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Our extensive industry news section features stories ranging from new applications for metal and ceramic injection moulding to materials and production equipment developments.

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 Plus essential reports and features... 

A review of the current status of MicroPIM:
Part 2, Screw injection units, simulation and process variants
In this, the second of a two part report for PIM International, Dr Volker Piotter (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany) continues his review of the current status of MicroPIM technology. Innovations in screw injection units, the simulation of MicroPIM, the various technologies available to enable multi-component MicroPIM, and sinter joining are featured.

ITB Precisietechniek: MIM titanium drives growth at Dutch producer
ITB Precisietechniek, based in Boxtel, The Netherlands, has been producing MIM components since 1996. The company has until recently been a relatively low-profile member of the international MIM community. Reflecting a new policy to more openly present its capabilities to the public, ITB recently opened its doors to Dr. Georg Schlieper who reports exclusively for PIM International on the company’s MIM activities, philosophy and views of the MIM industry.

Raymor AP&C: Leading the way with plasma atomised Ti spherical powders for MIM
AP&C, a division of Canada’s Raymor Industries Inc., is today the market leader in the production of spherical titanium powders specifically suited for Metal Injection Moulding (MIM). As a result of this success, the company’s titanium powders are used in a wide range of commercial and R&D stage applications. Jens Kroeger and Frédéric Marion review the powder production process at Raymor AP&C, highlighting technological innovations and related product developments.

MIM at Euro PM2011 Part 1: The competition between Metal Injection Moulding and Investment Casting
The Euro PM2011 Conference, held in Barcelona, Spain, from 9-12 October 2011, offered participants a diverse range of PIM related technical sessions and seminars. Dr David Whittaker reports for PIM International on a paper by Manuel Caballero of Spanish investment castings and MIM producer Ecrimesa/Mimecrisa that analysed how areas of overlap between these two competing technologies have changed in recent years.
 
MIM at Euro PM2011 Part 2: Metal Injection Moulding of applied functional materials
A highlight of the Euro PM2011 Conference, Barcelona, Spain, 9-12 October 2011, was a Special Interest Seminar dedicated to the Metal Injection Moulding of applied functional materials. Dr David Whittaker reports for PIM International on three papers that highlight the potential of MIM in areas other than standard structural component production. These include PIM products with magnetic, thermal and biocompatible properties.

MIM at Euro PM2011 Part 3: Biomedical applications
Reflecting the growing acceptance of Metal Injection Moulding as a manufacturing route for biomedical products, a number of presentations at the Euro PM2011 Conference, Barcelona, Spain, 9-12 October 2011, highlighted the diversity of implant materials now available via MIM. Dr David Whittaker reports for PIM International on three noteworthy papers.

 Technical papers 

Micro-Powder Injection Molding of Barium Titanate
Valmikanathan Onbattuvelli, Ravi K Enneti, Sung-Bum Sohn, Timothy McCabe, Seong-Jin Park and Sundar Atre

Baricum titanate (BaTiO3) displays a range of useful properties of relevance to capacitors, thermistors, sensors, transducers, micro-electromechanical systems, power electronics and energy storage. The current report details the fabrication of BaTiO3 capacitors via the powder injection moulding (PIM) process. Useful processing conditions were identified for injection moulding novel compositions of BaTiO3 containing nanoscale additions. A density of 97.5% and a dielectric constant of 3250 were achieved for the samples sintered at 1300˚C for 2 hrs.

Microwell arrays of 3 μm were successfully moulded and sintered, corresponding to the lowest reported feature size achieved by ceramic injection moulding. Increasing the surface area by the introduction of micro-features was found to increase the energy storage to a maximum of 5 J/cc. The present study demonstrates the applicability of PIM to manufacture BaTiO3 components with complex micro-scale features.

The effect of backbone polymer on phase transformation temperatures and pseudo-elasticity of MIM NiTi alloy using a water soluble binder system
Muhammad Hussain Ismail, Martin Bram, Ana Paula Cysne Barbosa, Manuel Köhl, Hywel A. Davies and Iain Todd

This study investigates the effect of backbone polymer in the binder system (based on water-soluble binder) mixed with pre-alloyed NiTi powder on the resultant impurity contents, phase transformation temperature, microstructures and mechanical behaviour of the as-sintered materials. Green parts were prepared by warm-pressing of the feedstock into a cylindrical shape. The samples were then leached in warm water, thermally debound in argon and finally, vacuum sintered at 1240°C for 10 hours.

The experimental results indicate that the oxygen content of the as-sintered material increased to almost double that for the powder state while the carbon increased by one third to one half, which consequently resulted in a shift of the phase transformation temperature to lower values and broadened the transformation range for the austenite to martensite transition. The uptake of oxygen and carbon during the process also led to the formation of the well known Ti4Ni2Ox and TiC precipitate phases. All samples exhibited psedoelasticity (PE) and shape memory effect (SME) behaviour during a load-unload compression test up to a maximum strain of 8%.

Metal Injection Moulding of W-10%Cu material with ultra fine composite powder
Jiupeng Song, Meigui Qi, Xiong Zeng, Longshan Xu, Yang Yu and Zhigang Zhuang

W-10Cu is one of the most widely used materials for thermal management applications. The sinterability of this material is, however, not enough for reaching high density with normal powder. An in-house developed W-10Cu ultrafine composite powder has been employed for MIM. The torque rheology has been investigated to the feedstock with this ultrafine powder. The W-10Cu parts sintered at 1400˚C has reached relative density of 99%.

The microstructure of sintered W-10Cu is homogenous and grain size for W is about 2-3 μm. Thermal conductivity and coefficient of expansion of the sintered part are 215 W/mK and 6.7X10-6 /K respectively. A comparison of microstructure and properties between W-10Cu MIM parts and Cu infiltrated products is presented.

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