High Performance Gear Obtained by Die Warm Compaction and Rapid Cooling Process

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 $1120^{\circ}C$ 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.