Comparison of metal forming processes

Picture 1 show, MIM has an exclusive advantage in terms of large part production and high degree of complexity. MIM is competitive for both medium-volume precision-cast complex parts and powder metallurgy small parts that require subsequent machining. Part designers should focus on designing parts with complex three-dimensional shapes and large production volumes, so as to give full play to the characteristics of MIM and reduce production costs.

 

 

To illustrate the degree of complexity that powder injection molding can create, Figure 2 shows a stereoscopic diagram of some of the parts shapes and features that MIM can design and produce. Various geometers can be combined to form a complex whole, showing the possible situations of holes, pins, wings, grooves, bevels, arms, etc. A variety of complex shapes are widely combined with material properties, fully demonstrating the characteristics of a wide variety of powder injection molding products.

 

 

 

 

MIM belongs to powder metallurgy category. PM has developed into a mature industry, and MIM is a breakthrough for PM, and there is a lot of room for process optimization. MIM and PM are not substitutes because the two products are quite different in terms of performance, shape and cost.

In the field of PM, powder hot forging and pressure regulation have been developed to improve product density; Improve the press and die structure to increase the complexity of parts, but nowhere near the level of MIM. All parts that can meet the requirements of users by die-sintering have low cost and should not be considered as MIM.

 

 

In the metal forming process, die casting and precision casting are the processes that can form three-dimensional complex shape parts. However, mold casting is still limited to low-melting metals. Precision casting is a better metal forming process for metals that can be melted into "melt" and "cast", such as alloy steel, stainless steel, high melting point alloys such as superalloy, and non-ferrous metals and alloys such as aluminum alloy, zinc, brass, bronze, silver, gold, etc. However, for such refractory alloys, hard alloys, high specific gravity alloys, false alloys, cermet and so on can do nothing. This is the essential limitation of ics, and ics are very difficult or not feasible for the production of small, thin, and large batch parts.

IC is a final-form metal forming process with mature industrialization and limited development potential. As a new technology, MIM will invade the market of IC large quantities of small parts.