Improving Powder Injection Molding: an Opportunity for the Aerospace Industry

Abstract

This work deals with powder injection molding (PIM) technology of metal and ceramis powders using polyoximethylene (POM) binder. In this study, two ways to decrease the viscosity of PIM feedstock materials with polyoxymethylene were investigated. The first way was to reduce the average molecular weight (AMV) of the binder and the second one to select a polydisperse particle size distribution with high maximum packing fraction. It was shown that binder with AMW equal to 24410 g/mol gives required level of viscosity around 10 Pa/s. It was shown that using the low disperse powder with wide size distribution can lead to volumetric loading of approximately 83 %. Moreover, using such a feedstock has viscosity lower than required by PIM technology 1000 Pa/s.

Keywords

• powder-injection-molding (PIM)
• polyoximethylene (POM)
• low viscosity feedstock