Abstract
Metal Injection Molding (MIM) process is a manufacturing route for mass-production of high density, highperformance, and near net-shaped metal components. However, MIM processes have been still limited in the size of the components. A Quickset process (QSP) has been invented as one of solutions for the issue. A feature of QSP is the manufacturing of large size parts that can not be made by the usual MIM processes based on a thermoplastic binder system. Although assessment of the properties such as strength are important to design the reliable machine structural parts, there are few reports about the properties of the materials produced by QSP at the present time.
In this study, the behavior of properties (relative density, hardness, tensile and fatigue strength) for machine structural low alloy steels produced by QSP have been investigated. The tensile strength of QSP alloy steels were equivalent to those of MIM alloy steels. However the fatigue strength of QSP alloy steel was relatively low, because of the coarse pores due to the segregation of binder occurred at water freeze injection molding step.
