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Concept
Powder metallurgy
Summary
Powder metallurgy (PM) is a term covering a wide range of ways in which materials or components are made from metal powders. PM processes can reduce or eliminate the need for subtractive processes in manufacturing, lowering material losses and reducing the cost of the final product.
Powder metallurgy is also used to make unique materials impossible to get from melting or forming in other ways. A very important product of this type is tungsten carbide. Tungsten carbide is used to cut and form other metals and is made from tungsten carbide particles bonded with cobalt. It is very widely used in industry for tools of many types and globally ~50,000 tonnes per year is made with powder metallurgy. Other products include sintered filters, porous oil-impregnated bearings, electrical contacts and diamond tools.
Since the advent of industrial production-scale metal powder-based additive manufacturing in the 2010s, selective laser sintering and other metal additive manufacturing processes are a new category of commercially important powder metallurgy applications.
The powder metallurgy "press and sinter" process generally consists of three basic steps: powder blending (or pulverisation), die compaction, and sintering. Compaction of the powder in the die is generally performed at room temperature. Sintering is the process of binding a material together with heat without liquefying it. It is usually conducted at atmospheric pressure, and under carefully controlled atmosphere composition. To obtain special properties or enhanced precision, secondary processing like coining or heat treatment often follows.
One of the older such methods is the process of blending fine (
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