• Journal of Powder Materials
• /
• v.20 no.2
• /
• pp.85-99
• /
• 2013

Powder metallurgy applied rapid heating to sintering starting year 1900. Since 1970 the study has intensified. Now rapid sintering concepts embrace a spectrum of options ranging from dunk cycles to microwave, induction, exothermic, electric field, and spark approaches. Most of the efforts are targeting reduced microstructure coarsening during sintering, although reduced material decomposition is another common goal. The efforts are impressive for simple shapes and success metrics such a small grain size after densification. Several barriers need to be removed prior to application in powder metallurgy commercial sintering. Rapid heating research needs to focus on significant property gains, accurate product dimensions, and lower costs. So far each property gain obtained with rapid heating is matched by traditional sintering and composition changes. Several examples are cited to show the goals for the next round of innovations.

• Proceedings of the Korean Powder Metallurgy Institute Conference
• /
• 2006.09a
• /
• pp.246-247
• /
• 2006

A new approach to sintering loose packed, coarse aluminum alloy powder to full or near full density is presented. A controlled amount of water vapor is introduced into the sintering atmosphere, which disru pts the oxide film and allows metallurgical contact between particles. In addition, supersolidus liquid phase sintering is used to sinter the part to full density. Since the method is particularly applicable to uncompacted powders, it is potentially useful for sintering aluminum powder preforms manufactured by 3DPrinting and powder injection molding.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
• /
• v.20 no.1
• /
• pp.91-98
• /
• 2003

Removal of gas in a mold has been a big problem in pressing mold or in injection mold. Air vent has been used to solve the problem, but it has weak points such as the increased cost, the increased number of process, and vent marks on the surface of a product. In this study, the sintering method and rapid tooling method are used for making porous metal mold. Porous metal mold has many open pores, which are very small. When porous metal mold is used for pressing mold or injection mold, all process would be made short, produce cost would be down, and vent marks would be not leaved on the surface of a product. Characteristic of porous material varies from sintering conditions, which are the length of sintering time, sintering temperature and sintering atmosphere etc. This study will find optimized sintering condition for the porous metal mold.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
• /
• 2002.10a
• /
• pp.308-311
• /
• 2002

Removal of gas in a mold has been a big problem in pressing mold or in injection mold. Air vent has been used to solve the problem, but it has weak points such as the Increased cost, the increased number of process. and vent marks on the surface of a product. In this study, the sintering method and rapid tooling method are used for making porous metal mold. Porous metal mold has many open pores, which are very small. When porous metal mold is used for pressing mold or injection mold, all process would be made short, produce cost would be down, and vent marks would be not leaved on the surface of a product. Characteristic of Porous material varies from sintering conditions, which are the length of sintering time, sintering temperature and sintering atmosphere etc. This study will find optimized sintering condition for the porous metal mold.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.26 no.6
• /
• pp.661-669
• /
• 2002

Rapid tooling technique enables us to make dies and molds that produce prototype parts with the correct material at a substantially reduced cost and time. In this study, experiments on selective laser sintering of tungsten carbide-cobalt mixture were carried out to find optimal sintering conditions that will be applied to rapid metal tooling. The experiments were carried out within an air, an argon and a nitrogen atmosphere. Coupons of single layer were sintered at various laser powers, scanning speeds and scan spacings. Very severe oxidation took place within an air atmosphere. The oxidation is reduced significantly within an argon and a nitrogen atmosphere. The thickness of the sintered coupons is increased as the energy density, the laser energy Per unit scanned area, is increased. Several multi-layer sintering experiments were also carried out.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
• /
• v.26 no.4
• /
• pp.216-221
• /
• 2016

A sintering process for copper based films using a rapid thermal process with infrared lamps is proposed to improve the electrical properties. Compared with films produced by conventional thermal sintering, the microstructure of the copper based films contained fewer internal and interfacial pores and larger grains after the rapid thermal process. This high-density microstructure is due to the high heating rate, which causes the abrupt decomposition of the organic shell at higher temperatures than is the case for the low heating rate; the high heating rate also induces densification of the copper based films. In order to confirm the effect of the rapid thermal process on copper nanoink, copper based films were prepared under varying of conditions such as the sintering temperature, time, and heating rate. As a result, the resistivity of the copper based films showed no significant changes at high temperature ($300^{\circ}C$) according to the sintering conditions. On the other hand, at low temperatures, the resistivity of the copper based films depended on the heating rate of the rapid thermal process.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
• /
• 1996.04a
• /
• pp.181-185
• /
• 1996

Rapid prototyping is becoming an increasingly importnat techniuqe involved in the design cycles of modern industry. The majority of the rapid prototyping systems currently available use photo-reactive resins and waxes as the raw materials. The models produced by these systems often have relatively poor mechanical and physical properties and as such have a limited application to the production of advance prototypes but are excellently suited to the manufacture of engineering prototyes. This work identifies the need to produed near production grade advance prototypes from a variety of metals and a novel prototyping process based on the techniques of selective laser sintering and conventional machining is proposed. The integration of a carbon dioxide laser and a conventional machine tool to create the opto-mechanical by multi-layer sintering and some of the problems involved are also discussed.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
• /
• 2002.02a
• /
• pp.187-194
• /
• 2002

This paper describes the experimental results on direct selective laser sintering of WC-Co mixture for rapid tooling. The experiments were carried out within an air, argon and nitrogen atmosphere. Coupons of single layer were sintered at various laser powers, scanning speeds and scan spacings. As the energy density (energy per unit scanned area) is increased, the thickness of coupons is increased. The main problem took place during sintering within an air atmosphere was severe oxidation of WC-Co mixture. As the laser power is increased and/or scanning speed is decreased, more severe oxidation occurred. Within an argon and nitrogen atmosphere the oxidation is reduced significantly. Experiments on multi-layer sintering were also carried out.

• Journal of Powder Materials
• /
• v.5 no.4
• /
• pp.293-298
• /
• 1998

In all larger hardmetal workshops furnaces for dewaxing, vacuum sintering or vacuum and overpressure sintering are today's standard. The furnace technology is well established. Equipment specifications such as operating overpressure, determine sintering cost, product quality, safety and reliability of the furnace and ultimately influence the competitiveness of the hard metal procucer in the global market. Essential furnace requirements are an efficient utilization of the furnace, an environmental friendly dewaxing system, high temperature uniformity, metallurgical treatment with process gases, as well as reduced cooling time by means of rapid cooling. Examples of reduced sintering costs are described achieved using a new design of vacuum sintering furnace with an improved rapid cooling device, cooling times are reduced by up to 45%. Additionally, a cost comparison of two different designs of vacuum overpressure sintering furnaces are included.

• Proceedings of the Korean Powder Metallurgy Institute Conference
• /
• 2006.09a
• /
• pp.323-324
• /
• 2006

The nanostructure control of $Si_3N_4$ ceramics can be achieved by using fine starting powder and retardation of grain growth. The spark plasma sintering technique is useful to retard the grain growth by rapid heating. In the present work, the change of microstructure was investigated with emphasis on the particle size of starting powder, the amount of sintering additive and the heating schedule. The rapid heating by spark plasma sintering gave the fine microstructure consisting of equiaxed grains with the same size as starting particles. The spark plasma sintering of $Si_3N_4$ fine powder was effective to control the microstrucutre on nano-meter level.