What is the application of metal powder injection molding?

What is the application of metal powder injection molding?

First, what is metal powder injection molding technology?

Metal Injection Molding (MIM) is a new near net molding technology in the field of powder metallurgy. The process of MIM consists of six steps: powder preparation, powder mixing and binder, injection molding, degreasing and de-binder, sintering curing and post-treatment.

The details are as follows: The metal powder particle size required for MIM is very small, generally in the range of 0 to 30 microns, through very high pressure water atomization method or gas atomization method; Mixed powder and binder: metal powder and organic binder are fully mixed to make particles, and the mixture particles are heated to a plasticized state; Injection molding: The mixture is extruded into the mold cavity by the injection molding machine to form the preliminary blank of the part; Degreasing debinder: by chemical or thermal decomposition method to remove the binder in the parts blank, only metal or only a little adhesive residue parts blank; Sintering curing: the parts are sent to the sintering furnace for curing to further remove the residual binder; Post-treatment: Through quenching heat treatment, chemical heat treatment, steam treatment and other means to reduce the internal pores of parts, improve the density of parts, improve the strength of parts, corrosion resistance and wear resistance, etc., to form the final part.

Second, what is the application of metal powder injection molding technology?

At present, MIM is widely used in electronic products, watches, small medical devices, automobile engine parts, sports equipment, light weapons and so on. Compared with traditional machining, MIM technology can effectively use materials, and can shape complex structure parts, is one of the effective complementary methods of traditional machining.

The processing applicable to MIM technology can be classified into the following situations:

1, in the traditional cutting or grinding processing material loss is very large, and the processing period is relatively long parts, suitable for MIM technology to reduce costs.

2, MIM can be mass production, meet certain mass production conditions, but the demand relative to the mold cost is lower parts suitable for MIM technology.

3, difficult to cut metals, such as titanium, nickel alloys, etc., can be considered through MIM technology manufacturing, product accuracy relative to traditional processing will be improved, but also greatly save materials.

4, with complex geometric shapes, such as surface threads, knurls, cross channels and other parts, such parts are difficult to achieve in traditional powder metallurgy, in the cutting process requires multiple changes in the processing of multi-axis parts or multi-reference parts, suitable for processing through MIM technology.

5. Parts that need to be processed by a combination of different materials, such as parts processed by metal and ceramic combination materials, or parts superimposed by different materials, such as hard magnetic - soft magnetic, magnetic - non-magnetic, conductive - insulating material superimposed parts.

Third, metal powder injection molding technology suitable materials?

MIM technology is applicable to a relatively broad range of materials, in principle as long as the melting point above the sintering temperature of the powder material can be manufactured by MIM technology parts, taking into account the economy, the current commonly used materials are mainly iron base, nickel base, low alloy, carbide and so on