Powder metallurgy is a processing technology that produces metal powder or uses metal powder (or a mixture of metal powder and nonmetal powder) as raw material, and molds and sinters it to produce metal materials, composite materials, and various products. Powder metallurgy is similar to ceramic production in that both are powder sintering technologies. Therefore, a series of new powder metallurgy technologies can also be used to produce ceramic materials. Due to its advantages, powder metallurgy technology is the key to solving the problems of new materials and plays an important role in the development of new materials.
Powder metallurgy includes powder production and product production. Among them, powder production is mainly a metallurgical process, which is consistent with its literal meaning. Powder metallurgy products often go far beyond the scope of materials and metallurgy and are often interdisciplinary technologies (materials and metallurgy, machinery and mechanics, etc.). In particular, modern metal powder 3D printing integrates mechanical engineering, CAD, reverse engineering technology, additive manufacturing technology, CNC technology, material science, and laser technology, making powder metallurgy product technology a modern integrated technology that spans more fields.
Meaning
Powder metallurgy is an industrial technology that produces metal powder or uses metal powder (or a mixture of metal powder and nonmetal powder) as raw material, and molds and sinters it to produce metal materials, composite materials, and various products. Powder metallurgy technology is widely used in the transportation, machinery, electronics, aerospace, weapons, biology, new energy, information, and nuclear industries, and has become one of the most dynamic fields of new materials science. Powder metallurgy technology has a series of advantages, such as significant energy saving, material saving, excellent performance, high product accuracy, and good stability, and is very suitable for mass production. In addition, some materials and complex parts that cannot be produced by traditional casting and machining methods can also be produced using powder metallurgy technology, so it has attracted great attention from the industry.
The powder metallurgy product industry includes a wide range of fields, such as iron and stone cutting tools, cemented carbide, magnetic materials, and powder metallurgy products. In the narrow sense, the powder metallurgy product industry refers only to powder metallurgy products, such as powder metallurgy parts (which account for the majority), oil-impregnated bearings, and metal injection molding products.
Features
Powder metallurgy has unique chemical compositions and mechanical and physical properties that cannot be obtained by traditional melting and casting methods. Powder metallurgy technology can be used to directly manufacture porous, semi-dense, and fully dense materials and products such as oil-bearing bearings, gears, cams, guide rods, and tools. It is a process with little or no cutting.
(1) Powder metallurgy technology can minimize the segregation of alloy components and eliminate coarse and uneven casting structures. It plays an important role in the production of high-performance rare earth permanent magnet materials, rare earth hydrogen storage materials, rare earth luminescent materials, rare earth catalysts, high-temperature superconducting materials, and new metal materials (such as Al-Li alloys, heat-resistant Al alloys, superalloys, powder corrosion-resistant stainless steels, powder high-speed steels, and intermetallic high-temperature structural materials).
(2) High-performance non-equilibrium materials such as amorphous materials, microcrystals, quasicrystals, nanocrystals, and supersaturated solid solutions can be made, and these materials have excellent electrical, magnetic, optical, and mechanical properties.
(3) It is a process technology that can easily combine various materials, fully bring out the properties of each component material, and produce high-performance metal- and ceramic-based composite materials at low cost.
(4) It can produce materials and products with special structures and properties that cannot be produced by conventional smelting methods, such as new porous biomaterials, porous separation membrane materials, high-performance structural ceramic molds, and functional ceramic materials.
(5) It can realize near-net formation and automated mass production, effectively reducing resource and energy consumption in production.
(6) It is a new technology that can effectively utilize ores, tailings, steelmaking sludge, rolled steel plates, recycled scraps, etc. as raw materials and effectively regenerate and comprehensively utilize materials.
Many of our general processing tools and hardware molds are manufactured using powder metallurgy technology.
