New Application of Titanium Alloy Powder in Metal Injection Molding MIM Industry

New Application of Titanium Alloy Powder in Metal Injection Molding MIM Industry

The TC4, TA1, and other titanium alloy MIM parts produced by Qinhuangdao Zhongwei Precision Machinery Co., Ltd. have been stably supplied to downstream MIM titanium parts user manufacturers, and have product applications in intelligent wearables, 3C electronics, medical devices, and other fields. In the future, Zhongwei Precision will launch a more diversified and low-cost variety of titanium alloy powder, providing customers with efficient and integrated technical solutions with excellent and stable product quality.

Development History of MIM Industry

MIM technology is an advanced forming technology that combines the advantages of powder metallurgy compression molding and plastic injection molding. Its research and development began in 1973, and Parmatech Company, founded by Weich in the United States, was the first to engage in research and product development of MIM technology, which is in its infancy. It was not until 1979 that its products emerged and won two awards in the International Powder Metallurgy Conference Product Competition, which attracted high attention from the powder metallurgy industry and subsequently developed rapidly. With the industrialization of the MIM industry in various countries, it has been widely applied in many fields such as automobiles, electronic products, medical devices, consumer goods, etc. Among them, the Asian market is mainly used in the electronic product industry, the North American market is mainly used in medical devices, light weapons, and other fields, and the European market is more focused on the automotive and consumer goods industry.

China included MIM technology in high-tech research as early as the 7th and 8th Five Year Plans to break the technological blockade of international advanced countries, and later increased research efforts in the 863 and 973 plans. In the late 1990s, industrial production lines were gradually built and industrial production began. In 2006, German BASF feed was effectively promoted in China. The rapid development of Polyoxymethylene feed system and degreasing technology has greatly promoted the domestic MIM industry. In 2011, Apple in the United States was willing to accept MIM technology and extensively used MIM sintered parts, which reached a period of explosive growth. With the development of domestic industrial technology, new injection machines, green and environmentally friendly oxalic acid degreasing technology, and new wax based feeding systems will drive the MIM industry to steadily increase at an annual growth rate of about 20%.

Prospects of MIM titanium alloys

Titanium and titanium alloys are widely used in aerospace and medical devices due to their high specific strength, high corrosion resistance, and excellent biocompatibility. However, they are limited due to their low efficiency, high waste, and poor performance when processed using traditional mechanical processing methods. Metal Injection Molding (MIM) is a new type of near net forming technology, which is considered an ideal machining process for preparing titanium and titanium alloys due to its low-cost mass production of complex structures, high-dimensional, and high-precision components. The current mainstream MIM titanium process involves mixing titanium alloy metal powder and binder to obtain a uniform and stable feed, and then obtaining a green billet that meets the requirements through injection molding; Subsequently, the binder in the green billet is removed according to different binder systems, and finally the required parts are obtained through sintering and post-processing

Figure 1 MIM Process Flow

According to the market analysis of China's metal powder injection molding (MIM) industry in 2020 by the Huajing Industry Research Institute, it is expected that the market share of the MIM industry will reach 12.19 billion yuan in 2025. Among them, MIM titanium and titanium alloy powder will experience explosive development, which will be concentrated in the consumer electronics field, and the proportion of mobile phones and their components will continue to increase.

Titanium alloy components produced by Qinhuangdao Zhongwei Precision Machinery Co., Ltd

Technical difficulties of MIM titanium alloy

At present, research on MIM titanium and titanium alloys has made certain progress, but there are still some difficulties in large-scale industrial applications, mainly including the following points:

1. Low oxygen spherical titanium and titanium alloy powders are expensive; Although domestic manufacturers of spherical titanium and titanium alloy powder have developed rapidly in recent years, there is still a certain gap between them and the world's leading technology.

2. Selection of binder and degreasing removal process; The choice of binder determines the amount of powder filling, which has a direct impact on the density, shrinkage and surface roughness of sintered products. The efficient degreasing process helps to reduce the impact of impurities such as C and O, and improve product performance.

3. Optimization of sintering process and equipment requirements; Due to the high activity of titanium alloys, it is crucial to control the temperature and oxygen content during sintering, which puts forward higher requirements for the sintering furnace.

Zhongwei Precision MIM Titanium Alloy Powder Research and Production

Zhongwei Precision Nu metal is committed to the R&D and production of new metal materials and spherical metal powders. It is a national high-tech enterprise oriented by R&D and centered on precision manufacturing.

In terms of metal injection molding business, Zhongwei Precision currently has 10 vacuum furnace production lines, with an annual output of over 1000 tons of high-quality components such as titanium alloys and high-temperature alloys. Its products are widely used in additive manufacturing, MIM, surface treatment and other fields. In 2020, zhongwei Precision began to focus on the development of MIM titanium alloy, and set up a joint research and development center with Central South University and other well-known universities in powder metallurgy to continue to break through the bottleneck of MIM titanium alloy powder metal injection molding technology.