Articles 

Development and Application of Ferrous Metal Powder Metallurgy Technology

2011-02-23

Powder metallurgy is the technology of creating metal material, metal composites or metal products through the forming and sintering of metal powder (or metal and non-metal powder compounds) as raw material. Due to its similarities to the production of ceramics, powder metallurgy technologies can also be applied to ceramic materials. Powder metallurgy technology is capable of producing high-precision parts of complex shapes through near-net shaping; this economically proficient trait is the reason for its popular applications in the automobile industry. In the past, such products used to compose of mainly ferrous metal powder. Lately, products constituted of alloy powders such as stainless steel, tool steel, as well as heat-resistant and corrosion-resistant super alloy have experienced wide-spreading developments. In terms of the technological background behind these developments, alloy powder produced from atomization is the first of many techniques to allow mass production for high-quality powder. The improvements in the traditional stamping and sintering, as well as developments in high density technologies such as forging and hot isostatic pressure of metal powder, have disintegrated any common doubts for unreliable properties within metal powder products.