Production of Micro Porous Metal Components by Metal Injection Molding Based Powder Space Holder Method

摘要

A novel production method for the metal components with micro-sized porous structures has been developed by applying powder space holder (PSH) method to metal powder injection molding (MEM) process. The representative materials are stainless steels, aluminum, copper, titanium, nickel and their alloy. This production method can comply with widespread applications with high functionality such as heat sinks, electrodes and medical implants and so on. Those applications welcome the advantages that this method proposed is capable of producing the micro-porous metal components with complicated shapes using most kinds of metal powder. The aim of this study is to clarify the effects of material combinations on the pore formation and some physical properties of sintered porous specimens. The green compacts were molded by uniaxial hot pressing for simplification using various porous compounds which were prepared with changing the combinations in size of metal powder and space holding particle, and were sintered at various temperatures. It was confirmed that the size of metal powder and space holding particle in addition to sintered temperature was main factors affecting significantly for the pore size, porosity, surface area and shrinkage of sintered porous specimens. It was confirmed that the method proposed was useful in producing the metal components with micro-sized and high functionally porous structures.