Powdered Metal and the Advantages of Powdered Metallurgy
Odds are that many of today’s top automotive, appliance, food processing, medical, and tool manufacturing companies have heard of using powdered metal to produce the components and parts they need. But beyond that, most companies are unaware of what powdered metal is, what its capabilities are, and how it can benefit their business.
As its name implies, powdered metal is a fine metal powder made up of one or several different types of steel materials such as:
Austenitic stainless steels- Carbon steels
- Chromium-Manganese steels
- Copper steels
- Ferritic stainless steels
- Full Density (FD) steels
- Martensitic stainless steels
- Molybdenum-Nickel steels
- Nickel steels
- Phosphorous steels
These fine metal powders are then pressed and sintered into metal components and parts of various sizes and shapes by a process known as powder metallurgy (PM).
The PM process consists of three steps; mixing, compacting, and sintering.
The metal powder is mixed, compacted at room temperature, and sintered to fit the desired shape and size inside of a high-temperature furnace.
The PM process is extremely cost-efficient because it minimizes or altogether eliminated the need for machining and is capable of producing a high volume of metal components and parts.
For further information about how powder metall and PM can benefit your business, contact the Sintered Specialities Division of SSI Technologies, Inc., today!
