It is desirable that gas-atomized powder will be used for Metal Injection Molding (MIM) because it has spherical shape and lower oxygen. However, gas-atomized powder is so expensive that water-atomized one has been usually used for MIM. The higher cost of powder by gas atomization is caused by the lower yield of fine powder. Therefore, the development of gas atomization nozzle for making finer powder in large scale has been demanded.In this paper we investigated a new confined-type atomization nozzle and found that the condition about the nozzle shape (angle of gas flow slit and protrusion length of metal delivery nozzle) had much influence on stability of atomization and the particle size of powder Furthermore, we could produce fine SUS316L powder (d_(50 percent)=18.4 #mu#m, <45 #mu# m=79.9 percent) with stable operation of atomization.
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