PM recent developments focus on increasing this technology's competitiveness when compared to wrought materials. Warm compaction allows the replacement of a double press double sinter process with a single warm press and sintering step, thus allowing cost and time savings. Moreover there are added benefits to consider such as reducing work in process and lessening part's logistics cost. This paper presents a successful industrial trial to replace a double press-double sinter process with a warm die compaction and sintering process. The part chosen was a high performance gear containing 0,9% wt. carbon. Sintering was conducted in a belt furnace at in a nitrogen rich atmosphere with rapid cooling process in order to obtain a quasi fully martensitic structure with a minimum of 700HV0,1 and 450HV10 after annealing. The balance between properties and cost is favoured by the use of a singular lubricant developed in a Eureka frame project together with POMETON S.A. and die warm compaction. Warm compaction is only needed to be effective on the gear teeth, in order to achieve the required properties. Therefore only the die is actually heated. This simplified system avoids flow rate problems typically involved when using more elaborate warm compaction equipments.

The high pressure compaction without internal lubricant and the high green density even with the pore free density were achieved by the newly developed die wall lubricant for warm compaction. This developed die wall lubricated warm compaction followed by high temperature sintering resulted in not only the superior mechanical property but also the low dimensional change. In this paper, the effects of increasing the green density on the sintered density, the dimensional change and the mechanical property are mainly discussed

Numerical Simulation of powder die pressing is conducted on Case Study geometry. Influence of fill density distribution and punch kinematics upon green density distribution and punch loading are studied and discussed. Deviations in punch kinematics due to punch deflection influence the most the results in term of density and force.

Crack generation during die compaction and distortion during sintering have been critical problems for the conventional pressing and sintering process. Until now, trial and error approach with engineers' industrial experiences has been only solution to protect the crack generation and distortion. However, with complexity in shape and process it is very difficult to design process conditions without CAE analysis. We developed the exclusive CAE software (PMsolver/Compaction) for die compaction process. The accuracy of PMsolver is verified by comparing the finite element simulation results with experimental results. The simplified procedures to find material properties are proposed and verified with iron based powder and tungsten carbide powder. Based on the accurate simulation result by PMsolver, the optimal process conditions are designed to get uniform density distribution in a powder compact after die compaction process by using a derivative based optimization scheme. In addition, the effect of non-uniform density distribution in a powder compact on distortion during sintering is shown in case of the fabrication of tungsten carbide insert.