Abstract
Metal injection molding (MIM) process offers near full dense and net shaping of the complicate parts with a relatively low processing cost. Therefore, this MIM process is hoped to be an advanced powder processing technique for fabricating new and high functional materials, especially seems to be quite useful for improvement of the quality and productivity in the automotive sintered parts.
In this work, MIM process has been applied to a wide variety of ferrous materials such as structural steels (4100, 4600 systems), high speed steels, 17-4PH and martensitic stainless steels, and ferrous composites with ceramics. Several processing variations were investigated to control the carbon and microstructure for high strengthening the above steels. Comments are particularly focused on the microstructure control needed for the MIM fabrication of high performance and functional sintered ferrous material components.
