Advantages and Disadvantages of Powder Metallurgy and Cutting

Advantages and Disadvantages of Powder Metallurgy and Cutting

Powder metallurgy is a forming process with little or no cutting. Under the condition that the performance of powder metallurgy materials can meet the requirements of parts, from an economic perspective, less and less use of powder metallurgy means that energy and materials can be saved, and a large amount of equipment investment can be saved. For expensive or difficult to cut materials, the value of powder metallurgy is obvious. Next, we will share the advantages and disadvantages of powder metallurgy and cutting processing:

The cost of tools for CNC and automatic turning is lower than that of any production method. Because of the high automation of the machine tool, the labor intensity is low, and the turning cost varies according to the number and scope of turning operations, the objects to be processed are usually bars, tubes, plates or blanks. The material utilization rate of parts processed by turning is very low. When cutting reinforcement, the material utilization rate is usually less than 50%. If the blank is rotated by the CNC machine, the material utilization may be lower. In general, the greater the amount of metal discarded during part processing, the more advantageous it is to use powder metallurgy.

powder metallurgy

The choice between turning and powder metallurgy may depend more on the shape of the part and economic factors. Turning is advantageous when the central axis of the shape of the part is symmetrical and has features such as cylindrical shape, grooves, steps, etc. The traditional powder metallurgy process can produce parts of any shape, which can be demoulded from the mold.

Compared with cutting, powder metallurgy has the following advantages:

1: The consistency of products is good, and the possibility of scrapping is small

2: Dimensional tolerance and good surface roughness

3: Inspection and testing costs can be saved because there is only one molding operation in the production process of powder metallurgy parts.

Due to the popularity of CNC machine tools, cutting efficiency and accuracy have been improved. However, for large-scale production, there are still problems such as laborious operation, troublesome chip cleaning, and all finishing operations take a long time. In these aspects, most can be solved by powder metallurgy manufacturing methods.