Application Of Sintering Support For Powder Injection Moulding Process

摘要

A commercial complex component traditionally manufactured by machining has been fabricated by the Powder Injection Moulding (PIM) process with a support. The support is made from the same feedstock as the component and has gone through the same process of injection, debinding and sintering. Due to gravitational effects and differential shrinkage between the component and the sintering plate, the components' geometry is found to be distorted by the conventional PIM process. The subsequent post operations to correct these errors are difficult and costly. These issues are overcome by removing the problematic contact areas between the component and sintering plate. This is achieved with the introduction of the support made from the same feedstock as the component. With no differential shrinkage characteristics between the component and support, reproducible and controlled dimensional stability is achieved.