CAE technology is an integrated tool including all aspects such as powder, binder system, mixing, injection molding, debinding and sintering. Therefore, CAE technology is considered as one of core technologies for PIM industry in the future. Recently many researchers are developing not only CAE software itself but also application procedures of CAE software. In this study, the applications for CAE technology in PIM industry are presented including feedstock mixing effect, several cases of troubleshooting and optimization procedure.
In this paper we presented numerical method for the simulation of powder injection molding filling process, which is one of the key processes in powder injection molding. Rheological properties of powder binder mixture such as slip phenomena and yield stress were introduced into the numerical analysis model of powder injection molding filling simulation. Numerical model can be classified into two types. One is 2.5D model which can be introduced to a arbitrary thin geometry and the other is full 3D model which can be applied to a general 3D shape. For 2.5D model we showed the validity of our CAE system with several verification examples. Finally we suggested flow analysis model for 3D powder injection molding filling simulation.