Abstract
The production method for metal components with micro sized porous structure has been developed by applying "powder space holder method" to metal powder injection molding process. In this study, the green compacts with fine and coarse particles of SUS316L were prepared by hot press molding, and the effects of size and contents of space hold particles on the microstructure, sintered shrinkage and porosity were investigated. Moreover a co-sintering process was utilized to make a plate of sintered metals with micro porous graded structure. The five layers of metal with symmetric structure, which the skin layer was formed with high density metal and the core was formed with open or closed porous structure, or with inverse symmetry, was obtained by changing stacking sequence in co-sintering process. Mechanical properties of the materials with plain homogeneous porous structure and porous graded structure were compared. The usefulness of proposed method for producing the metal components with micro porous graded structure and the effective of graded structure to compensate the deficiencies on the mechanical property of porous metals was shown.
