Metal Injection Molding technology is increasingly used as a cost cutting and performance enhancing tool. The products manufactured using MIM are now being considered for high performance applications. These applications made it necessary to evaluate the properties of conventional MIM and re-position itself to offer higher levels of properties and reliability. An aggressive acceptance of MIM as a standard manufacturing technology is hampered by the lack of transparency. The availability of several binder systems and their removal techniques have contributed to the confusion among the design engineering communities. The established large volume players with years of success with a common fleet of industries, customers using MIM parts, have advanced the rate of acceptance to some extent. The emphasis is now shifting from methods of processing, encompassing the binder systems and removal techniques, towards quality consistency and reproducibility. MIM being ideally a mass production process the cost advantage needs to be harnessed through consistent quality and high yields. MIM parts need to satisfy the material cost - processing cost - processing yield envelop to become an effective cost cutting tool.
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