This paper describes a Plasma Assisted Debinding and Sintering (PADS) equipment, which has been designed to process Metal Injection Molded (MIM) components. The use of a hybrid system combining a glow discharge with a conventional heating system makes debinding and sintering of MIM components, in the same heating cycle, a feasible industrial process. Characteristics as density, carbon content and mechanical properties are similar to traditionally processed MIM materials. The reduction of energy and gas consumption and shorter lead-times are economic advantages of PADS system. The clean environment of PADS is also an ecological advantage.

More and more applications or demands for machine parts etc are expected for AISI 440C (hereinafter referred to as "440C") Stainless Steel because of its characteristic features, i.e. high-strength as well as high-corrosion resistance. This research has enabled us to obtain sintered products with good quality even under a wide range of temperature by utilizing the pinning effect of NbC, improving the relevant sintering feature of 440C Stainless Steel in the MIM method.

Organic binders are usually pre-mixed with ceramic powders to enhance the formability during the shape forming process. These binders, however, must be eliminated before sintering in order to avoid pore formation and unusual grain growth during sintering. The present work was performed to investigate the effects of residual binder on grain growth behavior during sintering of piezoelectric ceramics. The microstructures of sintered samples were examined for various thermal processes and atmosphere at debinding. Addition of binder seems to promote abnormal grain growth especially in incompletely debinded regions and to make the grain shape change from corner-rounded to faceted.

Ancorsteel 4300, a high performance Cr-Si-Ni-Mo steel, was unveiled two years ago as the first in a series of powder metallurgy alloys that will simulate wrought steel compositions. Advantages of this alloy include good compressibility, high hardenability, and excellent dimensional stability. More important, however, is that this alloy has the ability to be effectively sintered at and maintain oxygen contents below 500 ppm. This unique blend of performance and processing capabilities provides static and dynamic properties that exceed those of conventional powder metallurgy alloys and approach wrought gearing materials. A second Cr-Si-Ni-Mo alloy has now been developed that offers complimentary performance levels at a lower Mo content. This manuscript reviews properties of the two chromium steels with comparisons to traditional sinter-hardened and heat-treated powder metallurgy alloys.

Austenitic stainless steel has been used as a corrosion resistance material. However, austenitic stainless steel has poor wear resistance property due to its low hardness. In this investigation, we apply powder composite process to obtain hard layer of Stainless steel. The composite material was fabricated from planetary ball milled SUS316L stainless steel powder and WC powder and then sintered by Pulsed Current Sintering (PCS) method. We also added TiC powder as a hard particle in WC layer. Evaluations of wear properties were performed by pin-on-disk wear testing machine, and a remarkable improvement in wear resistance property was obtained.

Ceramic-Metal Functionally Graded Materials (FGM) are of great interest for application as Thermal Barrier Coating (TBC) or Wear Resistant Coating (WRC). Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS) is a promising techniques for time-saving consolidation of laminated/graduated powder systems: SPS is a pressure-assisted electrical sintering method which directly applies a pulsed DC current as heat source. In the present work, production of FGMs by means of Spark Plasma Sintering is considered; effect of sintering condition on density, hardness and fracture toughness is studied. Problems correlated to this new processing technology are discussed.

When an alloy such as Ni-W is liquid phase sintered, heavy solid W particles sedimentate to the bottom of the container, provided that their volume fraction is less than a critical value. The sintering process evolves typically in two stages, diffusiondriven macrosegregation sedimentation followed by true sedimentation. During macrosegregation sedimentation, the overall solid volume fraction decreases concurrently with elimination of liquid concentration gradient. However, in the second stage of true sedimentation, the average solid volume fraction in the mushy zone increases with time. It is proposed that the true sedimentation results from particle rearrangement for higher packing efficiency.

The master sintering curve (MSC) is derived from densification data over a range of heating rates and temperatures. To improve the accuracy, several modifications were proposed: multi-phase MSC for solid state sintering with phase changes, MSC for liquid phase sintering, and MSC with consideration of grain growth. The developed MSC models were applied to several material systems such as molybdenum, stainless steels, and tungsten heavy alloys (WHA), in order to evaluate the effect of compaction pressure, phase change, grain growth, and composition on densification, to classify regions having different sintering mechanism, and to help engineer design, optimize, and monitor sintering cycles.

Anisotropic constitutive equations for sintering of metal powder compacts have been formulated from a linear viscous transversely-isotropic model in which an anisotropic sintering stress has been introduced to describe free sintering densification kinetics. The identification of material parameters defined in the model, has been achieved from thermomechanical experiments performed on 316L stainless steel warm-compacted powder in a dilatometer allowing controlled compressive loading.

Both densification and grain growth are driven by the reduction of the interfacial area, kinetics of which depends strongly on the interface structure. Abnormal grain coarsening in the system of singular solid/liquid interface such as WC-Co alloys was explained by the growth mechanism of 2-dimensional nucleation. Based on this concept, the marked inhibition of coarsening of WC grains by VC addition can be approached by the increase in the step free energy, which increases the barrier of 2-dimensional nucleation. The activated sintering in tungsten powders can be approached by the interface structure change induced by the addition of a small amount of nickel.

새로운 급속소결방법인 고주파유도가열 소결법과 펄스전류활성 소결법을 이용하여 습식 볼밀링으로 혼합한 WC-8wt.%Co분말에 60MPa의 압력과 90%의 고주파출력 또는 2800A의 필스전류를 가하여 상대밀도가 98.6% 이상인 초경재료를 2분이내의 짧은 시간에 제조하였다. 초기의 WC분말의 입도가 미세해짐에 따라 고주파유도가열 소결법과 펄스전류활성 소결법 모두 소결시간이 단축되는 경향을 보였으며 그 소결체의 결정립 크기도 감소하였다. 고주파유도가열 소결

급속소결방법인 고주파유도가열 소결법과 펄스전류활성 소결법을 이용하여 습식 볼밀링으로 혼합한 WC-8wt.%Ni분말에 60MPa의 압력과 고주파유도가열장치의 경우 전체 용량 (15kw)의 90%에 해당하는 고주파출력을, 펄스전류활성 소결장치의 경우 2800A의 펄스전류를 가하여 치밀한 소결체를 2분이내의 짧은 시간에 제조하였다. WC 초기입자크기가 증가함에 따라 제조된 소결체의 입자크기와 평균자유행로는 증가하였다. 또한 WC 결정립 크기가 증가함에 따라