In recent years, PCB drills with smaller diameters less than 0.1 mm are used and thus there are growing needs for ultra-fine grained cemented carbides. However, ultra-fine WC powder usually causes extraordinary grain growth during sintering which weakens mechanical strength of ultra-fine grained cemented carbides. So we examined several kinds of WC powders to make new ultra-fine grained cemented carbides having superior performance. We found that direct carburized WC powder is very good as a WC raw material. The PCB drills made of the developed ultra-fine grained cemented carbides have higher hardness, toughness and stiffness than conventional ones.

Mechanical properties of metal injection molded titanium and titanium alloy parts were investigated in this study. Material powders with low oxygen content and spherical shape were obtained by electrode induction-melting gas atomization which could melt and atomize titanium and titanium alloy bars with no touch on crucible or tundish. Tensile specimens were fabricated from obtained powders by metal injection molding process. Tensile strength of the specimens increases with increasing oxygen content. This result corresponds to a tendency of wrought metal.

Fabrication of a nano-laminar ceramic composite by sintering thin ceramic plates was examined. Silver-coated glass flakes with a thickness of less than were consolidated by pulsed current sintering or hotpressing to obtain model composites. The samples sintered at the optimum conditions were fairly dense, and the flakes were aligned by uniaxial press. The metal coating remained on the flakes through the sintering process, and became an interface layer between the flakes. No crack propagation through the transverse direction of the lamellar was observed in the indentation test. The possibilities of high resistance against crack propagation was suggested.

This paper presents the influence of the compositions of sintered Ti-Ni alloys on their thermo-mechanical properties. The Ti-Ni alloys having various compositions from 50at%Ni to 51at%Ni were sintered using elemental Ti and Ni powders by a pulse-current pressure sintering equipment. The deformation resistance in stress-strain curves increased with an increase in Ni content. In the case of Ti-50at%Ni, tensile strength and elongation were more than 500 MPa and 7%, respectively. The increase in Ni content also makes the transformation temperatures lower. The deformation resistance at a test temperature change from 293K and 353K in isothermal tensile test increased with elevating test temperature.

Hybrid atomization is a new atomization technique that combines gas atomization with centrifugal atomization. This process can produce fine, spherical powders economically with a mean size of about 10 m diameter and a tight size distribution.