Powder Metallurgy Parts, Powder Metal Sintered Parts

Next to casting, mechanical forming and machining, powder metallurgy (P/M) technology is an important method of manufacturing metal parts.

Undesirable characteristics of ingot based metals can be greatly reduced, and desired properties of metals which
would normally not alloy easily can be achieved by combining different metal powders or mixtures of metal and non metal powders.

The process of making powders, compacting them into useful shapes and then sintering them is costly, but the
finished parts have some specific advantages over wrought or cast parts.

The main advantages are:

– the possibility to make fi ne grained homogenous structures
– the ability to form complicated shapes with close dimensional tolerances
– and the ability to produce parts with a superior surface fi nish.

Costly machining processes are thus reduced or eliminated and consequently there is less scrap loss compared to other forming methods. it is therefore most economical to use powder metallurgy for the high volume production of small, intricately shaped, and/or very precise parts such as gears and links.

In addition, the process offers the potential to produce a wide variety of alloys with different material properties such as high temperature toughness and hardness. High speed cutting tool bits from sintered tungsten carbide powder properties which can be achieved with the powder metallurgical process.

As the density of the compacted and sintered part influences ite key properties of sterngth, ductility and hardness, a specific porosity is critical. For process control, metallography is used to check porosity,non-metallic inclusions and cross-contamination. In research
and failure analysis, metallography is amajor tool used to develop new products and improve manufacturing processes. In addition to chemical physical methods for checking density, dimensional changed, flow rate etc.