluminum alloy in 7075 aluminum alloy is nearly 8% less than that in 6061 aluminum alloy. % for the sake of it (6061 contains 97.9% aluminum and 7075 contains 90% aluminum). Because pure aluminum is a very soft metal element.

Therefore, the performance of the 7075 series trekking poles is far superior to the 6061 series trekking poles. At the same time, the price of the 7075 series trekking poles is also much higher than that of the 6061 series.