Abstract
The authors have reported previously the carbon control on 4600 steels formed by metal injection molding (MIM) techniques using elemental powders. In the present paper, mechanical properties of the 4600 steels are investigated as comparing with that of the full-densified materials by Ceracon Process and some factors affecting the properties are discussed taking the structure into account.
Sintered 4600 steels with elemental powders showed the better ductility than that of commercial sintered alloy steels with the same strength level because of the high density and the uniform distribution of finer spherical pores. Heat treatment improved the strength of 4600 steels with elemental powders over 2000MPa without loss of ductility (the elongation was over 3%), which showed the more excellent properties than those of conventional powder forged steels. This result indicates that it is possible to attain high performance ferrous materials by MIM techniques.
