Using a mixture of titanium dioxide, drywall plaster, aluminium powder and ground fluorite, Theo Grey of PopSci.com was able to smelt his own titanium, via a thermite reaction. The results are not pretty, and you probably don’t want to try this at home, but hey, DIY titanium!
Yet I was able to make titanium using equipment I had lying around. I did it with thermite reduction, a process commonly used to weld train tracks. In an iron thermite reaction, iron oxide reacts with aluminum and comes out as liquid iron. I just swapped in titanium dioxide instead. But that reaction, in which titanium dioxide transfers its oxygen atoms to aluminum, doesn’t release enough heat to melt the materials.
So I mixed in drywall plaster (calcium sulfate) and more aluminum powder. They react to create huge amounts of extra heat, enough to melt the titanium and allow it to pool at the bottom of the container. Adding ground fluorite powder makes the molten metals more fluid and protects the titanium from air as it cools.
The process used was developed by Gert Meyer. You can find more details here.
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