Overview of MIM Technology Development in the Last 25 Years through Our μ-MIM Technology

Abstract

It was a great honour for us to receive the 59th technical achievement award of Japan Society of Powder and Powder metallurgy (JSPM). We presented an overview of the metal injection moulding (MIM) technology development over 25 years of experience and future trends through our originally developed μ-MIM technology in the annual spring meeting of JSPM 2022, which are summarised in this paper.

The μ-MIM technology is developed for especially small size metal parts with strict dimensional tolerances. We have focused only on a small complex designed metal part production in a net shaping, thus, the trend related to MIM parts larger than 50 mm in size is not covered. We have also joined the Micro Manufacturing Association in Japan since its establishment in 2018, which promotes micro parts manufacturing technology to the world. The demand increment of micro parts in various industries is never slowdown thus our μ-MIM technology overview might be instructive for both powder metallurgy and micro parts manufacturing interests.